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Otto Adang. Violence and use of force in riot situations
(file://localhost/F:/Hooligans,%2.mht)
Riots, or more generally, different forms of collective violence are experienced as a problem. Large-scale violence or the threat thereof, occurs in the form of soccer vandalism, as a result of diverse forms of protest actions or during festive activities. Riots are experienced as problems because of the violence itself (and its consequences) or because of the efforts made to prevent or repress it. Over the years many sociological and social psychological publications have appeared about "collective behavior" or "crowd behavior" (Turner and Killian, 1972 and Mcphail, 1991 give an excellent overview). The extensive social-scientific literature about the behavior of crowds and the behavior of people in crowds is often based on restricted information and unsubstantiated interpretations according to the American sociologist Berk (1970). This diagnosis is, in essence, also supported by the Dutch sociologists Cachet and Valkenburgh (1973). Berk (1970) perceived that investigations into "crowd behavior" concentrated on the conditions immediately preceding the events and the subsequent consequences and not on the more difficult to examine mass process itself. Mass processes are difficult to examine because a great number of things happen in quick succession, simultaneous-ly and spread out over a large area while they are difficult to foresee.
The crowd processes leave little or no trace afterwards (the results, naturally, are visible) so that investigators often quickly resort to retrospective reports in which there are numerous conscious and unconscious distortions. When present, investigators often stand at a distance because of their own safety.
Despite insufficient data, investigators nevertheless frequently express an opinion over what happens in or with crowds. With this interpretation, one runs the risk of falling into a number of traps. Berk (1970) distinguishes five such pitfalls:
1. Crowd behavior is often characterized as irrational, instinctive, bestial or demonical, produced by emotions that are disconnected from reason or moral. As a matter of fact there is hardly any information about what happens to people in crowds and consequently no information to make comparisons with the daily behavior of people.
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2. Instead of correct descriptions and sound theories metaphores are often presented. Analogies with physiological/chemical (chain reactions, turbulence) and biological (herd forming, animal behavior) phenomena are often employed. An example of this is the extension of the saying "soccer is war" to soccer violence.
3. Often different analysis levels are tangled. Concepts on an individual level are used to analyze the behavior of groups and visa versa. So, consequently groups are attributed with their own desires and emotions. To add further to Berks (1970) third point, analyses on the causes and the goals of behavior are often tangled with one another as well.
4. It is often assumed that all individuals in a crowd have the same motives or are much alike in other ways. The homogeneity attributed to crowds is artificial because of the lack of information on separate individuals.
5. Speculations are made on the processes that occur in the crowd, based on events prior to the crowd or on the results of the crowd's behavior, without these speculations being verified.
These inclinations in the social-science literature have not been without consequence for the views held in the police force and police schools (e.g. Cromwell & Lewis, 1971; Schmidt, 1972; van de Sande et al., 1987; Bijl unpub). By describing the pitfalls Berk (1970) hoped to stimulate investi-gators to collect data relevant to their speculations, direct investiga-tions to the mass process itself and be critical with regard to the source of their information. To the present day this does not appear to have been accomplished. The endeavors using objective non-participation observations conducted up until this moment concerned mainly the type of riot that is difficult to observe, namely around festive events. Dutch examples are riots accurring at New Years Eve, Queen's Birthday, "Luilak" and "The Night of Assen" (Buikhuisen, 1965; Cachet and Valkenburgh, 1973; Van Reenen, 1975; Riss-Lambers, 1976; de Vries, 1981).
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Mark Steyn. What is a crime? It's a matter of opinion
All over the United Kingdom, right now, real crimes are being committed: mobiles are being nicked, front doors are being kicked in, bollards are being lobbed through bus shelters - just to name some of the lighter activities that add so much to the gaiety of the nation. None of these is a "priority crime", as you'll know if you've ever endured the bureaucratic time-waster of reporting a burglary.
So what is a "priority crime"? Well, the other day, the author Lynette Burrows went on a BBC Five Live show to talk about the government's new "civil partnerships" and expressed her opinion - politely, no intemperate words - that the adoption of children by homosexuals was "a risk". The following day, Fulham police contacted her to discuss the "homophobic incident".
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A Scotland Yard spokesperson told the Telegraph's Sally Pook that it's "standard policy" for "community safety units" to investigate "homophobic, racist and domestic incidents" because these are all "priority crimes" - even though, in the case of Mrs Burrows, there is (to be boringly legalistic about these things) no crime, as even the zealots of the Yard concede. "It is all about reassuring the community," said the very p.c. Plod to the Telegraph. "All parties have been spoken to by the police. No allegation of crime has been made. A report has been taken but is now closed."
So no crime was committed. Yet Mrs Burrows was "investigated" and a report about the "incident" and her involvement in it is now on a government computer somewhere. Oh, to be sure, the vicious homophobe wasn't dragged off to re-education camp - or more likely, given budgetary constraints, an overcrowded women's prison to be tossed in a cell with a predatory bull-dyke who could teach her the error of her homophobic ways.
But, on balance, that has the merit of at least being more obviously outrageous than the weaselly "community reassurance" approach of the Met. As it is, Lynette Burrows has been investigated by police merely for expressing an opinion. Which is the sort of thing we used to associate with police states. Indeed, it's the defining act of a police state: the arbitrary criminalisation of dissent from state orthodoxy.
Mrs Burrows writes on "children's rights and the family", so I don't know whether she's a member of PEN or the other authors' groups. But it seems unlikely the Hampstead big guns who lined up to defend Salman Rushdie a decade and a half ago will be eager to stage any rallies this time round. But, if the principle is freedom of expression, what's the difference between his apostasy (as the Ayatollah saw it) and Mrs Burrows's apostasy (as Scotland Yard sees it)?
I don't suppose the Tories will be eager to take to the ramparts for Mrs B, either. Every time I hear a Conservative heavyweight these days, they're droning on about how "the public sees us as too white, male, middle-class and heterosexual". Actually, they don't seem terribly heterosexual to me. But, at any rate, defending Lynette Burrows's right to free speech seems unlikely to play well with the party's marketing gurus.
As for the Government, in the Observer on Sunday, Tony Blair wrote a piece almost every bland sentence of which had me spraying my cornflakes all over my civil partner, right from the sub-headline: "The most important freedom is harm from others."
"Freedom from harm" is all very well, "freedom from being offended" is extremely dangerous - a way of extending the already harmful media phenomenon of "libel chill" to every noisy lobby group. If Sir Iqbal Sacranie and co get their way on "religious hatred", every BBC Five Live discussion on Islam will be followed by a call from an aggrieved listener and a visit from the Fulham police. And, for every Lynette Burrows, insisting she'll continue to exercise her right to free speech, there'll be a hundred more who keep their heads down and opt for a quiet life.
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