Gunning for trouble

• Autores: Michael Bond
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2984, 2014, págs. 26-27
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In Europe, many police forces have started to accept that the traditional model of public-order policing, which treats all crowds as potentially dangerous, often makes things worse. This model dates back to the French Revolution, which seeded the idea that crowds turn people into primitive, dysfunctional automata, and that the only way to deal with protesters is to attack, disperse or "kettle" them--a draconian form of containment. Such tactics are slowly being abandoned in Europe because social psychologists have shown repeatedly that they can have a dramatic and often catastrophic effect on how people in crowds behave. Here, Bond provides a good example of how overly robust policing can change the dynamics of a crowd for the worse.