Crowd Control and Riot Management

Law Enforcement officers are positioned as our first line of defense and are a dedicated assembly of Americas finest to protect our First Amendment rights. When crowds gather, they are there to protect life and property, ensure fair and impartial enforcement of laws, and enable citizens to collectively express, pursue, promote, and defend their common interests. Unfortunately, it has now become a growing trend for rioting to be used as an expression of displeasure with law enforcement especially when they take action against a certain faction, group or individual. Many times, the riot is flamed by certain individuals who don’t even have an interest in the activity that is taking place. This training teaches a proactive approach of methods to assess each crowd situation based on Human Behavior and Environmental Awareness and make a decision using predictive assessments. Crowd Psychology and understanding Human Behavior can play an important role in crowd control through a proactive setting known as “predictive assessment”. Whenever a large number of people congregate for a specific purpose or otherwise, there is always the probability of some problem arising.

Predictive assessment is a method of observing people and accurately predicting what their next course of action will be. Social Science has concluded that human behavior can be quite predictable and it gives the bearer an ability to influence actions and reactions at all levels of public contact. Wouldn't it be beneficial for the officer to know ahead of time if encounters are going to result in crowd gatherings with intent of malice or harm toward them?  Modern demonstrators are sometimes paid, and often trained to create chaos and violence. Peaceful demonstrations have been infiltrated by Antifa and anarchists who have used violence as a deliberate tactic. Through scripted behaviors, they hope to trigger violence in the crowd, or an over-reaction by police officers. Think of the upper tactical edge an officer would have if he/she could identify the crowd agitator and take action to de-escalate or remove the instigator before they have time to exploit the mood of the crowd. Most experts agree that snuffing the match before the fire erupts is by far the best outcome for any riot situation.

This program teaches the officer to recognize behavior cues that improve their ability to make accurate assumptions about their current environment, individual’s thought process, crowd mood, emotional state and plans of action. Officers will be able to identify those who consider them as a threat and those who consider them as non-threatening. The essence of maintenance of sound public peace and order means good crowd control. Unattended crowds have the propensity of turning into mobs, the result of which may eventually be a riot. The quantum of force and the effort required to handle a crowd increases progressively with the delay in its handling by the police. This training also gives the officer the necessary skills to make physical arrests in the presence of the crowd and media quickly and efficiently using techniques that put the officer in a favorable limelight with onlookers.

Crowd control is a very important aspect of policing, and every police officer must, therefore, be able to understand a crowd and its psychology, and also have the ability to handle a crowd tactfully (but firmly) and disperse it with the minimum use of force. This program will familiarize the student with the psychological aspects of crowds and present procedures to control crowds, demonstrations, and civil disorders.

Other topics of discussion covered during the instructional period:

1. Preventive measures to keep crowds from rioting

2. Different categories of crowds.

3. Differences between a casual crowd and a mob.

4. Crowd dynamics.

5. Duties of a law enforcement officer when patrolling a potentially violent demonstration.

6. Primary duties of a law enforcement officer at a nonviolent (passive) protest.

7. Crowd control formations