Name: How to Stop a Riot
Uploaded: 2021-06-10T16:41:22.000Z
Duration: 10 min 18 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Two weeks ago Charlottesville erupted into chaos.

Violence met the streets as a groups of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and far right demonstrators

Some have criticized and blamed the violence on the police response.

They're getting overtime pay, they're getting hazard pay, they've got tens of

thousands of dollars of equipment per officer and they came out here and guarded empty space

But to better understand why the demonstration ended up the way it did, you have to understand

The fundamental problem with riot control is that there are almost never more riot police

than rioters so the police need to artificially give themselves an advantage.

They make it so rioters think that the police could defeat them.

The uniforms riot police wear are intentionally dehumanizing.

Clad in protective gear head-to-toe, you can hardly tell one person from the next.

This creates a psychological barrier between the police and the rioters.

Studies have show that these uniforms make both protesters and the police themselves

feel like the police officers are more powerful than they are.

It has also been proven that the way riot police act increases their perceived power.

The officers almost always march and act in unison.

When they act as a collective, just like the protestors, they personally feel as if they

have the power of the collective and the crowd does too.

The most basic riot police formation looks like this.

With the goal of moving the crowd to another location, this front echelon slowly advances,

pushing rioters forward with their shields and batons.

They're followed by a team leader who organizes the whole group, most likely this officer

Right with the team leader are a few gas officers.

They have tear gas or pepper spray to deploy over the front echelon towards any demonstrators

Following them is a group of arrest officers.

Should the front group encounter any particularly difficult rioters, they can open up, let the

demonstrator though, then the arresting officers can take the troublemaker into custody.

Finishing is the rear echelon which protects the group and can sub out with the front echelon

Violence happens at rallies because of three facts: crowds are anonymous, anonymity breeds

violence, and violence lowers consequences.

When you're just one of a number, you don't think or act as much like an individual person.

A group of people all with a common goal and a common way of thinking breeds a collective

In a crowd, people don't think about consequences the same way they do when they're on their

Just like a sports game or a nightclub, people act differently than they normally might because

There's a sort of wordless peer-pressure.

Individuals subconsciously escalate their violence to match that of the leaders.

People act almost by instinct in crowds and the individual breaks down and becomes a part

When there's widespread violence, individuals are punished less.

There's a lower sense of legal culpability since police often make far fewer arrests

In a riot, authorities can't arrest everyone.

They target the leaders, the most violent protestors.

You don't have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than the slowest

Dozens or perhaps hundreds of people committed violent acts in Charlottesville that normally

would have resulted in arrests, but out of them, only eight were arrested.

Police have to be very careful with the directionality of the protest.

The police's goal is to stop or slow the riot while widespread arrests will often further

In Charlottesville, for example, if the police had intervened too strongly, the direction

could have turned and members of both groups could have directed their violence towards

Police never want to be perceived as unjust, in a riot scenario that is dangerous, so they

have to play a careful balancing act between too little and too much response.

Why did it end up so violent and could the police have prevented it?

The “Unite the Right” rally was initially slated to begin at noon but by 9 am there

were already hundreds of demonstrators from both sides.

They weren't in their riot uniforms and they didn't have significant numbers.

The initial plan was to physically separate the two groups on separate sides of Emancipation

There were barriers set up, but nobody seemed to anticipate the number of people that showed

The “Unite the Right” rally was in fact a permitted assembly.

That group's presence at Emancipation park was fully legal, but the city did not want

The city government tried to block the demonstration permit unless the group agreed to hold their

rally at nearby McIntire park, a much larger and more open park nearby, but the rally's

organizers successfully contested this move in court on first amendment grounds and was

allowed to hold their rally right there in downtown Charlottesville.

There simply was not enough space for the number of people who showed up, but the fundamental

Charlottesville is a small town, fewer than 50,000 people live there, and their police

While there were thousands of protestors, the police force had fewer than 130 officers.

At the same time, the officers working in Charlottesville were hardly experienced with

It's not a big city with frequent protests—this might have been the first time many officers

They could not afford for the violence to turn towards them.

While the chief of police hasn't spoke much about his tactics, experts have said that

the lack of initial intervention was likely a conscious choice to assure that the violence

stayed between protestors and protestors, not between protestors and police.

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How to Stop a Riot

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