Fan stupidity
Posted by: Jim Lawson on 22 October 2004
A person has died as a result of fan stupidity in Boston after the big win. Why has it become a predictable part of sports that big victories and big defeats are followed with rioting?
Posted on: 23 October 2004 by J.N.
"Jeux sans frontieres".
'Games without frontiers, war without tears' as Peter Gabriel so eloquently put it.
Supporting one's 'tribe' brings out the bestial instincts in man. A primaeval desire to protect one's own tribe and fight the opposition.
Even chanting at football matches is verbally aggressive. I find it all a bit sad.
Fascinating, imperfect species aren't we?
'Games without frontiers, war without tears' as Peter Gabriel so eloquently put it.
Supporting one's 'tribe' brings out the bestial instincts in man. A primaeval desire to protect one's own tribe and fight the opposition.
Even chanting at football matches is verbally aggressive. I find it all a bit sad.
Fascinating, imperfect species aren't we?
Posted on: 23 October 2004 by Mekon
Banning alcohol sounds like a good first step, but drunken crowds do not necessarily riot. I think the work research on crowd behaviour using social identity theory is interesting. Researchers analysed a bunch of riots (St Pauls, the poll tax riots, and the trouble at italia '90, among others), and (roughly) they conclude that it is only when the (in these cases) police treat the crowd as a homogenous unit, rather than targetting those seeking to incite violence, that major public order disturbance occurs.
From my limited reading of the events in Boston, as girl was killed when a police officer indiscriminately fired a projectile into a crowd after someone threw a bottle at a mounted police officer.
Having seen my wife and sister both smacked in the face by an officer with a riot shield, I don't have an awful lot of faith in normal police tactics for handling crowds.
Sadly, I think those in charge do know how to handle crowds, but the tabloid outcry when isolated groups get away with small scale disturbances (like the targetting of a McDonalds branch a few years back - when, so I have heard, a social identity researcher had been employed to advise the police in advance of the protest) is considered too high a price to pay to avoid widespread disorder.
From my limited reading of the events in Boston, as girl was killed when a police officer indiscriminately fired a projectile into a crowd after someone threw a bottle at a mounted police officer.
Having seen my wife and sister both smacked in the face by an officer with a riot shield, I don't have an awful lot of faith in normal police tactics for handling crowds.
Sadly, I think those in charge do know how to handle crowds, but the tabloid outcry when isolated groups get away with small scale disturbances (like the targetting of a McDonalds branch a few years back - when, so I have heard, a social identity researcher had been employed to advise the police in advance of the protest) is considered too high a price to pay to avoid widespread disorder.