crowd control strategy
Suppressing political demonstrations has been a key function of the police since their founding. Crowd control strategies have evolved over time, and understanding the different approaches police can take will assist activists in overcoming them.
This article explores the most common crowd control strategies, provides advice for protest organisers, and provides historical context.
(NB. Crowd control can refer to police management of sports events, parades, and other large gatherings. This article focuses on the policing of political demonstrations.
Strategy refers to the overarching plan police have for dealing with demonstrations, whereas tactics are the individual actions police take to execute their strategy. Tactics such as the use of “less lethal” weapons are discussed in other articles)
Crowd control is generally conducted by militarised police forces (riot squads), but in some cases by the military, or non-specialist police.
Police claim that they attend demonstrations to prevent violence and safeguard individual rights. For example, the International Association of Chiefs of Police Crowd Management Policy states:
“The primary goal of all law enforcement crowd response should be to protect individuals and their associated rights, including, but not limited to, those associated with assembly and free speech.”(1)
In reality, police responses to crowds are affected by the aims of the regime and the ideology of the police. The intensity of crowd control policing is influenced by the race of the participants (2), whether participants are left wing (3,4), and if the demonstration is opposed to police brutality (5).
While the police claim that crowd control is about avoiding violence, pre-emptive violence is key to most strategies described in this article.
Police will generally be outnumbered by protestors, so to overcome the crowd they rely on formations, physical barriers and weapons that allow them to concentrate force.
strategies
escalated force
Escalated Force is the oldest, and simplest strategy still in use. Police are heavily armed and present overwhelming force to intimidate the crowd. Police order the entire crowd to disperse. If this does not work, the police will attack with increasing intensity until the crowd disperses. The violence is indiscriminate, and may involve mass arrests and killings.
Police employing this strategy see political demonstrations as automatically undesirable, no matter how they are conducted. Police will initiate force to break the crowd up even before any violence or property damage has occurred.
Escalated Force is underpinned by the “classic” view of crowds as inherently disruptive and irrational. Individuals are theorised to lose their sense of self in a crowd, in a process called “deindividuation”. Members of the crowd shed their values, inhibitions and ability to reason, acting as part of a collective mind that is “unanimous, emotional, and intellectually weak.”(6)
The classic view of crowd psychology lacks a solid evidential basis and is no longer supported by most academics, but it still forms the basis for many police forces’ crowd control strategies (7,8).
Rather than dispersing crowds, the indiscriminate violence of Escalated Force may antagonise and unite crowd members who previously had a “neutral” relationship with the police (9).
responding to escalated force
Escalated Force is the most violent strategy discussed in this article, so activists should consider postponing or relocating the demonstration to avoid casualties.
If you continue with the demonstration, ensure that you have trained street medics and protective equipment. Crowd members wearing shields, helmets, goggles etc. can protect from “less lethal” weapons but may antagonise the police, so this approach may not be advisable against other crowd control strategies. However, if police are using Escalated Force, they will attack the crowd indiscriminately regardless of the protective equipment and behaviour of the crowd.
Escalated Force has a tendency to unite crowds and public opinion against the police, as with the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, Bloody Sunday in 1905 or repression of American civil rights protests in the 1950s and 1960s. Activists should highlight police violence in the media to galvanise public opinion against the police, and discourage the police from using Escalated Force in the future.
negotiated management
Negotiated Management focuses on open communication between protest organisers and the police, minimising violence and disruption. Organisers may be given “permits” to protest. Police will minimise violence and arrests, or negotiate with organisers about the conduct of pre-arranged symbolic arrests.
Negotiated Management contrasts with Escalated Force because it acknowledges a legitimate role for political protest.
In theory, Negotiated Management aims to reach a consensus between police and protestors to avoid any conflict, respecting the public’s right to freedom of political expression (10). In practice, police and protest organisers do not have equal power in negotiations, and even when courts allow protests to go ahead, police may use force to shut them down with impunity (11, 12).
During negotiations, police may try to pressure protest organisers into concessions such as:
Limiting the size, duration and area of the demonstration eg. A march can involve a maximum of 1000 people, for one hour, only along a pre-planned route, block only one entrance to a workplace, remain in public parks or squares instead of blocking traffic.
Limiting what protestors can carry. Flagpoles may be deemed weapons and certain slogans may be banned from banners. Masks and protective equipment may be banned.
Limiting access to food, water and blankets
Identifying participants in the protest, and providing other intelligence
Organisers must purchase public liability insurance
These concessions often form part of a contract or protest permit, which may be legally enforceable depending on the jurisdiction. If a protest goes beyond the agreed parameters (eg. the crowd blocks traffic when organisers agreed not to do that), police may hold the organisers responsible and seek to prosecute them. Police use this threat to pressure protest organisers into policing their own protest and limiting its effectiveness.
