Editing Edwin Meese (section)

====Berkeley protests====
{{Main|1960s Berkeley protests|1969 People's Park protest}}
As Reagan's chief of staff, Meese was instrumental in the decision to crack down on student protesters at [[People's Park (Berkeley)|People's Park]] in [[Berkeley, California]], on May 15, 1969. Meese was widely criticized for escalating the official response to the People's Park protest, during which law enforcement officers killed one student, on his way to class, who was not a protester and injured hundreds of others, including bystanders. Meese advised Reagan to declare a [[state of emergency]] in Berkeley, contrary to the recommendation of the Berkeley City Council. That resulted in a two-week occupation of People's Park by [[National Guard of the United States|National Guard]] troops.

The first governor to turn to Meese for advice on riot control was Democrat [[Pat Brown|Edmund (Pat) Brown]], who first telephoned Meese seeking advice on how to best handle the situation. "I told him," Meese said, "that the people in that building should be arrested and taken out of there. I told him that if they were allowed to stay, there would be another mob scene, even bigger, the next day." Meese and Deputy District Attorney [[Lowell Jensen]] later served as co-counsels in the trial of Berkeley demonstrators. Meese was recognized as one of five "Outstanding Young Men of California" by the California Junior Chamber of Commerce for his role in countering the Berkeley demonstrators.<ref name="Edwards"/> Meese's role in quelling the riots at [[University of California, Berkeley|UC Berkeley]] has been identified by critics and supporters as an example of a conservative law-enforcement philosophy at work.<ref name=Ravitch>{{citation |last=Ravitch |first=Diane |author-link=Diane Ravitch |title=The Troubled Crusade |year=1983 |publisher=[[Basic Books]] |location=New York |isbn=978-0465087570 |page=[https://archive.org/details/troubledcrusadea00ravi/page/191 191] |url=https://archive.org/details/troubledcrusadea00ravi/page/191 }}</ref>