Riot policing is probably the closest that modern states ever come to combat in the pre-firearm or early-firearm era. I mean, you’ve got men fighting on foot in dense formations with melee weapons, men charging peasants (pardon me, rioters or demonstrators) from horseback, and so on.
I wonder - do riot cops think of their jobs this way? In their training, are they told things like, “Gentlemen, your basic fighting unit is a modified phalanx,” or asked “What can we learn about fighting in a crowd from Agincourt?” Or is riot policing sufficiently removed from warfare (after all, riot cops generally don’t want to kill people) that this stuff just isn’t applicable?
In Germany, police are trained the opposite way - de-escalation, on how to calm a crowd down. Because going out all attack on a rioting mob goes against the values and principal idea of the police in a democratic country being there to protect the citizens. It’s not protecting citizens if you bash their head in.
I once knew an SCA fighter and 911 dispatcher who claimed to have been tapped by the department to show cops how to use riot shield and billy club the way he knew how to use a shield and rattan sword.
This was back in the early 80s in Portland, Oregon. I have no independent confirmation of the man’s claims, and I haven’t seen the guy since about 1985.
As a police officer I have received zero training in riot tactics. But I work in a suburban environment. I’m sure that departments like the NYPD which will more likely have such situations do go thru such training. If it is anything like the civil disturbance training I received in the National Guard then it is very basic. Basic formations like wedge, line, eschelon right and left. Anything more complex would require a lot more training time and take people away from their real job.
Or how about this? “Riot police used truncheons and teargas today to clear a rail line during violent clashes with activists trying to disrupt a shipment of nuclear waste in Germany.”
Or this? "Riot police have responded with tear gas and water cannon in an effort to drive them back. "
De-escalation means “trying to calm down a situation before it escalates”. It doesn’t mean “doing nothing after being attacked”.
Having an ideal and a proper procedure doesn’t mean it’s followed 100% of the time; it does mean that people are upset, however, when it’s not done. When police cleared protesters from the Stuttgart train station and used excessive force, people were upset about it.
During the protesters blocking train tracks of the nuclear waste transports, spokespeople of both sides (police and protesters) said how much the situation had improved compared to the 80s because of de-escalation strategy and how sad it was that a few hardcore people looking to create trouble spoiled this (this is general a problem with peaceful and legal demonstrations - a handful of teens want to have a fight, so they incite one, but in a group of several thousands, it’s difficult to find 50 people.)
On the first of May, when the anarchists meet for their “festivals” and it escalates into burning cars and smashed shop windows, the police are under attack afterward by the politicans and the shop owners on whether they shouldn’t have interfered more forcefully and if de-escalation strategies haven’t gone too far.
But generally, the right to legally protest and demonstrate, both registered and spontaneously, is considered important both by the population and by the union of police themselves. As compared to the 60s, when water throwers were driven up to disperse any demonstration, or when the police allowed secret police of the Shah to beat people in Berlin. That is considered generally to have been quite wrong and therefore procedure was changed to prevent it.
They certainly used to. Some acquaintances of mine (friends of friends that I met a time or two) were into historical reenactment and were invited to play the yobs in a police training riot scenario. They creamed the police. Then they showed the police how the police should have done it. The only significant details I recall is that the police were holding their riot shields in a way that interfered with each other and that the police needed to hold ranks.
Hmm… IIRC here in the U.K. the duty of the police is to preserve the Queen’s Peace.
Is that just another phrase for “preserving the peace of the country” or does it only refer to the Queen herself, so if the peace is disturbed elsewhere, it doesn’t matter?
I do realize though that I approached this from the protesters/ demonstrations angle: the police needs to refrain from using force on protesters so as not to limit the (important for democracy) right of citizens to assemble in pulic and to demonstrate.
Maybe the OP was thinking of real riots like in NY during blackouts in the 70s, or the LA riots sparked by the Rodney King case, where hordes of angry people move through the streets, smashing and burning everything in sight?
Because those are (aside from the mentioned 1st of May anarcho-meetups) rare to non-existent here.
Britain had them recently with the London riots, and much was discussed on how the British police seemed not suited to respond to riots like these with approriate force or means to prevent widespread destruction of property / end of time anarchy. (Other sources mentioned that with cell phones, GPS, twitter and software coordinating mobs, it was possible to evade the police 2 streets away and therefore, technology made it impossible for the police to catch rioters in the act).
So at what cost is the British police prepared to preserve the peace? And what does the population expect of them - keep the peace at all costs, even if it means cracked heads? Or let the public demonstrate as is their right?
I am an SCA fighter, I have heard stories of SCA units serving as trainers/sparring partners for riot training but I do not know how factual such accounts are. Although there is a thing or two we can teach each other many of the fighting styles of the SCA would be inappropriate (although brutally effective) against a crowd with improvised weapons.
For example SCA fighters wouldn’t hesitate for a second on a shot to the head or face whereas against an unarmored opponent that would be possibly even probably lethal. We depend on our armor to avoid serious injury. Riot police as I understand it, if they have to engage, are looking for body and leg shots to painfully incapacitate but not in any permanent way.
I also don’t think most police riot armor is compliant to SCA safety standards to avoid being injured. (face and neck protection in particular)
Riot control isn’t really like any historical form of combat. You’re “fighting” a crowd of individuals, not a military unit so the situation is very different. The main tactics is controlling the movement of the crowd and dividing up the crowd. The basic formation is a flying wedge - you go in, grab a few people on the edge of the crowd, pull them out, and secure and confine them. You keep doing this until the rioting crowd is reduced down to nothing.
Agincourt was a battle between archers and heavy cavalry, so the tactics there wouldn’t be relevant to a riot.
What would riot police do if faced with a large crowd/mob who were defensively “armored”- wearing helmets, gas masks and padded clothing for example, but no weapons?
Get yourself a copy of “Kill or Get Killed” by Colonel Rex Applegate. The sections on dealing with rioters are very illuminating. And, no, despite the lurid title it isn’t about how to massacre rioters. Applegate was an authority on crowd control and his methods are still in use today.