Negotiated Management requires advance notice for demonstrations and a centralised organising leadership who cooperate with the police. This strategy is ineffective against snap actions or decentralised groups. Where this happens or if organisers don’t engage with the Negotiated Management process, police will employ a more directly violent strategy.
While Negotiated Management is less aggressive than other crowd control strategies, the goal of police is ultimately the same. They want to defend the regime or their own power, and have determined that Negotiated Management is most likely to achieve that goal. Police exert social control over activist groups through the Negotiated Management process, and the threat of employing a more aggressive strategy if organisers do not comply (13).
responding to negotiated management
There are broadly two approaches to dealing with Negotiated Management, that we call Compliance and Avoidance.
Compliance involves notifying police of a demonstration, seeking a permit if necessary, and discussing protest restrictions with police. During the demonstration, protest organisers deploy police liaisons and marshals to ensure that crowd members stick to the restrictions and prevent police violence.
Advice for Compliance:
Familiarise yourself with the local permit system, for example in New South Wales “Form 1” (14) and Part 4 of the Summary Offences Act 1988 (15).
Be wary of conceding too much when negotiating with police - contest each restriction they try to place on the protest.
Keep social interaction with the police to a minimum and avoid giving them extra intelligence eg. names of crowd members, information on groups or political tendencies, or other upcoming demonstrations.
Police liaisons and marshals should be trained in how to do their job safely and effectively. Marshals should not act as proxy police officers - they have no power over crowd members.
Compliance can drastically reduce the risk of police violence and arrests, but may reduce the effectiveness of your protest and preclude the possibility of direct action. You may inadvertently provide intelligence that incriminates yourself or others.
Avoidance means refusing to notify police of your demonstration. In some cases (like a small gathering in a park or on the footpath) this approach may still be lawful, and will not antagonise police.
Advice for Avoidance:
As with compliance, familiarise yourself with the local permit system, for example in New South Wales “Form 1”(16) and Part 4 of the Summary Offences Act 1988 (17).
In some jurisdictions you may not need a permit for certain demonstrations. In NSW, permits are not strictly necessary, but prevent participants from being charged with obstructing people and traffic etc. If the demonstration will not involve those offences, the Avoidance approach carries less risk. The demonstration can be openly advertised.
If the demonstration does legally require a permit, or you anticipate participants may be charged with an offence, organise the demonstration discreetly to avoid police detection. This is suitable for occupations and other direct action.
It can be valuable to organise a large, public demonstration to break the culture of Compliance. A culture of Compliance helps justify violence against “unauthorised protests” - a category controlled by the police. The more often groups choose Avoidance, the more effective it becomes.
Avoidance can grant the element of surprise, increasing the effectiveness of protests, especially direct action.This approach increases the risk that police will switch from Negotiated Management to a more aggressive strategy, with violence and arrests.
strategic incapacitation
This approach involves identifying “problematic” groups or individuals within the crowd and focusing violence on that specific group, rather than the whole crowd. In theory, attacking only these groups will be seen as more legitimate and avoid antagonising the wider crowd. “Problematic” targets could include members of a Black Bloc, political faction, perceived “outside agitators” or perceived leaders.
Strategic Incapacitation relies on surveillance and intelligence leading up to the demonstration, identifying leaders and other “problematic” activists. Police may visit the homes of these individuals ahead of the demonstration to intimidate them (18). At the demonstration, police may use snatch squads to conduct “preventative arrest” ie. arresting potential troublemakers before they have committed a crime. Harsh bail conditions are used to prevent protestors from participating in subsequent demonstrations.
Strategic Incapacitation may initially resemble Negotiated Management, where police use conversations with protest organisers to identify individuals for later targeting. Strategic Incapacitation shares Negotiated Management’s restrictions of march routes etc. but while Negotiated Management is premised on protests being legitimate political expression, Strategic Incapacitation aims at eliminating dissent (19).
Strategic Incapacitation is based on the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM) of crowd psychology. While the classic view sees crowds as a single, collective consciousness, ESIM instead views crowds as a collection of individuals with different motivations. Individuals with similar motivations will form groups within the larger crowd. Individuals “do not lose values and standards but rather shift to acting in terms of the values and standards associated with the relevant group.” (20)
These group identities are subsequently influenced by police behaviour. Indiscriminate violence as seen in the Escalated Force approach can lead to the formation of a strong collective identity where the whole crowd becomes the in-group, and the police the out-group (21). By focusing on “problematic” targets instead of the crowd as a whole, police can play groups off against each other, be seen as more legitimate and prevent the formation of a coherent crowd identity. A targeted minority of the crowd become the out-group, with the police and the rest of the crowd forming the in-group.
responding to strategic incapacitation
Strategic Incapacitation relies on having a highly trained riot squad. For example, Sydney has a population of over 5 million people, and a full time riot squad of just 91 officers, with 102 officers in the auxiliary Operations Support Group (22). This means that police may not have the resources to use Strategic Incapacitation outside of major cities, and you can stretch their capacity by holding multiple simultaneous demonstrations.
