WTH? The police behaviour sounds... both unnecessary and really, really dumb. Exactly how peaceful are the next round of protesters going to feel if they get the same treatment?
The police don't want there to be a next round of protestors; which is why they talk up the violence beforehand and try to make the protest as negative as possible; by scaring off the moderates, they reinforce the idea of the protestors being hardened thugs as well as marginalising the protestors by minimising their numbers; you can dismiss a couple of thousand protestors far more easily than ten or fifteen thousand.
Cops and crowds go together like nitro and glycerine in general, but the kettling thing is new to me. I would have thought that allowing people to disperse was a good idea, but perhaps their playbook includes lessons from some protest or other where the protesters dispersed and reappeared in multiple elsewheres and stretched the police's resources. It would certainly be easier to do that with mobiles etc nowadays
( ... )
One possibility is that the police were trying to stop protesters from moving on to support the anti-war protest at Trafalgar Square.
I can understand not wanting to have criminal groups pop up all over, but it wasn't that kind of crowd. The few vandals were almost all concentrated at the RBS already.
Interesting tacticsext_179115April 3 2009, 08:05:46 UTC
That would have been pretty good tactics from the Police for containing a full riot situation, it's actually very similar tactics to how the Roman legions would contain areas of a battlefield (some copper's been studying ;p). I like to call it the 'dosey-doe' :).
A pity it was used to block off the peaceful protesters , I mean given the numbers of police they had it's not hard to let out the peaceful flower wearing hippies (excuse the broad generalisation of the crowd ;p) and say "Sorry young man, but with your hoodie, mask and and brick in your hand we're just going to keep you here for a few hours longer".
Interesting as well that the protest was really small compared to the one over the weekend, a lot of people stayed away because of the potential violence, a shame really.
Re: Interesting tacticssierra_le_oliApril 3 2009, 09:00:24 UTC
It feels like the police and media talked up the violence beforehand and then the police sparked off most of it. The press probably wound up encouraging some of it too (the amount of photographers surrounding the first window smasher was hilarious) and then over-reported it. I know, I'm starting to sound like a bug-eyed conspiracy theorist. I hate sounding like a bug-eyed conspiracy theorist.
A lot of the crowd weren't actually hippy-types, just, I dunno, there were all sorts. Regular people, I guess. All wandering around, not comprehending why the police would do this to them.
Comments 12
Reply
"Have you been involved in this protest or any other protest today?"
"Oh no, Officer!"
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
The police don't want there to be a next round of protestors; which is why they talk up the violence beforehand and try to make the protest as negative as possible; by scaring off the moderates, they reinforce the idea of the protestors being hardened thugs as well as marginalising the protestors by minimising their numbers; you can dismiss a couple of thousand protestors far more easily than ten or fifteen thousand.
Reply
Reply
I can understand not wanting to have criminal groups pop up all over, but it wasn't that kind of crowd. The few vandals were almost all concentrated at the RBS already.
Reply
A pity it was used to block off the peaceful protesters , I mean given the numbers of police they had it's not hard to let out the peaceful flower wearing hippies (excuse the broad generalisation of the crowd ;p) and say "Sorry young man, but with your hoodie, mask and and brick in your hand we're just going to keep you here for a few hours longer".
Interesting as well that the protest was really small compared to the one over the weekend, a lot of people stayed away because of the potential violence, a shame really.
Reply
A lot of the crowd weren't actually hippy-types, just, I dunno, there were all sorts. Regular people, I guess. All wandering around, not comprehending why the police would do this to them.
Reply
Leave a comment