Cronin&Reicher 2006

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175
British Journal of Social Psychology (2006), 45, 175196

q 2006 The British Psychological Society
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A study of the factors that influence how senior

officers police crowd events: On SIDE outside
the laboratory
Patrick Cronin1 and Stephen Reicher2*
1
2
School of Social and Health Sciences, University of Abertay, UK

School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, UK
This paper fits into the SIDE perspective (Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995; Postmes,
Spears, Lea, & Reicher, 2000), which emphasises the importance of integrating the
cognitive and strategic dimensions of group processes. Our study examines the
decisions made by senior police officers during a simulation exercise of a crowd event.
The analysis shows, firstly, that officers are deeply concerned about their accountability
to a variety of audiences, both internal and external to the police force. Second, these
different audiences pressure them to act in different, and sometimes contradictory,
ways. What counts, then, is the overall balance between accountability concerns. Third,
this balance and, with it, police perceptions and decisions alters in the course of an
event. More specifically, with escalating conflict, the balance of accountability concerns
moves increasingly in the direction of undifferentiated intervention against crowd
members. In discussion, we consider both the theoretical implications of this analysis
for research on group processes (in particular the importance of accountability issues
once one moves beyond the laboratory and deals with groups that have a past and
future and in which membership is more than simply an act of choice) and the practical
implications in terms of crowd policing.
In the midst of Londons Poll Tax Riot of March 1990, the phone rang in the Metropolitan
Police public order control room at New Scotland Yard. The officer who replied heard a
familiar voice say this is Margaret. After a brief moment, he realized he was talking to
the Prime Minister. This officer, a participant in our present programme of research, told
us this anecdote in order to stress that crowd policing takes place under intense scrutiny
from multiple audiences at multiple levels. These audiences have the power to exact
consequences according to their judgment of police performance. Hence, however they
themselves would wish to proceed, the senior officers who control the police operation
must constantly manoeuvre around the expectations and demands of those who
scrutinise them.
* Correspondence should be addressed to Stephen Reicher, School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife
K16 9JU, Scotland, UK (e-mail: sdr@st-andrews.ac.uk).
DOI:10.1348/014466605X41364

176
Patrick Cronin and Stephen Reicher
The primary aim of this paper is to examine more systematically and

comprehensively the various ways in which police officers can be held to account for
their decisions during public order events, the ways in which that affects their decisions,
and the ways in which changes in accountability leads to changes in police action.
In doing so, we wish to contribute to a growing literature on the way in which strategic
as well as cognitive factors impact on group behaviour (Reicher et al., 1995; Postmes
et al., 2000). In addition, by understanding the factors that govern policing decisions,
we also hope to gain a better understanding of the overall dynamics of crowd events
and, more specifically, the conditions under which crowd conflict is likely to escalate.
Both of these concerns the latter self-evidently, but the former less obviously can
be traced back to crowd research. According to classic models of crowd behaviour
(Le Bon, 1895) and their development into de-individuation theory (for reviews see
Postmes & Spears, 1998; Reicher et al., 1995), the question of conflict escalation barely
arises. It is assumed that, as people become anonymous in the mass, they lose their
individual identity and, hence, they lose control of their behaviour. As a result, crowd
members are incapable of resisting antisocial impulses and the potential for destructive
behaviour becomes ever present. By contrast, recent investigations of crowd behaviour
(Drury & Reicher, 1999, 2000; Reicher, 1984, 1987, 1996a, 2001; Stott & Drury, 2000;
Stott, Huchison, & Drury, 2001; Stott & Reicher, 1998a) have stressed that crowd
members shift from personal to social identity in the crowd, and that control of
behaviour passes from personal concerns to the norms, values, and beliefs associated
with the relevant social category. As a result, the behaviour of crowd members is not
unconstrained. Rather, they act within clear social limits and their collective acts display
clear social patterns that reveal their collective understandings.
However, it is not simply that there is a cognitive transformation in the crowd.
Crowd members also gain the power to enact their social identities. This is partly due
to their sense of support from fellow group members who are all acting together as
members of a common category, and partly due to their sense of being anonymous
to out-group members who thereby lose their ability to single them out for retribution.
As Reicher (1987) concludes, perhaps it is only in the crowd that people are able to act
fully as social subjects and to realize their collective perspective.
According to this argument, the cognitive salience of social identity is not sufficient
for people to behave in terms of social identity. One also needs to consider the practical
ability to express social identity, especially where in-group norms prescribe acts that
would attract sanctions from out-groups. What is more, the same factors, such as the
classic de-individuation manipulation of lowered visibility in a group, may operate in
complex ways at both levels. It may both increase the salience of social identity by
reducing cues to interpersonal difference and lower the power of out-groups to punish
expressions of social identity they deem illegitimate, but also reduce cues to social
support from fellow in-group members, which would be necessary for challenges
against a powerful out-group.
These claims have subsequently received experimental support (Reicher & Levine,
1994a, 1994b; Reicher, Levine, & Gordijn, 1998; Spears & Lea, 1992; Spears, Lea,
Corneliussen, Postmes, & Ter Haar, 2002) and formed the basis for the so-called social
identity model of de-individuation effects (SIDE; Postmes et al., 2000; Reicher et al.,
1995). SIDE emerged out of specific concerns related to crowd behaviour and, over
time, it has developed into a more general programme to integrate what have been
termed the cognitive and strategic dimensions of group behaviour.

