Research

Police need rethink on crowd management

Published 24 January 2013

Police tactics of charging or 'kettling' crowds can unite protesters and escalate disorder, according to new research by the University of Brighton.

Rather than dispersing and leaving the scene, crowds "under attack" by police can become more militant and more determined to resist what they see as illegitimate behaviour by the police.

Dr Chris Cocking, a University of Brighton senior lecturer, carried out interviews with 20 people who had experienced police charges at demonstrations including the student tuition fees protests of 2010. His findings are published online today in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling.

Dr Cocking said: "I found that rather than panicking and displaying selfish behaviour such as pushing, trampling over others etc, people co-operated when they fled if they were physically able to so.

"Furthermore, the initially instinctive response of flight was quickly overcome by more socialised reactions, and resulted in increased crowd unity, militancy etc and tended to make people more determined to resist what they saw as illegitimate behaviour by the police rather than dispersing and leaving the vicinity, which is the stated aim of the tactic of crowd dispersal.

"I concluded that the tactic of crowd dispersal, along with other indiscriminate public order tactics, such as kettling, may be counter-productive, as it may serve to psychologically unite previously disparate groups in a crowd and so escalate crowd disorder."

Dr Cocking said police needed to rethink tactics: "This study adds to an existing body of psychological evidence that is critical of the use of indiscriminate public order tactics and supports calls for more evidence-based public order policing to inform police decision making, rather than relying on outdated and unsubstantiated irrationalist accounts of crowd behaviour.

"Police commanders responsible for deciding on the implementation of indiscriminate public order tactics need to consider the implications of using them and consider whether their use risks generating a self-fulfilling prophesy. For, if they use crowd control strategies that rely upon a fundamental distrust of crowds and treat them in a uniform way, then they may increase the threat of disorder that the public expects them to prevent.”

For more details of his work on crowd behaviour see Dr Cocking's blog.