The aim of this guide is not to show you how to conduct a riot. Neither is
it intended as a critque on the pros and cons of fighting with the police.
Oust for the record: the authors believe history has proven that engaging with
the police on their terms is not likely to result in lasting social change)
What we present here instead is a brief guide to surviving public order situations
and slowing down or preventing the police from gaining the upper hand once a
situation has occurred.
Bear in mind that the police are much better equipped and trained for close
combat than you or I, They will have been psyching themselves up for hours,
have plenty of reserves standing by and will feel confident with the law behind
them. Beating the police is about outwitting them, not necessarily hitting them
over the head.
THE AIMS AND METHODS OF THE STATE
British Law has traditionally been concerned with keeping the peace and not
necessarily preventing or solving crime. The roots of such public order policing
can be traced back to the common law offences introduced to control the havoc
caused by mercenaries returning from the hundred years war. These laws evolved
into the 1967 Riot Act, which established in law the concept of arresting anyone
present at a riot, regardless of whether or not they are guilty of violent acts.
The Riot Act no longer exists, replaced by the Public Order Act in 1986. The
reality of the situation is that the police still act as if it did.
The main problem centres around the Public Order Manual of Tactical Operations and Related Matters. This manual has never been made public, has no legal standing and was never discussed by Parliament. it basically gives the police guidance in the use of pre-emptive acts of violence, to achieve the following:
1) To break the crowd up into manageable portions, keep them moving then eventually disperse them. 2) To provoke violence as a way of justifying their actions and flushing out any ringleaders 3) To contain the crowd and stop the trouble spreading 4) To intimidate and break the spirit of the crowd 5) To gather evidence for later
The manual contains details of tactics which include the use of snatch squads, baton charges and the use of horses to disperse and intimidate large crowds.
If you can't be arsed to read it all then here is the hyper-edited version:
Don't be tempted to stand there and fight - get out to where you can cause some damage or disruption without the police around
Keep moving around, as a group and individually. Fill gaps. Never stand still - chaos puts the police off
Police attempts to divide the crowd and the formation of police lines must be nipped in the bud.
Don't be intimidated
Do everything in small teams, prepare in advance
Think defensively. Protect each other and escape routes
Always face outwards, ie. away from us and towards them
Link arms as often as possible, form barriers, use your body
Move quickly and calmly, never giving the police time to react
PREPARATIONS Staying out of jail and hospital need not be hard work, most people caught up in riots manage it - even a fairly high proportion of the really pissed-up ones. But with a bit of forethought you can turn surviving a public order situation into living a public order situation!
THE AIMS OF THE PROTESTERS No one really 'wins' at the end of the day, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that you are unhurt, still free and the some egg is still stuck to the face of your original target, after the police have been and gone.
With all that in mind, we suggest you stick to these 3 basic aims when you find yourself in a riot:
1) Getting you and your mates away safely, rather than fighting 2) finding a place to cause embarasment and economic damage to your real target, rather than fighting 3) Helping others in trouble by administering first aid and de-arresting, rather than fighting.
STICKING TOGETHER Always try to form an affinity group before setting out and
at the very least have a buddy system in place whereby everybody has one person
to look out for them and to act with when a situation arises.
Affinity groups are just a handful of people who work together as a unit, as
and when circumstances arise. They can meet beforehand to discuss issues and
possible reactions, practice or role play scenarios. The more your group meets,
the quicker your reaction times will get and your effectiveness will improve.
Affinity groups can often act without the need for internal discussion, they
naturally develop their own shorthand communications and can divide up skills
and equipment amongst each other. Water, Dlocks, paint first-aid, food, banners
and spare clothes is a lot for one person to carry, but divided up between 5
people its nothing.
Do pay attention to what you are going to wear in advance. Although no one wants to go to a street party or a demo dressed in full body armour, consider precautions that are discrete, adaptable, easy to apply and discard. Thinking about these threats in advance will help:
1) Surveillance. Masking makes it difficult to identify individuals in a crowd
and if everyone rnasks up no one will stand out. The cut off sleeve of a long
sleaved t-shirt makes a good mask. Wear it casually around your neck. If you
wear glasses use a cut off section of a short stocking (hold-ups work best as
they have thick elastic) instead of a t-shirt, this prevents glasses steaming
up. You can use it as a hair tie, if you're a hippy type, until you need it.
A hooded top will cover most of your face and a baseball cap on its own provides
good protection from most static cameras, which are usually mounted high up.
Sunglasses give good protection against harmful rays including UV and CCTV.
2) Truncheon blows. A placard makes a good temporary shield and light strips of plastic under your clothing on the forearm could offer some protection. The best protective clothing however is a good pair of running shoes.