Policing crowd events
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On the one hand, research has sought to identify the different types of strategic
consideration that moderate ones ability to act in terms of social identity. These can be
divided into intragroup concerns, such as gaining acceptance as a group member and
evaluating support from fellow group members for particular actions (e.g. Barreto,
Spears, Ellemers, & Shahinper, 2003; Ellemers, Spears, & Doojse, 2002; Ellemers,
van Dyck, Hinkle, & Jacobs, 2000; Spears, Postmes, Lea, & Wolbert, 2002) and intergroup
concerns, such as improving the out-groups general perception of the in-group or
avoiding punishment from the out-group for specific acts (Barreto et al., 2003; Klein &
Azzi, 2001; Klein & Licata, 2003; Scheepers, Spears, Doojse, & Manstead, 2003).
On the other hand, it has been shown that these various strategic concerns may play
a part in explaining an increasingly diverse range of group phenomena, including
expressed level of in-group identification, in-group bias, judgments of prototypicality,
normative behaviour, loyalty, and commitment (e.g. Barreto & Ellemers, 2000; Barreto
et al., 2003; Douglas & McGarty, 2001; Klein, Licata, Durala, & Azzi, 2003; Reicher &
Hopkins, 2001; Reicher, Hopkins, & Condor, 1997; Spears, Postmes et al., 2002).
Nonetheless, despite the accumulating body of evidence, SIDE research is at a
relatively early stage and, in many ways, it is still more a programme for research than a
programme of research. There remain a number of issues to be resolved and a number of
gaps that need to be filled, some of the most obvious include the following. First, most
research on SIDE uses experimental paradigms that generally seek to manipulate factors
(such as audience or visibility) which impact on strategic considerations, and then
examine the consequences for behaviour. While such studies are undoubtedly useful for
investigating the impact of these factors, they cannot tell us whether they actually
operate or are important when it comes to the groups that interest us outside the
laboratory.
Second, like most group research, SIDE research tends to use informal social
categories such as nationality, ethnicity, gender, and so on. Membership of these
categories is generally a matter of choice and there are no formal procedures for
admission and no formal procedures for expulsion. In many ways, this limits the
strategic importance of others since they are more limited in their ability to impose
consequences upon the actor. This is very different in institutional groups. I cannot
simply decide to identify myself as a doctor, a lawyer, or a police officer. I depend upon
others to judge my performance and to give me entry. I also depend upon the judgment
of others since, if I displease them, they may block my progress, discipline me, and even
expel me. Hence, in looking at the actual operation of strategic factors, it may be
propitious to start with an examination of an institutional group.
Third, in common with experimental research in general, SIDE research aims to
isolate factors in order to analyse their impact. The tendency is to look at one strategic
factor at a time, perhaps two in interaction, or three at most. However, outside the
laboratory, multiple strategic factors will be operating at the same time and, as discussed
above, the same factor may be operating at many different levels. What is necessary,
then, is not only to identify the range and impact of individual factors that operate at any
one time, but also to examine how group members balance these various factors and
how this balance might change over time. This is clearly of importance since, if different
strategic concerns affect behaviour in different ways, then changes in the overall
balance of concerns are likely to alter the probability of different behaviours being
expressed.
In this paper, we address these issues through a study of senior police officers
involved in controlling a crowd event. Not surprisingly, public order policing has

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generated considerable interest from a range of social sciences. However, such work has
tended to concentrate on policy and practical dimensions and has largely ignored a
psychological perspective (e.g. Fielding, 1991; Northam, 1988; Townshend, 1993;
Waddington, 1992, 1987, 1994). More recently, social psychologists interested in crowd
dynamics have begun to take an interest in the police (Drury & Reicher, 1999; Drury,
Stott, & Farsides, 2003; Reicher, 1996a; Reicher, Stott, Cronin, & Adang, 2004;
Stott & Drury, 2000; Stott et al., 2001; Stott & Reicher, 1998b).
They point out that crowd events are intergroup encounters, typically between
crowds and the police, and that police action can have a critical effect on the outcome of
events. In particular, where the police act in ways deemed illegitimate in terms of crowd
perceptions, or else stop crowd members from acting in ways they perceive to be
legitimate, then conflict is liable to ensue. To complicate matters, many physical masses
of people contain multiple psychological crowds in the sense of people who identify
themselves as members of a category with distinct norms, values, and understandings.
Some of these crowds may sanction illegal or confrontational actions while others may
not. How the police respond when certain groups enter into confrontation with them is
of critical importance. If they treat all crowd members as a homogenous danger, then
they create the conditions for conflict to escalate from some to all of the groups who are
present.
This research has played an important part in showing how police actions impact on
crowd dynamics and also in elucidating the perceptions and attitudes which contribute
towards these actions. It has also revealed some of the practical constraints that affect
what the police do. For instance, Stott and Reicher (1998b) show that, when employing
tactics such as crowd dispersal, the police treat all crowd members similarly not only
because they perceive them to be homogenous, but also due to the difficulty of
distinguishing between people in the rush of events. Nonetheless, despite these
contributions, research has not sought to make a systematic investigation of the
strategic constraints operating upon police decisions, nor has it generally been as
interested in the antecedents of police judgments as in their consequences.
In sum, research into the strategic determinants of group behaviour has tended to
ignore the nature and interplay between strategic factors that impact simultaneously
upon institutional groups as they act in the world, such as the police during crowd
events. Conversely, psychological research into public order policing has tended to
ignore strategic determinants. In this study, then, we investigate the perspective of
command level officers those who set the overall strategy and tactics of police
operations as they are in the process of dealing with a crowd event. It might seem most
obvious to do this in the context of a real event. However, our previous observations
(Cronin, 2001) indicate a serious drawback to this approach.
Such are the time pressures during real events that command level officers
frequently make decisions without discussion and without articulating their reasons.
Moreover, to the extent that they do communicate, it is usually to fellow officers who
share a common set of assumptions, a common stock of knowledge, and a common set
of prior references. Hence, much remains implicit and is intelligible only to those who
already have access to these shared understandings. Consequently, such events are
problematic as a means of revealing those understandings and the way they affect
decisions. This is particularly relevant in a study like ours that is concerned as much
with hypothesis generation as it is with hypothesis testing. Whereas it may be possible
to devise criteria for identifying instances of strategic factors to which one is already

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attuned, it is far harder to identify the relevant factors in the first place if they are not
made explicit.
For these reasons, our study is based on a table top exercise in which officers are
taken through a developing crowd scenario and have to decide on strategy, tactics, and
deployment of resources. The obvious disadvantage of such an exercise is its artificiality
and the fact that it may differ from the real thing, both by omitting factors that would
be relevant during actual events and, perhaps more seriously, in that the way the
scenario is set up and events are characterized may invoke perceptions and reactions
that might otherwise be absent. It is hard to dismiss such criticisms entirely, and this
undoubtedly has implications for the weight that can be placed on the analysis of the
present study and also for the relationship between this and other studies of crowd
policing, both of which we will address in the discussion. At the same time, it is worth
stressing that the exercise was designed and run by the police as the culmination of one
of their training courses for public order commanders and was made to be as realistic as
possible.
The scenario was an amalgam of elements mostly taken from actual events. It was
run in real time, putting pressure on participants to commit themselves to decisions.
The way in which information was provided in the form of verbal injects about the
developing situation was made to be in the form and language that commanders would
receive if, for instance, they were controlling an event in a police control room. While in
such cases they may have some live video of the event, much of the key information
would be radioed in by intelligence officers on the ground, filtered through a specialist
officer in the control room, and then handed as an inject to the commander. Finally,
given that the exercise was part of the course that officers needed to pass in order to
qualify as a public order commander, their performance had real consequences for their
position as a police officer.
Although important, the artificiality of the exercise should not be overstated.
By contrast, the great advantage of using such an exercise was that the officers had
to discuss their perceptions of the event, to indicate how they thought it would unfold,
to talk about the effects of different interventions (or non-interventions), and thus
provide a rationale for how they would police the event. This provided us with explicit
material covering the concerns of officers, their judgments, their treatment of the
crowd, and the relationship between these various elements. To summarize, our aims in
analysing this material were:
(1)
(2)
to undertake a systematic analysis of the strategic factors which influence public

order policing and to examine whether and how each of these factors affects the
judgment and decisions of officers.
to investigate whether the nature and balance of strategic factors changes during
an event and, if so, whether and how this affects the way in which the police
perceive and treat crowds
(a) as a special example of the above, given the evidence suggesting the impact
of differentiated versus undifferentiated treatment of crowds on crowd
conflict, to examine whether and how the changing nature of strategic
factors affects the likelihood that the police will treat the crowd as a
homogenous and dangerous entity.