Look out for Strategic Incapacitation practices masquerading as Negotiated Management - for example NSW “Form 1” permits based on the 1988 act that now serve the purpose of intimidation and intelligence.
Police will attempt to identify leaders to arrest ahead of demonstrations through digital surveillance and informants. Avoid this by practicing security culture (for example, not discussing plans online or in large open forums). Organise legal support ahead of the demonstration, and plan how to respond if police speak to you (ie. do not answer questions).
Police may try to target particular political factions, “outside agitators” or otherwise “problematic” parts of the crowd. Whatever political or tactical disagreements you might have with those people, it’s best to defend them against police aggression.
Have an exit plan after the protest, since that’s also a time police pick people off.
other strategies
Police approaches to crowd control can be categorised in various ways. Academics and police themselves have outlined other categories which may overlap with the ones already listed.
Some examples include:
Dialogue Policing - This model developed in Sweden combines an approach similar to Negotiated Management with insights from ESIM (23, 24). The specially trained Dialogue Police Unit assigns officers to liaise with organisers before, during and after demonstrations.
Command and Control - Micromanagement of crowd behaviour, punishing the most minor infractions. This approach is an extension of Broken Windows Policing. Principally developed in New York City, Broken Windows Policing sees disorder (whether unlawful or not) as problematic and granting social license for escalating disorder. Hence police should have zero tolerance for minor crimes (like breaking windows) (25).
Security Model - This model emphasises the enforcement of “security” for the neoliberal order rather than “law”. As institutions are privatised and taken out of democratic control, the need for state legitimation has decreased, with militarisation replacing the appearance of legitimacy granted by Negotiated Management (26).
general advice for protest organisers
You can anticipate which strategy police will use against you by studying previous actions - did police use a permit system and negotiate with organisers? Did they have specialised riot police? Did they use force against the whole crowd, or specific individuals/groups?
The strategy police employ may vary based on the size, tactics, political orientation and demographics of the crowd (27). For example Negotiated management for a union May Day march, Strategic Incapacitation against climate activists planning direct action, Escalated Force against a spontaneous uprising.
Police approach crowd control with a strict chain of command and discipline, which crowd members often lack. Protest participants may have had little prior contact with each other, and protest organisers may lack authority to direct others. A hierarchical structure can be a weakness, with leaders being co-opted through Negotiated Management or attacked through Strategic Incapacitation.
To achieve something approaching the cohesiveness of the police, consider discussing the likely police strategy and your response with trusted comrades ahead of protests. Track which strategies police employ in your area at other protests and share information with the broader movement.
a brief history of crowd control strategy
Before the introduction of professional police forces, crowd control often took the form simply of a battle or massacre.
In the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, the enclosure of previously common lands and the industrial revolution led to rapid growth of cities with a large class of workers living in slums, either unemployed or working in terrible conditions. These conditions led to a rise of petty “crime” and social unrest, coupled with increasing political consciousness following the French Revolution. Older methods of control were unsuitable to enforce the new urban economic system.
The problem of crowd control was best demonstrated by what became known as the Peterloo Massacre (28). On 16 August 1819, 30-50,00 workers gathered at St Peter’s Field in Manchester to demand electoral reform in the midst of artificially inflated food prices and poor working conditions. Without a regular police force to disperse the gathering, local authorities relied on the army. Cavalry charged the crowd leading to 18 deaths and hundreds of injuries (29). The British public was outraged, and the press dubbed the massacre “Peterloo” to evoke the recent battle of Waterloo.
It became clear to the British government that soldiers were not suited to the task of suppressing protests. In order to prevent further public outrage while also more effectively maintaining order, the government established police forces with modern equipment and strategy (30).
The founding of the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1822 and the Metropolitan Police Force in 1829 served as a model for policing throughout the world. The British and French Empires spread their models of policing to their colonies to prevent uprisings.
Later in the 19th century, governments began experimenting with urban planning to assist crowd control. For example, in France under Napoleon III the streets of Paris were widened between 1853 and 1870. One of Napoleon III’s aims was to make the construction of barricades more difficult, improve artillery sightlines and facilitate troop movement (31).
19th century academic views of crowds characterised them as irrational and violent, leading to the Escalated Force approach (32). Escalated Force has historically remained the dominant approach to crowd control, albeit increasingly using more sophisticated specialist weapons.
