Towards an Army of Ghosts ***

In the idealized framework of police tactics all riot lines are orderly and controlled, but in reality cops have emotional responses, disobey orders, make mistakes, and are sometimes overwhelmed with resistance. The police riot is a massive acceleration of action, the complete breaking of coherence to reimpose coherence, but if it fails then they fall completely into incoherence. Though there is a tendency to see the police as a unified force, the organization of a riot line is not a form of order, rather it is a by-product of the attempt to organize a certain terrain of action within the paradox of contained crisis.