Public order policing covers a vast array of routine policing of public spaces (downtown central business districts; shopping malls) and public offences (drunk and disorderly; street violence; assaults; anti-social tourist behaviour). The public order policing of collective unrest in regional and remote locations includes the policing of protest events, rallies, marches, strikes and lockouts. Protests in rural locations are less frequent and of smaller numbers than urban occurrences, but nevertheless impact participants, communities and police.

The highly visible policing of public order represents special operational, logistical and political challenges for police strategies and tactics. Failure to prevent violence through police inaction, or escalating violence through police intervention, are constant dilemmas faced by police as they respond to conflicts. Public order policing comprises the state’s law enforcement in establishing social control and maintaining order; unruly and riotous behaviour raises questions about police legitimacy and capability. The policing of public dissent in rural areas is influenced by many factors, including global events, but also the dynamics of the localized interaction of police and activist.

The myth of bucolic bliss – the mystical crime-free rurality, devoid of conflict – has been shown to be misleading, inaccurate and even dangerous. Regional and remote conflicts between colonial state police and Indigenous groups all too often occasioned bloody encounters. Rural policing is a specialized activity in itself. It is traditionally embodied within a community policing ethos with the local police station symbolic of stability and emergency assistance. Police remain the primary agency for identifying and interdicting rural crime and potentially violent conflict situations. Paradoxically, rural police are both the protectors and the prosecutors; a dichotomy of providing assistance and enforcing arrests.

As Baker (2014) points out, the coercive arm and guardian of the state, police – historically supported by governmental authority and the ruling power elites – have often assailed and quelled advocates of radical social change in a repressive and even brutal manner (peasant revolts; suffragettes; civil rights campaigners; anti-apartheid demonstrators; environmental activists; anti-globalization protesters) (see Baker et al, 2017). Public order policing is not confined to urban boundaries; for instance, in Australia, many vexatious, bitter and violent industrial disputes occurred in remote areas and resulted in pitched battles at shearing sheds, coal mines and regional wharves.