Mass arrest

A mass arrest occurs when police apprehend large numbers of suspects at once. This sometimes occurs at illegal protests. Some mass arrests are also used in an effort to combat gang activity. This is sometimes controversial, and lawsuits sometimes result. In police science, it is deemed to be good practice to plan for the identification of those arrested during mass arrests, since it is unlikely that the officers will remember everyone they arrested.

The Japan Farmers' Union and other Japanese labor-farmer groups were hit by mass arrests in the 1920s. On April 16, 1929, several thousand members of the farmers' movement were arrested. Following World War II, mass arrests (over 120,000) of actual and suspected Quislings occurred in the Netherlands.Totalitarian regimes have sometimes conducted mass arrests as a prelude to a purge of perceived political enemies, sometimes through executions.

On March 10, 2010 a mass crackdown was initiated to thwart a planned peaceful 'million march' to be conducted in a South Indian state capital of Hyderabad demanding formation of a new federal unit, more than 100,000 Telangana people were taken in to custody by a police force controlled by the coastal 'andhra' elites. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12699113

The 2010 G-20 Toronto summit was witness to the largest mass arrest in Canadian history.

In December 1964, the University of California, Berkeley was disrupted by a mass student sit-in in the administration building and by mass arrests of 700 students.

Beginning on May 3, 1971, three days into the 1971 May Day Protests - a series of large-scale civil disobedience actions in Washington, D.C. - massive arrest sweeps begin. In a few days over 12,000 are arrested - the largest mass arrest in U.S. history.

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