Download breakin g barriers - Scottish Institute for Policing Research

UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Policing in Context: Understanding Crowd Dynamics
Reflections on crowd/police interactions and current thinking on crowd dynamics
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
• Work on riots, political demonstrations, carnivals, football
matches and ceremonial occasions.
• Supported by the ESRC, Home Office, Metropolitan Police,
London, NPIA (National Police Improvement Agency
formerly Centrex), University of Abertay and SIPR (Scottish
Institute for Policing Research).
• UK Collaborators: Dundee, Liverpool and Sussex.
• International Collaborators: Dutch National Police Institute
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Public order and community
policing
The duty of the police service in Scotland
is “to prevent and detect crime – and to
preserve public order”1
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Complexity of police decision making
• Strategic
• Tactical
• Operational
(Gold)
(Silver)
(Bronze)
Our work has shown that police decision
making at these levels is informed by
accountability concerns to internal and
external audiences.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Provoke/permit violence – a dilemma
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
What tactics should we use?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Arrest
To kit/not to kit officers
Use of officers with protective equipment
Use of dogs
Use of horses
Contain/’Kettling’
Do nothing
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Police accountability
•Internal audiences (senior and junior officers) – senior officers suggest
this is a bijou event, junior officers are calling for the horses to clear the
streets.
•External audiences (politicians, political commentators,
journalists, protest groups, lobbyists) Massive political pressure exerted
on senior officers to avoid London coming to a standstill.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Changing accountability
• Prior to any conflict, no tension between
internal and external sources of accountability
• Incipient conflict (a few bricks and bottles) can
be held to account for both provoking and
permitting violence
• Full Monty – When London burns - can only
be held to account both, internally and
externally, for permitting violence to occur
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Practical advice
•
•
•
•
•
Four principles:
Intelligence
Facilitation
Communication
Differentiation
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Intelligence
• Intelligence: Prior to any event, the police should
identify all the groups that might be involved and
their perspective on events: their intentions, their
tactics, their notions of acceptable behaviour, their
views of other groups and how they view their
history with those groups including any grievances
or points of sensitivity.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Intelligence
• Intelligence may also indicate the proportion of
different groups in the crowd, how homogenous
the crowd might be in its intentions, whether any
groups have intentions that the police cannot
sanction, and how confrontational these groups
will be when their intentions are frustrated.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Facilitation
• Facilitation: The police should consider
both in advance and during any event how
to facilitate any lawful and legitimate aims
of groups that are present. They should also
consider whether there are legitimate
alternatives through which crowd members
can express themselves even when they
propose illegitimate actions.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Facilitation
• These considerations are particularly
important when conflict begins to break out
and may make the difference between
escalation to full-blown riot and isolated
acts of violence. The aim should be to
permit the pursuit of lawful aims whilst
impeding unlawful acts
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Communication
• Communication: It is important to devise
in advance a communications strategy
which considers what is communicated,
who communicates and how
communication occurs.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Communication
• The police should communicate to crowds
how they are seeking to facilitate the
crowd’s legitimate aims and how the
illegitimate actions of some in the crowd
may serve to impede those aims.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Communication
• Communication should be through figures
respected by crowd members and liaison
should be established at an early stage.
• Communication technologies may vary
from leaflets handed out in advance to
sound and display systems that will be
noticed even under crowd conditions.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Differentiation
Differentiation: Under conditions where
conflict is expected, and especially if
conflict begins to break out, there is a
tendency to treat all crowd members with
hostility.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Differentiation
However especially in such situations, it is
crucial to treat people with respect and win
them to the police side, not the side of those
initiating conflict. When formulating a
response to potential or actual disorder, it is
always critical to act in ways that
distinguish between people promoting
conflict and other crowd members.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Differentiation
• This is important at all stages from
designing tactics to planning events to
implementing tactics. Even if only a few
individuals are treated inappropriately (e.g.
pregnant women caught up in an ‘isolate
and contain’ tactic) it can do considerable
harm to an otherwise successful police
operation.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Differentiation
• Thus police commanders should ensure that
officers distinguish clearly between crowd
members at all times and that they place as
much priority on helping the majority to act
peacefully as on preventing a minority act
violently.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Conclusions
The police need to utilise intelligence,
communication, differentiation and
facilitation strategies which avoid the
situation of them treating a physical
aggregate of people as a psychological
crowd.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Conclusions
• Police decision making in public order
situations is complex and influenced by
accountability concerns.
• Important to realise how intra group
processes (relations within the police
themselves) affect decisions.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Conclusions
• Also, need to take account of how police
decisions on strategy and tactics influences the
crowd (intergroup relations).
• Questions?
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Thanks to co sponsors of the event:
• SIPR (Scottish Institute for Policing research)
• Public Policy forum (Scotland)
• University of Edinburgh
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Selected references
• Cronin, P. D. J. & Reicher, S.D. (2009).
Accountability processes and group dynamics: a SIDE perspective on
the policing of an anti-capitalist riot: European Journal of Social
Psychology. Vol. 39, 237 - 254.
• Cronin, P.D.J., & Reicher, S. (2006).
A study of the factors that influence how senior officers police crowd
events: On SIDE outside the laboratory. British Journal of Social
Psychology, 45, 175-196.
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Selected references
• Cronin, P.D.J. & Reicher, S.D.(2002). Report and recommendations
into the policing of the May Day Protests (2001): London:
Metropolitan Police.
• Reicher, S.D., Stott, C., Cronin, P. & Adang, O. (2003) Association of
Chief Police Officers manual for keeping the peace. London: Home
Office.
• Reicher, S.D., Stott, C., Cronin, P. & Adang, O. A new approach to
crowd psychology and public order policing.
(Policing 2004 - vol. 27. no.4).
breaking barriers
UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY
Selected references
• Le Bon, G. (1895, trans. 1947).
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. London: Ernest Benn.
• Reicher, S., Stott, C., Drury, J., Adang, O., Cronin, P., & Livingstone, A.
(2008). Knowledge-based public order policing: Principles and practice.
Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 1, 403-415.
breaking barriers