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Analytic framework
Participants
The participants in this study were eight Metropolitan Police officers at the rank of chief
inspector, or the more senior rank of commander, along with two senior members of the
Scottish Prison Service being trained by the Metropolitan Police. All the officers were
male (which reflects the general preponderance of male officers in public order
command positions). They were aged between 37 and 54 years (mean: 44 years) and
had between 16 and 29 years of service (mean: 22 years). All had previously completed
advanced public order training.
The exercise
All the participants were attending a week-long bronze commander training course at
the Hounslow public order-training centre (colloquially known as riot city) situated in
west London (Townshend, 1993). In Britain, the command structure for public order is
divided into gold, silver and bronze officers. Gold commanders set the overall
strategy and are often removed from the actual policing of an event. Silver commanders
translate this strategy into tactics and, while being intimately involved with an event, are
frequently situated in a command centre that is removed from the ground. Bronze
commanders translate tactics into action. They are responsible for a specified sector of
an event, which may be either geographical or other (e.g. in charge of the reserve or else
in charge of horse mounted officers). Therefore, bronze commanders are those who
give the orders that determine what front-line officers actually do. On successfully
completing the course, participants would be eligible to act as bronze commanders for
public order events throughout London.
The exercise was part of the course. It was designed and run by police who were
public order specialists and was conducted on the last day lasting 3.5 hours with no break.
The participants, along with the researcher and two instructors, were seated together in a
classroom. Using verbal, written, and visual inputs, the instructors presented a crowd
scenario and asked the participants to discuss how they would respond as a group. Over
time, the instructors provided further injects to describe the development of the event
and, at each point, invited further discussion from the participants. However, there was
time pressure since the events were described as if they were in real time. Additionally, all
the inputs were presented in a form and in language that mirrored the information that
would be the basis for police decisions in a real event.
Thus, prior to any event, commanders would be given a briefing from special branch
(the intelligence wing of the police), which would detail the historical context and past
history of conflict; the expected numbers of participants divided into three categories
leading troublemakers (Category A), people who will readily participate in conflict
(Category B), and others (Category C) and the overall likelihood of trouble. During the
event, they would get constant information filtered to them from officers on the ground
so-called forward intelligence teams (FITs). Once again, these would describe salient
events, note sightings of known Category A and B individuals in particular and provide
both numbers and evidence of what they are doing. The initial briefing mirrored a special
branch report along with descriptions of the situation from officers on the ground. The
later injects took the form of reports from front line officers and FITs.
The scenario concerned a march and rally involving 5,000 anti-Fascists who were
expressing their opposition to a British National Party (BNP) candidate for local
government elections in London. They were also protesting at a police decision to merely

181
caution this candidate for an offence of threatening behaviour. The BNP was at the time
(January 1997) the largest far-right group in Britain. While the event was fictional
(although it bore some resemblance to a number of different anti-fascist and anti-police
demonstrations), it was situated in a real part of the city (the boroughs of Stoke
Newington and Hackney in north London) and the scenario was presented using maps of
this area.
The event unfolded as follows:

(1)
(2)
(3)
Following an overnight downpour, the agreed assembly point for the march,
Clissold Park, (Point A on the map), had to be changed. The police had to
determine how to inform the 5,000 demonstrators and get them to agree to this,
knowing that no organizer had been identified.
After delays caused by the change of assembly, the police decided that the
march would start from a public road bordering the park, Stoke Newington
Church St (Point B). It was planned to end with a rally on arrival at Clapton
Common (Point C).
As the march passed by the library (Point D) on Stoke Newington Church Street
(which had previously hosted a controversial BNP meeting and was therefore
identified in the pre-event briefing as a potential trouble spot), placards, bricks,
and bottles began to be thrown at police serials (constables, sergeants, and
inspectors) deployed outside the library. These serials were not public order
trained, they did not have riot equipment to protect themselves and their
colleagues, and they were wearing ordinary uniforms rather than specialized
protective clothing. Minor casualties were beginning to be sustained among
officers and, in addition, some damage was being caused to the fabric of the library.

182
(4)
(5)
(6)
However, the conflict was of a fairly low level and was contained to a limited
section of the crowd comprising some 40 people.
Eventually, the march moved past the library. However, when marchers came to
the junction with Stoke Newington High Street (Point E), they stopped and split
into two sections of some 2,000 each.
At this point, a sustained period of rioting broke out involving a number of
incidents. This included the use of petrol bombs and an attack on the home of the
BNP candidate in Smalley Close (Point F). There was also a report that crowd
members had been seen in possession of firearms.
The exercise ended with considerations concerning the preservation of the scene
of the disorder for criminal inquiries.
Data sources
The analysis presented here is part of a larger study of the training week, which involved
a combination of methods including participant observation, interviews both before
and after the training exercise, and textual analysis of the exercise itself. In this paper,
we concentrate on this last data source and we only use data from other sources to the
extent that it helps clarify the text.
The training exercise was recorded using a wide angled video-camera placed
unobtrusively at the back of the classroom (although both instructors and participants
had given consent to being filmed and were therefore aware that the camera was there).
The soundtrack was then transcribed into a word-processing package using the video
images to help identify who said what. This yielded a transcript approximately 70,000
words in length. This transcript included only what was said, not such features as stress
or pauses. These were felt to be superfluous given the nature of the analysis that we
undertook.
Data analysis
Given the nature of our research questions, we employed a hybrid analytic strategy.
On the one hand, we sought to explore the strategic factors that emerged from the data
as affecting the deliberations and decisions made by our participants. Accordingly, we
used inductive procedures based on grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967;
Miles & Huberman, 1994; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). On the other hand, we were
interested in the incidence within the data of an analytically predefined category;
namely, the perception and treatment of the crowd as homogenously dangerous. This
involved procedures based upon thematic analysis (Kellehear, 1993).
The analysis involved three stages. The first stage, akin to the open coding of
grounded theory, involved an iterative process of line-by-line readings of the text, and
the gathering together of extracts that address a similar concept category (where the
concepts are related to our general topic; namely, the factors that affect perception and
treatment of the crowd). The second stage, akin to axial and selective coding in
grounded theory, involved comparison between categories in order to examine how
they cluster together and the relationships between them. The third and final stage,
which was more akin to thematic analysis, involved a specific analysis of whether
perception and treatment of the crowd as homogenously dangerous had emerged as a
concept category and, if so, how it related to other concepts.
Before presenting the outcome of this analysis, it is important to stress that we are
primarily concerned with issues of quality (the kind of strategic factors that are relevant
to crowd policing, how they relate to policing decisions, and the conditions under