3) CS Spray. The best authorities suggest a solution of campden tablets (used to clean home brewing equipment), some say use lots of water, but its effectiveness is unclear. Whatever you do don't rub it in or take a hot shower. If in doubt get clear and let the wind blow it away from your skin. This will take 20 minutes.
4) Baton charges. If you want to take a banner, use a long strip of plastic haulage tarps rather than a sheet. This can be used as a movable barrier to stop charging police or for you to advance behind. Wrap the ends in on themselves so the police can't easily grab it. hide behind and hold on tight.
DEFENDING
If you aren't doing anything else you should always be defending, Whether that
means securing a building, strengthening your position on the street, barricading
(see later) or protecting others. Here are some ideas:
1) Keep looking outwards. For example, if someone is being given first aid,
stand and face away from them.
2) Form cordons as much as possible. Anything the police want, including buildings
and especially sound systems need a strong outwardly facing cordon. Things may
be quiet and you'll feel like a prick linking arms or holding hands with complete
strangers, but do it. Repeat this mantra 'Its not a hippy peacenik thang, its
rock hard revolutionary thang.' Take a leaf out of the police manual: stand
like you're about to do 'the conga' and stick your right hand down the back
of the trousers of the person in front, repeat along the line, asking permission
first. Its virtually unbreakable.
3) Get into the habit of dancing with your back towards the sound system
4) Someone needs to watch the police from a good vantage- point, so that their
next move can be pre-empted. On top of the sounds van is not a good place; no
one can hear when you shout 'here come the dog handlers! Fucking run!' and any
gestures you do will be interpreted as dancing...
5) Sitting down is good for dissuading the police from charging, but you should
only do it in large numbers and the crowd needs to feel confident. We advise
you to sit down as soon as the shout goes up, hesitating is not good, you can
assess the situation once you're down there. Hopefully others will do the same.
If it still looks viable 5 seconds later, link arms with your neighbours. There
are times when sitting down is not really recommended - horses are maybe too
unpredictable but the authors have never seen horses charge into a seated crowd,
the way they do into a standing crowd. It's a good way to avoid the crowd getting
split up. Some particularly violent gangs of police just aren't worth it either.
Only experience will teach you when to sit down.
6) Throwing stuff as a defensive tactic. It is not wise to throw stuff at the
police at the best of times, it only winds them up so they hit you harder. We
shouldn't stop having respect for life just because the police have. If you
want to throw do it defensively, strategically and on mass - a constant hail
of debris creates 'sterile areas' into which the police won't want to go, thus
keeping them at arms length.
REMEMBER: don't throw to attack or cause injury. Only throw from the front,
then disappear into the crowd. Only wankers throw from the back.
7) Barricades can be more hassle than they are worth. A solid impassable barricade
can reduce your own options when you need to run. Bear in mind that anything
you build now you are likely to get dragged over later, leave out the barbed
wire. The best barricades are random matter strewn all over the place - horses
can't easily charge over them, police find it hard to hold a line in amongst
them, but individuals can easily pick their way through. If you know police
are advancing from only 1 direction & you have clear escape routes behind,
barricading can be sensible. The tactics the cops developed during the 1980's
riots was to drive vans into crowds with TSG in the back, jump out and arrest
everyone they caught. Barricades is an effective way of stopping this.
8) The best form of defense of all is CHAOS! a complicated hierarchy needs orders
to act on and those orders come from individuals making informed decisions.
If the situation changes constantly they simply cannot keep up. Keep moving
all the time, weave in and out of the crowd. Change your appearance. Open up
new directions and posiblities, be unpredictable. If you find yourself stood
still and passive for more than a minute then you've stopped acting defensively.
BASIC POLICE CHOREOGRAPHY
With any crowd the police will be looking to break it up as soon as possible. Crowd dispersal is achieved with baton charges, horse charges and sometimes CS gas and vehicles. Some particularly nasty or out of control units. may pile straight into the crowd, but there is usually a gap between the time they arrive and the start of dispersal. This stalling time is often just dithering by the commanding office - or psyching/ tooling up time for the troops (the later is easy to spot). This aside, there are only 3 more reasons why they aren't wading straight in, see if you can spot them next time you're waiting for 'kick-off':
1) They haven't worked out where they are going to disperse you to 2) They want to gather more evidence/flush out more ring leaders. This involves keeping you right where they can see you and provoking you like hell. They will film you and photograph you and send out snatch squads to pick off individuals 3) They are waiting for back up because you out number them or are in danger of gaining the upper hand.
