The challenges of the 21st century and modern methods for crowd control by the police – international practice and domestic reality

The challenges of the 21st century and modern methods for crowd control by the police – international practice and domestic reality

The Hungarian police are not yet prepared for the info-communications challenges of the 21st century – this has been revealed in an international project which focuses on elaborating new methods for dealing with demonstrations by the police. The staff of the Ombudsman have been actively participating in the GODIAC project for two years already, and they are making use of newly acquired information for studying demonstrations in Hungary.

The staff of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights are currently analysing the circumstances of the handling of four demonstrations by the police. They are conducting inquiries into the application of the law by the police in the following cases: the "occupation of offices" by activists at the mayor's office in Józsefváros, the demonstration on 23 December 2011 in Kossuth square, the hunger strike in front of the MTVA building and the demonstrations outside the Opera House on 2 January 2012. Máté Szabó is continuing the series of inquiries he was requested to do by László Sólyom, former President of the Republic, when he nominated Máté Szabó, a researcher of demonstrations and protest actions, for the office of Ombudsman in 2007. In 2008 the Ombudsman started a project examining the enforcement of the right of assembly, and ever since he and his staff have been regularly dealing, both on the basis of complaints and of ex officio inquiries, with the fundamental rights problems of the police handling of demonstrations and other mass events.

Demonstrations are more and more often crossing national boundaries, whilst demonstration tactics are also changing and developing. When demonstrations become international, police expertise in the matter must also become international. It is a challenge all over Europe that, on the one hand, the police have to guarantee security, but that on the other hand they also have to ensure that citizens can freely exercise their rights. It is for supporting this aim that the GODIAC project was set up with the participation of 20 partner organisations from 11 countries; the partner organisations include law enforcement organs, research and education institutions, as well as National Police Headquarters and the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights. One of the most important aims of the GODIAC project is to find out how the new info-communications technology can be used to establish a constructive dialogue or "law and order protection partnership" between the police and the demonstrators, who are also primarily building networks in the virtual space, in order to prevent the degeneration of demonstrations and offences against law and order.  

At the latest conference in Sweden, where the developments and results were summarised, one of the topics concerned a new phenomenon of 21^st century mass demonstrations: the fact that many such events are organised by using the social networks on the internet. Consequently, the police must be able to communicate effectively on such sites, like Facebook or Twitter, with the organisers of mass demonstrations organised on the internet. Such methods are not yet used by the Hungarian police, and the experience gathered in the GODIAC project shows that domestic police practice is not aware of the possibilities of using these social networks for transmitting messages.  For example the police of London, the Metropolitan Police, actively communicate on the social networks even during the events and they have almost 1600 comments on Twitter. As opposed to this, the user called ‘Hungarian Police' has not made more than 14 comments, the last of which in February 2010 – are we again falling behind Europe?