183
which they lead to the treatment of the crowd as homogenously dangerous). Rather
than analyse how often these factors occur, our aim is to provide an understanding of
what they are through description of instances. Hence, the analysis consists of extracts
from the transcript and its validity is ensured by making them sufficiently detailed to
allow the reader to judge the analytic points they are used to sustain.
Given that our interest is in command level policing of crowd events, we have only
used extracts from the participants who were police officers (what is more, the prison
officers made few contributions). Extracts are numbered sequentially and participants
are identified by rank, age, and years of service. Thus, for example, (Cmdr 42, 20)
denotes a commander aged 42 with 20 years of service, while (C Insp 49, 29) denotes a
chief inspector aged 49 with 29 years of service. Where any editorial clarification of
jargon or slang used in the extracts is necessary, it is placed in square brackets ([]).
Analysis
The analysis is divided into two sections that correspond to the concerns we identified
in the introduction. In the first section, we outline the various strategic concerns that
impacted upon the judgments and decision of officers, and we also consider the nature
of that impact for each concern (Aim 1). In the second section, we look at how the
nature and balance of strategic concerns shifts during the events and how this impacts
upon the treatment of crowds, particularly upon the tendency to treat the crowd as a
homogenous and dangerous whole (Aims 2 and 2a).
Strategic concerns and crowd policing
Very early on in the event, while the crowd was still assembling prior to moving off,
participants were informed that 40 troublemakers (Categories A and B) had been
spotted in the crowd. As the officers discussed how to respond, one of them (C. Insp,
54, 25) suggested, to general assent: why dont we just arrest them all? However,
another officer was more cautious:
1. (C Insp, 48, 28): Thats an interesting concept. I wonder if we could get away with it.
I think our intelligence about those individuals would have to be very strong for us to justify,
lets say in the eyes of solicitors branch and any subsequent court proceedings, where we
would be held accountable for these decisions.
His input led participants to discard the idea of arrests. It was agreed to monitor the
group but not to do any more at this stage. Two initial points flow from this interchange.
The first is that officers do spontaneously invoke strategic concerns and, more
specifically, the ways in which they would be held to account by others. Second, these
accountability concerns can be decisive in determining how they do act, over-riding
how they would like to act. Extract 1 is not an isolated instance of this. Throughout the
exercise, our respondents invoked concerns about their accountability to a series of
different audiences. These concerns can be divided into two broad categories: external
accountability (accountability to audiences outside the police service) and internal
accountability (accountability to audiences within the police service). Let us consider
each in turn.
External accountability often referred to a general concern with what the
community would think of police actions. Officers were aware that they could be
blamed for being too permissive and allowing disruption to occur. However, there was a
particular concern with being blamed for being too repressive and hence held

184
responsible for initiating conflict. This is clear from the following quotation, which
relates to the decision of how to act outside the library:
2. (C Insp, 48, 28): As managers of the event you are gonna be put under a lot of pressure by
your serials to get people kitted up [i.e. front line officers will want to put on protective riot
gear], sometimes I know it sounds horrible, sometimes you may have to take a couple of
injuries.
The point is that if the police are seen to act prior to having sustained any injuries, then
they can be accused of being precipitate and of provoking violence. Once injuries have
been sustained, then they are more likely to seen to be the victims than the aggressors in
the public eye, and their actions will be seen as responses to violence rather than violent
in and of themselves. Indeed, more generally in our interviews and in other studies of
crowd policing we have undertaken (Cronin, 2001) senior officers talk of acceptable
damage, which refers to the level of crowd violence which officers are prepared to
endure in order to render the police reaction legitimate in the eyes of the public.
However, it was not simply a matter of waiting for events to enable the police to
intervene without fear of blame by the public. Participants were actively concerned
with interpreting events for the purposes of blame management. Thus, violence by
some crowd members outside the library could be used to represent the crowd as a
threat to the public and the police as its defender, rather than vice versa:
3. (Cmdr, 42, 20): What they have actually done at the library is present you with a current
and subsequent opportunity, theyve attacked the local community if you want to put it that
way, and if youve got your area press and publicity officers out and the local press there and
youve got your police consultative group representatives out, you can spread that message.
In the above examples, the nature of the community was left rather undefined as are
the precise mechanisms through which public judgments might impact on the police.
However, there were times where participants were quite explicit about what the
community meant and where the ways in which this public can affect them was
equally clear. Sometimes, as in the story of Margaret Thatchers phone call that we noted
at the outset of this paper, the community referred to political representatives and direct
political pressure. However, such pressure is relatively rare. More often, it referred to
formal investigatory processes, especially public inquiries. Officers were aware that if
any event were to turn into a serious riot, then such an inquiry would be highly likely.
Given this ever-present possibility, our participants emphasized that all decisions must
be made with an eye to their defensibility in front of a public inquiry. In an interview
prior to the exercise itself, one officer stressed this with some fervour and at some
length:
4. (C Insp, 45, 25): And now, of course, we are into civil litigation, we are talking about
thousands of pounds, and apart from that, and this is secondary I know, but we are talking
about public safety. Hillsborough, Bradford, Heysel [all examples of football matches where
large numbers of people were crushed or burnt to death]. Absolutely. However hard you
work, however hard you try, you will never get it right totally. Thats why people who dont
take it seriously dont realize what they are not doing and how vulnerable they are and their
colleagues are, how vulnerable they make the service and how they can let the public down
You mustnt let down the public, ever, because as we have seen the public inquiry always
exposes the limitations of the police operation and further erodes our credibility.
Let us now turn to internal accountability. First, our public order commanders were just
as concerned with an internal inquiry as they were with an external inquiry. In the case

