Chapter 12 - Crowd Management and Special Event Planning

Abstract

Whenever people gather together in large numbers, there exists a potential threat for mass discord. Therefore, it is important that police and security forces be able to quickly determine, if a gathering becomes uncontrollable and take immediate steps to prevent the disorder. This chapter explains the various types and causes of crowd formation, steps to be taken and planning strategies to control a crowd, and crowd management assessment. A crowd may exist as a casual or a temporary assembly having no cohesive group behavior. There are several causes of crowd formation including basic, casual, or emotional cause. The behavior of crowds varies widely depending on its motivational interest and most of the crowd types that might be encountered are: acquisitive, expressive, hostile, and escape. Potentially dangerous crowds can usually be controlled by removing or isolating individuals involved, fragmentizing the crowd into small isolated groups, removing the crowd leaders, and diverting the attention of the crowd. The planning considerations of security personnel for large crowd control events include barriers, communications, time of year and type of environment, and type of crowd expected. Assessment of an effective crowd management involves several factors such as officer-audience ratio, type of performance, whether permits have been obtained, and evacuation procedure in the event of panic.