Early police weapons such as batons and horses were supplemented with water cannons and tear gas to quell social unrest in the 1920s and 1930s (33).
The 1960s saw a wave of civil rights and anti-war protests in the United States that were met with extreme police brutality, galvanising the public in favour of protesters. Escalated Force was discredited, and the Negotiated Management approach gained favour for the next three decades (34).
While Negotiated Management was increasingly prominent, Escalated Force remained common and this period also saw new crowd control weapons including rubber bullets in 1970 (35), pepper spray in the 1980s (36) and the Long Range Acoustic Device in 2009 (37).
Negotiated Management fell out of favour following a wave of anti-globalisation and anti-capitalist protests at international conferences of organisations such as the World Trade Organisation, International Monetary Fund, World Bank and G20. Across 1999-2000, large demonstrations occurred at conferences in Seattle, Washington, Prague and Genoa.
Where previous union and civil rights demonstrations were organised by centralised liberal institutions with leaders who could be bargained with, these conference demonstrations were characterised by decentralised coalitions and anarchists employing disruptive black bloc tactics. Police developed Strategic Incapacitation as a response to the failure of Negotiated Management at these events (38).
The decline of Negotiated Management was also influenced by the rise of Broken Windows Policing. Principally developed in New York City, the Broken Windows Theory claims that visible signs of crime (like broken windows) grant social license for escalating disorder (39). Therefore broken Windows Policing involves cracking down on minor infractions to prevent more serious crimes. When applied to crowd control, this is a return to thinking that crowds are inherently problematic and political protest should be heavily policed (40).
Paul A. Passavant has described how this new, militarised mode of crowd control flows from neoliberalism and the decline of democratic institutions, saying “... shutting people out of policy making, designed to weaken their political voice, health, and social and economic well-being, can lead to anger and the threat of disorder. These observations indicate why neoliberal authoritarianism relies on protest policing hostile to the demonstrations and assemblies of the people…” (41)
In the 21st century, Strategic Incapacitation has become the dominant strategy in the West when police face disruptive demonstrations. Escalated Force is still common, especially when police are unprepared, and Negotiated Management is in place for cooperative demonstrations. Crowd control strategies continue to evolve, and so must our responses.
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references
(1) Crowd Management - International Association of Chiefs of Police
(3) US police three times as likely to use force against leftwing protesters, data finds | The Guardian
(6) The crowd : A study of the popular mind by Gustave Le Bon | Project Gutenberg
(9) John Drury, Stephen Reicher, Collective Action and Psychological Change: The emergence of new social identities pp. 596
(14) Notice of intention to hold a public assembly (police.nsw.gov.au)
(15) Summary Offences Act 1988 No 25 (legislations.nsw.gov.au)
(16) Notice of intention to hold a public assembly (police.nsw.gov.au)
(17) Summary Offences Act 1988 No 25 (legislations.nsw.gov.au)
(18) 9159 - NSW POLICE VISITS TO POTENTIAL PROTESTORS HOMES (parliament.nsw.gov.au)
(21) Crowd Behavior & Elaborated Social Identity Modeling | Domestic Preparedness
(22) 2562 - Police and Counter-terrorism - POLICE OPERATIONS AND ODIN (parliament.nsw.gov.au)
(26) Passavant, Paul A. (2021) The Post-Democratic State and the Figure of Black Insurrection
(28) Vitale, A.S. 2017, The end of policing, Verso, London [England], page 35
(29) Poole, R. 2019, Peterloo: the English uprising, Oxford University Press, USA.
(30) Lyman, J.L. 1964, ‘The Metropolitan Police Act of 1829: An Analysis of Certain Events Influencing the Passage and Character of the Metropolitan Police Act in England’, Journal of criminal law, criminology & police science, vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 141–54.
(31) Parisian Boulevards Built Wide Not For Cars But To Better Quell Street Protests | Forbes
(32) The crowd : A study of the popular mind by Gustave Le Bon | Project Gutenberg
(33) 100 Years of Tear Gas - The Atlantic
(34) McPhail,C. Schweingruber, A. McCarthy, J. “Policing Protest in the United States 1960-1995” in (eds) Della Porta, D. and Reiter, H. “Policing Protest: The Control of Mass Demonstrations in Western Democracies” pp. 49-69
(35) CAIN: Chronology of the Conflict 1970 (ulster.ac.uk)
(36) Object of Interest: Pepper Spray | The New Yorker
(37) The New Sound of Crowd Control | Vice
(39) Broken Windows | The Atlantic
(41) Passavant, Paul A. (2021) The Post-Democratic State and the Figure of Black Insurrection, p. 246