THE DANCE STEPS
Ok, so they've stopped fucking around and now its time to send you home, with
a great story to tell your friends (let's face it, they won't see the truth
on the news). The bulk of the action is shocking in its predictability. The
following will be repeated over and over, in different combinations, until they
win or get bored:
1) officers in lines will pen you in (preferably on the pavement)
2) officers in lines will push into a crowd to divide it in half
3) Batons/horses/CS spray attack penned in crowds to lower moral.
4) Charges that slowly push you down a street (rush of cops>fall back>strengthen
line>repeat)
5) Crowds throwing missiles will be 'put to flight', as its harder to throw
stuff if you are running)
6) shift changes. (often look like the arrival of reinforcements. It is important
to try and spot the
difference for reasons of morale, and that they are vulnerable during shift
changes)
Most of the above require the individual officers to be in tight lines, so its important to stop those lines forming. Unfortunately we are quite bad at this. The first line drawn is the most crucial and most people don't see it coming. The police will try and form lines right in amoung you if they can, thus weakening your position at the same time as strengthening theirs.
LINE DANCING or STOPPING LINES FORMING
If the crowd seems volatile, the police will hold right back and the first line
drawn will be some distance away. But if you are all hanging around looking
confused and passive they will sneak right in amongst you and the first lines
will be dividing lines. This is how it works:
They first divide the crowd up into 'actors' and 'viewers'. Small groups of
officers will move into the crowd and start politely encouraging the timid ones
onto the pavement. Once the crowd starts moving the way they want, those little
groups of cops will get bigger and start joining up. Before you know it, there's
two crowds on two pavements with two lines of cops penning them in. Let the
head cracking commence. Or...
Don't stand and watch them
Don't look like you'll let them any where near you
spot gaps in the crowd and fill them
Work out which space they want to take and get there with you mates first
Get long tarp banners to the front to stop them advancing and filming
Protect your escape routes by standing in them
Get those who have turned into spectators off the pavements, back in the crowd and moving around
Of course, now having resisted being split up and penned in, they may just let fly with the baton charge. Fair enough, but you're in a stronger position to deal with it and escape. Whatever happens next, don't just stand there waiting for it. If you've managed to get their line drawn faraway, you've bought valuable time and space -souse it! Even if their line is right up against you, they still haven't broken down your numbers.
However, its only a matter of time before the police try and get closer/break you up again. Use the time to get out of there slowly and in one block, this is the last thing they want - a large mob moving around freely. Whatever you do, don't stand there waiting for them to try again. You are now in control to go and do whatever you want, so do it.
If they have blocked your only exit try...
COUNTER ADVANCING This involves moving your lines forward into theirs, thus
gaining more space and opening up more exits. Use the front line as a solid
wall, linking arms and moving slowly forward. Use the long banner like a snow
plow (this stops them grabbing you or breaking the line, they can still hit
you with truncheons though)
SNOW PLOWS A fine of crowd control barriers can also be carried by the front
line like a snow plow to break into the police ranks. The point of the 'plow'
can then be opened once their line is breached and the barriers pushed to the
side to contain the cops. This all needs a lot of co-ordination and balls, the
advantage gained will not last long so push all your ranks forward through the
gap straight away.
USING YOUR BODY Your body is your best and most adaptable tool. It is best used
in concert with others. For instance it could take a longtime for twenty to
scale a wall, but stand two people against the wall, bowed together with their
arms locked with two more crouched at their feet and you've got a set of human
steps! (Those waiting to climb can link arms around the steps to protect them)
Always look for ways to use your body to escape.
REFORMING Keep looking for ways of increasing your numbers, by joining up with other groups and absorbing stragglers. Everyone has to get out and you'll stand a better chance of getting out unharmed, with all your belongings and equipment if you leave together at the same time.
SNATCH SQUADS When the police want to isolate and arrest an individual in a crowd they will usually employ a snatch squad.
Watch for groups of 10 or so fully dressed up cops, rallying behind the police lines. They will be instructed by evidence gatherers and a superior (you can often spot them pointing out the person to be snatched). The fines will open temporarily to let the squad through. Half the officers will perform the snatch, the other half will surround them with batons, hitting anyone who gets in the way. Once they have their target he/she is bundled away, back behind police lines.
Try and beat the snatch squad by:
1) Keeping the crowd moving around
2) Spot the squad preparing
3) If possible warn the target to get the hell out of the area
4) inking arms in an impenetrable wall in the squads path.
5) Surround the squad once they are in the crowd and intimidate them so much
that they panic and give up
6) If you are being grabbed or pressure pointed, keep your head and arms moving..
Don't lash out if you can help it, or you will end up with an assault charge
too.
DE-ARRESTING
The best time to do this is as soon as the snatch has happened. You need a group
who, know how to break grips and some people to act as blockers. Once you've
got your person back all link arms and move of into the crowd. The police may
try and snatch back or arrest one of the de-arresters.
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