185
of large-scale disorder, they would be subject to internal investigation by a neutral

senior officer, either from within the Metropolitan Police or an outside force if merited
in terms of serious complaints arising from the disorder (Metropolitan Police, 1999).
The outcome could potentially lead to severe indictment even to the extent of ending
ones career. Consequently, as with public inquiries, officers suggested that decisions
must always be made with an eye to how they may subsequently be viewed by police
investigators:
5. (C Insp, 45, 25): I do worry how kitting up would be seen in any internal police inquiry,
which we seem to have quite regularly when a public order event has been seen to have
gone wrong.
Second, and somewhat less formally, our participants were concerned with their
accountability to their peers, that is, fellow senior officers. Peers may not be able to sack
you, but ones reputation among them is critical both to social acceptance and to career
advancement and critical to ones reputation is the ability to remain in control of
oneself and of events:
6. (C Insp, 49, 29): This is particularly so when the wheel comes off [extreme and
unexpected events occur] as the officers will always remember how well you performed
under pressure and if you did not cope very well everyone will remember that especially
in the public order cadre [Advanced public order trained Met Officers].
This suggests that control is a group norm. If this is so, then one would expect officers
not only to indicate that others value controlled and controlling behaviour (and that
they are motivated to express it for extrinsic reasons), but also that they value such
behaviours themselves (and that they are motivated to express it for intrinsic reasons).
We have already seen implicit evidence of this at the start of this section. That is, when
participants were given evidence of the presence of troublemakers their initial
reaction was to impose authority over them and remove them from the scene.
However, there is explicit evidence as well. As one participant (C Insp, 45, 25) said
when asked by the instructors about the general approach that should be taken to
policing the crowd, we dominate and control. Again, when we provided feedback
on our findings about accountability to a meeting of top-level public order commanders,
no one challenged their importance, but a number of people told us that we must
remember that being in control of events is possibly the most important thing to any
police officer. This is a point to which we shall return in discussion. For now, however,
we shall consider a third and final aspect of internal accountability: that of public order
commanders to their junior officers.
The concerns here are somewhat different and they are well illustrated in
discussions about when orders should be given for junior officers to don riot gear. First,
the matter was debated in general terms. One chief inspector argued that (C. Insp, 48,
28), if commanders do not allow junior officers to kit up, then they themselves may
decide sod this, Im gonna go in there kitted up, at which point youve lost control of
your officers. Then another chief inspector voiced identical concerns with respect to
what should happen outside the library:
7. (C Insp, 45, 25): It may be that that sustained missile attack only lasts a matter of 1520
seconds and then they are going to go away. Well, that is a judgment call on the people in
charge at the time, balanced against that is the effect that it has on the officers because if you
are not seen to take action by the junior officers there is a danger of them acting without
senior officers.

186
The concern of senior officers was that, however good the strategies that they set, their
ability to deliver these strategies depends upon the cooperation of junior officers. If
junior officers disapprove of command decisions (which is particularly likely where
permissive policing increases the likelihood of injuries to front line officers), then these
officers can and do subvert the command strategy.
In effect, these observations take us full circle. We began our analysis by showing
that external accountability concerns led commanders to delay the use of repressive
tactics and to countenance injuries to their own officers. Now, we see that internal
accountability concerns pressured them to endorse such tactics in order to avoid police
injuries. Therefore, as well as listing the various different accountability concerns that
impact on public order commanders, this section has also shown that the police face
multiple accountability concerns simultaneously and that different concerns may
influence their decisions in different and sometimes contradictory ways. This suggests
that it is not sufficient to look at specific accountability concerns in isolation, but rather
we must look at their overall balance at any given point in time. Should that balance
alter, then one would also expect the nature of command decisions to alter. This is the
subject of analysis in the next section.
Phase, accountability and decision-making
It is possible to divide the overall crowd scenario into three phases: first, non-conflict,
which covers the period from initial assembly until demonstrators reached Stoke
Newington Church Street (Points 1 and 2 in our account of the scenario provided
above); second, incipient conflict, which covers the throwing of placards, bricks and
bottles by some crowd members outside Stoke Newington library (Point 3); and third,
conflict, which covers the period of intense and generalized violence from the point
crowd members reached the junction of Stoke Newington Church Street and Stoke
Newington High Street (Points 46). It should be stressed that these are not divisions or
labels used during the exercise itself, but rather are categories that emerge from our
analysis. They are of use to the extent that we can identify shifts in the nature of
accountability concerns as a function of phase and also see associated changes in police
perceptions and actions. We shall consider each of these in turn.
Phase and the balance of accountability concerns
In the non-conflict stage of events, officers were particularly aware of the way in which
external audiences may hold them to account for intervening against crowd members.
Such concerns were clearly expressed in Extract 4 above. To intervene where there is no
violence can lead to accusations both of denying rights and of provoking violence. What is
more, as one participant (C Insp, 48, 28) pointed out, this might place front line police
unnecessarily at risk: you may get some injuries to officers when they try to arrest these
40 hard core as they may get help from their mates in the crowd. Hence, in this context,
internal accountability to junior officers did not point unambiguously towards
intervention. Since external accountability militated strongly against intervention and
internal accountability militated less towards intervention, in the pre-conflict phase, the
overall balance of accountability concerns was clearly such as to limit intervention.
In the incipient conflict phase, the balance shifted. While it might be slightly harder
for external audiences to hold commanders to account for provoking violence that has
already started, they can still be held responsible for escalating a minor problem by
intervening too early. On the other hand, as we have already seen, their own junior
officers may undermine command strategies if they do not intervene. At this stage, then,

187
the different accountability concerns were evenly balanced and clearly placed
commanders in a dilemma where they could suffer negative consequences whichever
way they acted. This was reflected in a lengthy discussion as to how to act outside the
library and it was encapsulated in the following contribution:
8. (C Insp, 48, 28): I would be wanting to ask at this stage for the reserve officers to be kitted
up because you seem to be in escalating violence. Your officers have already been injured,
and you have to balance being seen to protect them with inflaming the whole crowd. It is a
balancing act you have to ask for these officers to be kitted up while, at the same time,
ensuring they are tucked away around the corner so as not provoke the crowd.
In this case, the dilemma was resolved by a strategy that faced both ways and could be
represented differently to different audiences. To external audiences, riot police were
not deployed in front of the crowd and so could not inflame them. To junior officers, riot
equipment was brought out in order to prepare for action.
By the time that violence has become generalized and serious (the conflict phase of
the event), external audiences, like internal audiences, were seen as unlikely to criticize
the police for provoking or inflaming violence, but rather for failing to intervene in order
to protect people and property against crowd members. It is notable, for instance, how
in the following extract, both danger to the public and danger to the police were
invoked as reasons for draconian interventions:
9. (Cmdr, 42, 20): They are now chucking petrol bombs at me: : : I would consider whether
the horses were an option at this stage, if they were not because of the crowd dynamics,
because we have people trapped in burning buildings.
Thus, since external accountability concerns switched round so as become consonant

