Abstract
Drawing on examples from Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, this chapter considers resistance to COVID-19 rules and regulations at the level of everyday life and in respect of public gatherings for the purpose of protest. Governments have often deployed police to enforce compliance with COVID-19 rules. Sometimes that has resulted in the criminalization of marginalized groups and disproportionate use of fines in already-overpoliced communities. At times, police have also adopted heavy-handed tactics at protests during the pandemic in contravention of informal arrangements designed to foster cooperation and negotiation between police and protestors. Even when protests have been sanctioned by courts, police have sometimes sought to thwart them in a relatively autonomous display of their discretionary power. The chapter considers dilemmas of pandemic policing in the context of critical commentary, suggesting the police are not the most appropriate or the most effective agency to deal with a public health crisis. It is argued that in daily life and at protest events, a facilitative, community-based approach is desirable (though not entirely unproblematic), that is, an approach relying less on enforcement and more on policing at the margins rather than through fines and other punitive sanctions.