Riot police are police who are organised, deployed, trained or equipped to confront crowds, protests or riots.
Riot police may be regular police who act in the role of riot police in particular situations or they may be separate units organised within or in parallel to regular police forces. Riot police are used in a variety of different situations and for a variety of different purposes. They may be employed to control riots as their name suggests, to disperse or control crowds, to maintain public order or discourage criminality, to protect people or property, to function as a tool of political repression by breaking up protests and suppressing dissent or civil disobedience.
Read more about Riot Police: Riot Gear, List of Riot Police Organizations
Famous quotes containing the words riot and/or police:
“So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.””
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 27:24.
“Despite the hundreds of attempts, police terror and the concentration camps have proved to be more or less impossible subjects for the artist; since what happened to them was beyond the imagination, it was therefore also beyond art and all those human values on which art is traditionally based.”
—A. Alvarez (b. 1929)