with internal accountability concerns, dilemmas of intervention became resolved. The
only sanctions from either the public or ones own officers would be due to nonintervention. Measures taken against the crowd were perceived as likely to win plaudits
all round. Overall, the shift in the balance of accountability concerns from non-conflict
to incipient conflict-to-conflict phases of the event was towards steadily greater pressure
for intervention.
Changing accountability and public order decision-making
To the extent that there was an overall shift in the balance of accountability concerns as
a function of phase, one would also expect there to be a series of more specific shifts
across phases of the event in the way that public order commanders used information
about the crowd and how they acted towards crowds. In each case, the shift should
progress from lesser to greater emphasis on danger and intervention as the event went
from no conflict, to incipient conflict, to sustained conflict.
It is important to stress that the shifts we are expecting should occur at the level of
collective agreement rather than individual suggestion. That is, the nature of the
exercise was such that participants were encouraged to suggest different options as a
basis for discussion. We would therefore expect a variety of positions to be expressed at
each phase. What we are concerned with, however, are those positions that secured
collective agreement and shaped group discussion either by resolving overt
disagreement or (as was more usual) by being taken for granted by others and
providing agreed terms for subsequent discussion. Such consensualizing positions best
reveal the stance that people take as group members (Haslam, Oakes, Turner, McGarty, &
Reynolds, 1998). Consequently, we are not looking for quantitative shifts but rather

188
wish to look more closely at the ways that debates and decisions were shaped at
different phases of the event.
Use of information: The dilemmas surrounding information usage stem from the fact that
public order commanders have various sources of information that frequently give
different indications of danger. Thus, participants were initially given a briefing from
special branch (SB; the intelligence wing of the police), which indicated that up to 900
troublemakers would be present. They were also given reports from FITs (which
operate on the ground during events) indicating that 40 troublemakers had been
spotted. Finally, they were told that the crowd was 5,000 strong.
In the non-conflict stage, participants took for granted the lowest estimate provided by
FITs as the relevant information on which to proceed. When the figure of 40 was
mentioned, it was not challenged by others. Participants debated what to do with these
40 (arrest them or leave them alone see Extract 4 and the preceding discussion), but
there was no debate as to whether or not they constituted the sum total of dangerous
people in the crowd. That is, no concerns were expressed concerning the remaining
4,960 or so demonstrators.
Moreover, officers invoked models of crowd process that suggest that crowd
violence derives from the pathological character of particular individuals in the
crowd who therefore are unlikely to draw wider sections of the crowd into conflict,
except, possibly, for their personal friends or mates. Thus, when participants were
debating whether rowdy behaviour alone can be used as a sign of crowd danger, the
following intervention was decisive:
10. (Cmdr, 42, 20): No, theyve got to be people that you have identified as key players, key
orchestrators, and theres a history to them that forms the basis for you suspecting a Breach
of the Peace by their presence or demonstration.
As soon as the violence outside the library started the phase of incipient conflict
things changed. Recall that, at this point, the numbers themselves did not change
as only the 40 so-called hard core were involved in the violence. However, what
did change was the weight put on the different numbers. At this point, the SB
estimate of 900 became taken for granted and the fact that far fewer people were
actually involved in conflict became the basis for a discussion on where the missing
trouble makers might be. As one officer (C Insp, 45, 25) asked, if the police have
only met some 50 or so troublemakers wheres the other 800 and odd? Another
officer suggested that they may be identified through their reactions to police
interventions:
11. (C Insp 54, 26): Up to a thousand people who are troublemakers. We have only
identified 40 of them. If we go and arrest those, that could inflame the others and they could
cause trouble here or further on.
Note also from this extract that the model of crowd process changed somewhat. While it
was still true that only people with a certain predisposition were seen to initiate
violence, others were seen as prone to become drawn into conflict through the crowd
process. This is a hybrid of those models that explain crowd violence in terms of
individual pathology and those which propose that all individuals become pathological
in the crowd what we have termed elsewhere the Allportian and the Le Bonian models
(cf. Allport, 1924; Le Bon, 1895; Reicher, 2001).

189
In the final phase of sustained conflict, the estimate changed yet again. Both the SB
and the FIT estimates were discarded. Rather, as is clear from the following extract, it
was assumed that the entire crowd were troublemakers, and discussion of tactics
proceeded on this basis.
12. (C Insp, 39, 20): We have to treat all 5,000 members of the crowd as dangerous and
liable to join in the violence against police.
Note that the figure of 5,000 dangerous people was not based on what people were
actually doing and on how many showed evidence of being troublesome. Rather, the
claim was that all crowd members are in principal potentially troublesome and, hence,
the only information that counts is how many people are in the crowd. While there was
still some use of the Allportian notion of individual pathology in order to underpin this
claim (all crowd members must be anti-authority in order to be on the march), at this
point we also saw the use of full blown Le Bonian ideas, according to which even the
most respectable people can lose their judgment and become subject to crowd
contagion. This was eloquently expressed by one chief inspector:
13. (C Insp, 45, 25): Its amazing how people who are extremely well behaved and hold
good jobs and have a good public standing and are law abiding citizens get involved in all
sorts of stuff but when you put it to them. They dont ever remember doing it, they just get
caught up in the dynamics of the mob and start joining in with the troublemakers.
The shifts in which information was attended to from phase to phase were not simply a
result of different evidence becoming available concerning the extent of trouble. Rather,
participants used different estimates of danger as the basis upon which evidence of
trouble was sought. As the event became more conflictual, progressively less emphasis
was placed on information that suggested limited danger and progressively more on that
which played up the danger of the crowd. This was even clearer when it came to shifts
in the use of models of crowd process. After all, none of the information that was
provided related to these models. Rather, the model affected the significance accorded
to information by indicating how conflict was likely to develop. Therefore, as conflict
developed, it was not only that officers saw more people as actually dangerous but that
they saw greater potential for others to become dangerous. In this way, the selection and
assessment of information provided a warrant for interventions against progressively
wider sections of the crowd.
Treatment of crowd members: In the non-conflict phase, participants differed over how to
treat the 40-strong hard core. However, all agreed that, whatever tactics were used,
they needed to be highly targeted and differentiated. To borrow the metaphor of one
participant: (Cmdr, 42, 20), its about shooting the chiefs. When incipient conflict
broke out, there were differences once again. However, the parameters of debate had
changed. Now, no one suggested that intervention be limited to the chiefs. Rather, the
issue had become how wide to spread the net. Hence, participants discussed the
relative merits of arresting people for serious or minor crimes, and the practical and
logistical difficulties associated with such interventions.
14. (C Insp, 48, 28): You can arrest for a very serious crime or minor crime. Some of them
they will be smoking things like cannabis, just purely to wind the PCs up, so your arrest
policy has got to be very clear, what you are gonna arrest for.

