Crowd control

For other uses, see Crowd control (disambiguation).
During the 2014 London Marathon, a police officer keeps spectators behind a fence, while first aiders patrol
Garda Síochána officers on guard duty at a cleared street in Dublin, Ireland when President Obama visited the country in 2011.
Kyoto Prefectural Riot Police Unit officers on duty during the Gion Matsuri 2008 festival.

Crowd control is a public security practice in which large crowds are managed in order to prevent the outbreak of crowd crushes, affray, fights involving drunk and disorderly people or riots. Crowd crushes in particular can cause many hundreds of fatalities.[1] Effective crowd management is about managing expected and unexpected crowd occurrences.[2] Crowd control can involve privately hired security guards as well as police officers. Crowd control is often used at large, public gatherings like street fairs, music festivals, stadiums and public demonstrations. At some events, security guards and police use metal detectors and sniffer dogs to prevent weapons and drugs being brought into a venue.[3][4][5]

  1. ^ Benedictus, Leo (October 3, 2015). "Hajj crush: how crowd disasters happen, and how they can be avoided". The Guardian. Retrieved October 4, 2015.
  2. ^ "Effective Crowd Management". National Retail Federation. Retrieved 2018-01-16.
  3. ^ "Three injured, 60 found with drugs at Future Music". The Sydney Morning Herald. 28 February 2015. Retrieved 2016-05-21.
  4. ^ Sanders, Bill (2005). "In the Club: Ecstasy Use and Supply in a London Nightclub". Sociology. 39 (2): 241–258. doi:10.1177/0038038505050537. ISSN 0038-0385. S2CID 145212892.
  5. ^ "Jenni Ward: Researching Drug Sellers". Archived from the original on 2019-02-13. Retrieved 2016-02-15.