Non-Subscriber Extract
Chaos theory
By Clifford Stott, Stephen Reicher and John Drury
23 April 2009
Mass containment of crowds during public order incidents may be legally justifiable, but how effective it is in managing crowd dynamics remains open to question.
In the High Court on 23 March 2005, the judge Mr Justice Tugendhat concluded that the police tactic of surrounding and holding large crowds was legal where it could be justified that there was a threat of violence or damage to property (PR, 1 April 2005).
The judgement was critical because it freed the way for the Met to use mass containment as a formal part of tactical planning for future incidents, including this month's G20 protests.