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How the police estimate crowd sizes

Slarti | 29.08.2007 18:16 | Anti-militarism | Other Press | Repression | London | World

Interesting article on the BBC about how the police lie about crowd sizes on demos. Prompted by the 60,000 / 10,000 disparity between organisers and police estimates for the size of the Stop the War demo in Feb, the beeb asked the Met how they came up with their figure.

Turns out their "10,000" was actually 12,000 and was actually an estimate of the maximum number of people in Trafalgar Square at any one time, not the size of the demo at all. And it was estimated by one person, based on the licencing capacity of the square. No sampling. No computer analysis of aerial photos. No thought that the licencing capacity might be based on health and safety rules, number of exits, not the number of people who will actually fit in the square.

The story is at  http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2007/08/how_many_there.html

Slarti
- Homepage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2007/08/how_many_there.html

Comments

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none

29.08.2007 19:34

What idiots.

me

"Turns out their "10,000" was actually 12,000"

29.08.2007 22:20

No there wasn't.

Dr Who

No dissent we are British.

30.08.2007 05:49

It should be obvious to anyone that one of the main roles of the police is to minimise political dissent. If they they dared to revealed its true size in this sham democracy that could incite even more unrest, especially among the 21% of the electorate who actually supported the government at the last election.

Itsme