190
Some of the participants began to suggest tactics that do not differentiate between
demonstrators at all. Thus, one commander (Cmdr, 42, 20) suggested using officers in
riot gear against the crowd as a whole to drive them past the library.
Once into the conflict phase, all considerations of differentiation and targeting were
discarded. Thus, one officer explained how he would use horses to stop crowd
members from proceeding despite their numbers:
15. (Cmdr, 42, 20): They cant get a lot of momentum up to push, so you could probably
stand and fight with the crowd, I suppose, and start trying to force them, to stop them
coming south so theyve got no choice but to stand still.
The only debate that occurred at this stage was over the timing and combination of
such tactics: should riot police be used on foot, should horses be used, and should
rubber bullets be deployed? However, nobody voiced any concerns about the fact that
all these tactics treated anyone who remained present as equally dangerous and drew all
of them into conflict with the police whether they liked it or not.
Discussion
The first aim of this study was to analyse both the nature and the impact of strategic
concerns upon public order commanders. Perhaps the simplest and clearest of our
findings is that accountability has a critical influence upon the decisions of these
commanders. From the start of the exercise, our participants were constantly aware of
how, in a crowd event, others would judge their actions, and of the consequences these
judgments would have for their future as police officers. These can range from the
relatively trivial and informal (loss of reputation, reduced promotion prospects) to the
serious and formal (demotion, dismissal, or even legal proceedings). Officers were
aware that, during events, they are simultaneously faced with multiple accountability
pressures from multiple audiences, with some external to the police and some internal.
These different sources of accountability frequently placed pressure upon officers to act
in different ways. What was important, then, was not any one form of accountability but
the overall balance of accountability concerns that operated at any given moment in
time.
Our second aim was to investigate whether this balance changes over time, and if
so, how and with what effect upon policing decisions. Here, too, the findings were
clear. The nature of individual accountability pressures varied as a function of the
phase of the event and hence the overall balance changed as well. More specifically,
as violence escalated, officers portrayed internal audiences as dropping any ambiguity
about intervention and external audiences as dropping support for non-intervention.
This had a clear impact upon judgments and decisions. With increasing violence,
officers increasingly sought evidence of danger rather than evidence of safety, and
increasingly treated crowd members as dangerous. This relates directly to our specific
concern with the conditions under which officers treat crowd members as a
homogenous and dangerous entity. From the moment that conflict started (even
when only a small proportion of crowd members were involved in it), such
tendencies began to be observed among our participants and they became
predominant as conflict escalated.
These findings have theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, our work
serves to emphasize the importance of accountability processes in determining group
action. As Lerner and Tetlock (1999, p. 255) note in a recent review, despite the fact that

191
accountability is a modern buzzword, research on the topic remains scarce,

particularly when it comes to groups. Indeed recent reviews even those that focus on
collective judgment and decision-making do not even mention the term (e.g. Baron &
Kerr, 2003; Stasser & Dietz-Uhler, 2001).
As we suggested in the introduction, one reason for this lies in the methods that
psychologists use and hence the types of group we study. Research is dominated by
experimentation where our encounters with others are brief and inconsequential.
As Lerner and Tetlock (1999, p. 270) put it, there is no shadow of either past or
future. Moreover, the use of informal groups where membership is a matter of
choice may also lead to the importance of accountability being underestimated. For
our officers, the reason why the future was important was because their decisions
about how to treat the crowd could impact upon their position in the police
service, which, in turn, depended upon institutional procedures surrounding group
membership: the fact that others decide if they can join the group, where they
stand in the group, and even whether they remain in the group. Our investigation
of such formal groups shows that accountability is a central issue at a psychological,
as well as a political, level.
However, it is equally important to place analyses of accountability in the context of
group process. Whereas conventional approaches tend to present an individualistic and
passive picture of the subject who is motivated simply to gain approval from others
(cf. Emler & Reicher, 1995), our analysis supports a model of the motivated group
member acting under constraint. On the one hand, the reason why our officers were
concerned with the reactions of others was not primarily to get obtain individual
rewards but rather to remain police officers and act as such. In some cases, the two were
confounded. For instance, censure from a public inquiry could lead to removal from
ones job and hence both loss of group membership and loss of individual salary.
However, in other cases, the collective level of concern was predominant. Thus,
concerns about accountability to junior officers were discussed entirely in terms of how
to get command strategies delivered to maximum effect. The one constant throughout,
then, was the group based motive.
On the other hand, there is evidence that command officers do have their own
norms and values on which they would wish to act, but that their action is moderated by
accountability concerns. This takes us back to comments made in the analysis after
Extracts 1 and 6. In both cases, there was explicit reference to the value of control and
that commanders are concerned to dominate an event. Their primary concern was to
get crowd members to act in terms defined by the police (rather than, say, facilitating the
crowd to behave in their own terms to the extent that these fall inside the law).
However, there was equally explicit reference made to the fact that accountability
constraints sometimes render this impossible. To borrow from Extract 1, officers are
always dealing with the question can we get away with it?
Overall, then, our study supports the argument that group processes (more
specifically, social identity processes) and accountability processes need to be analysed
in conjunction with each other rather than counter-posed. In other words, it validates
the premise of the SIDE tradition (Postmes et al., 2000; Reicher et al., 1995). Indeed, as
the first significant field study explicitly undertaken within this tradition, it shows how
this approach is especially relevant when seeking to account for the actions of members
of real groups with ongoing histories, enduring commitments, and formal procedures
relating to membership. Moreover, it builds on previous work by showing that one can
be accountable to multiple in-group and out-group audiences. It also shows that the

192
various accountability pressures operate simultaneously and that it is the balance

between different pressures, rather than any single pressure, that is important. We have
also illustrated that the balance of accountability pressures affects both the use of
information and decision concerning action, and that this balance can change during an
episode thus resulting in changes of judgment and action.
In terms, of the practical implications of our study, our aim is not to extrapolate
from the precise form that accountability pressures took in the exercise that we
studied. In different circumstances, different audiences may become relevant. For
instance, in a demonstration targeting a foreign embassy then international concerns
may come into play. Second, the pressure from a given audience may vary from event
to event. Thus, whereas accountability to political audiences generally militated
against early police intervention in our exercise, there have been other circumstances
(e.g. the 1999 visit by Chinese President Jiang Zemin to London) where fear of a
diplomatic incident led governmental pressures to operate in precisely the opposite
direction. Therefore, in any given context, there is a need for a situated analysis of
the accountability pressures that are operating, the balance between these different
pressures, and the way this changes over time. This will be critical to the policing
decisions that are made.
Even if the type of accountability pressure in a given situation may vary according
to the audience and even if the type of accountability pressure from a given audience
may vary according to the situation, in our study, there was a constant in the way in
which accountability pressures altered. That is, as violence increased, every audience
either maintained or increased its pressure for generalized intervention. Certainly,
none became less interventionist. Perhaps this attests to the prevalence of Le Bonian
ideas in our society (cf. Reicher, 1996b; Reicher & Potter, 1985). That is, as soon as
there is any violence in a crowd, it is always arguable that escalation is inevitable and
hence the police can never be unequivocally held to account for having inflamed the
situation, regardless of how they acted. Whatever the case may be, the implications
are serious.
It is precisely when some sections of the crowd begin to act confrontationally that
the police response is most critical. At this important point, the police differentiate
between crowd members and accountability concerns begin to switch round and
pressure officers towards less differentiation. Thus, it is not only factors internal to the
police that lead to generalized intervention (Drury et al., 2003; Reicher et al., 2005;
Stott & Reicher, 1998b) but also factors external to the police. Equally, any attempts to
change police practices in the direction of more differentiated strategies and tactics
must deal with the more general view of crowds in society as well as the views of the
police themselves. As long as the procedures that are easiest to justify to outsiders tend
to escalate violence (cf. Simonson & Nye, 1992), then any sophistication of police
insiders will count for little.
Of course, these conclusions must be tempered by the limitations of our study
notably, the fact that our analysis is based upon an exercise and not a real crowd event.
In the introduction, we explained the advantages of such an analysis in terms of getting
explicit accounts of perceptions and rationales for action and this is reflected in the
richness of our transcript. However, we acknowledge that the artificiality of the exercise
may have undermined our findings. Most obviously, the stress on accountability
concerns could have been a simple demand characteristic that had been communicated
by the instructors during the course and which was expressed by participants during
the exercise.

193
Such an argument is certainly plausible. However, if anything, any mention of

accountability during the course (which was attended in its entirety by the first author)
was made by the participants rather than instructors. Indeed, in the analysis we have
used, interview material that shows that officers are acutely aware of the need to show
the public that the police are not responsible for initiating violence. Far from pointing to
the fact that accountability concerns are an artefact of the exercise, this suggests that the
concerns participants express in the exercise reflect those expressed during actual
events.
Another possible criticism of our analysis is that any shifts in police accountability
concerns during the event may result from the terms in which the conflict was
described rather than from changes in the nature of the conflict itself. If the information
had been phrased differently or if people were provided with fuller and richer
information sources (e.g. radio and video) as in a live event, then we might have
obtained different responses.
Undoubtedly, the responses of participants are not to an immediate social reality but
rather to a social reality that is constructed for them through language (cf. Edwards &
Potter, 1992; Potter, 1996). Hence, the terms in which the injects were phrased are of
critical importance. Having said that, it is important to draw a distinction between
language that, in itself, carries certain entailments and language that invokes culturally
bound systems of knowledge through which conclusions are drawn. For instance, if the
term incipient conflict had been used in the inject relating to events outside Stoke
Newington library, it is arguable that the word incipient points to the start of an
escalating process and from this point, participants would see it likely that more people
would be drawn into the conflict, to look for evidence of this, and to treat crowd
members accordingly.
However, as we have stressed, the term was an analytic label. Participants were told
that 40 people were throwing placards bricks and bottles. It is hard to see how such
information suggests escalation and points to generalized interventions without being
mediated by assumptions about crowd process and audience reactions. If the latter is
true, then it suggests that any information indicating conflict, and not only that
contained in our specific injects, would lead to a shift in accountability concerns and
police decisions. It is important to reiterate that the injects were worded to mirror those
that officers would receive in a live event. In general, they were based on actual
information provided about previous events. Thus, even if the language of the injects
was important in producing responses, this constitutes a link rather than a difference
between our study and the dynamics of real events.
To conclude, the analysis in this paper provides at least provisional data
concerning the importance of accountability concerns in moderating the behaviour
of groups outside the laboratory and, more specifically, of the conditions under
which the police may act in ways that serve to escalate collective conflict. The rich
and explicit nature of the data provides some vindication of our decision to
commence investigation of these issues using a training exercise. Moreover, there are
good reasons to believe that any particularities in the way that information was
provided to participants in this exercise are reproduced in actual events.
Nevertheless, our aim in this study was as much to generate as to test hypotheses.
Undeniably, the questions generated by this study need to be complemented by
further evidence gathered in the field. To borrow an old adage from Robert Park
(hopefully, not to literally), go get the seat of your pants dirty in real research
(McKinney, 1966, p. 74).

194
Acknowledgements
This research was made possible by an ESRC research studentship for the first author:
ROO429824363. Thanks to the Metropolitan Police for granting access for this study and
specifically to the Public Order Branch of New Scotland Yard for facilitating the research.
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Received 30 March 2004; revised version received 22 November 2004

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British Journal of Social Psychology (2006), 45, 175196

A study of the factors that influence how senior

School of Social and Health Sciences, University of Abertay, UK

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Patrick Cronin and Stephen Reicher

The primary aim of this paper is to examine more systematically and

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Policing crowd events

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Patrick Cronin and Stephen Reicher

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Policing crowd events

to undertake a systematic analysis of the strategic factors which influence public

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Patrick Cronin and Stephen Reicher

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Policing crowd events

The event unfolded as follows:

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Patrick Cronin and Stephen Reicher

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Policing crowd events

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Patrick Cronin and Stephen Reicher

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Policing crowd events

of large-scale disorder, they would be subject to internal investigation by a neutral

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Patrick Cronin and Stephen Reicher

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Policing crowd events

Thus, since external accountability concerns switched round so as become consonant

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Patrick Cronin and Stephen Reicher

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Policing crowd events

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Patrick Cronin and Stephen Reicher

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Policing crowd events

accountability is a modern buzzword, research on the topic remains scarce,

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Patrick Cronin and Stephen Reicher

various accountability pressures operate simultaneously and that it is the balance

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Policing crowd events

Such an argument is certainly plausible. However, if anything, any mention of

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Patrick Cronin and Stephen Reicher

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Policing crowd events

Copyright The British Psychological Society

Patrick Cronin and Stephen Reicher

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