Numbers on Trident/Iran/Iraq demo

[detective-boy]

Even if they took their shoes and socks off, each copper would still only be able to count 20 protestors so it's no surprise police estimates are always very low...

24 in some cases ...

 

[detective-boy]

And detective boy if you really think the police aren't political you're living in cloud cuckoo land.

That's not what I have said, I've regularly posed on the bad things which have flowed from the political deployment of police since the days of Thatcher and the miners - I've only been commenting on their approach to estimated numbers. My experience is that they are routinely estimated by public order planning unit and passed to Press Bureau as a matter of course, with no passing through the prism of politicised senior management.

Even if they were, they would not, in my view, risk being exposed as frauds because it is hardly unlikely that some other sad fuck would count the numbers and then claim they were very different. The numbers released are as counted by those who plan the policing of these things.

Numbers referred to (or revised) days later, by senior officers, now that may well be a different matter.

 

[cockneyrebel]

But as said there is no way anyone could have estimated 10,000 on that march with out having an agenda or being totally incompetent, it's totally inconceivable. At any one point there were far more people than that in Trafalgar Square and for over an hour people were flowing in and out.

 

[detective-boy]

At any one point there were far more people than that in Trafalgar Square and for over an hour people were flowing in and out.

What were the criteria accompanying the 10,000 estimate? Was it as at a certain time? Or was it meant to be a total figure?

 

[Groucho]

What were the criteria accompanying the 10,000 estimate? Was it as at a certain time? Or was it meant to be a total figure?

The police said 2000. Then they said 3000. They finally upped the estimate to 10,000 total. Not at a certain time but the total of protesters. It is complete and utter bollocks, a made up figure designed to downplay the impact and effectiveness and give reason for press and media to ignore it. A very political manipulation of the truth by the same force that significantly overestimated the pro-fox hunting countryside alliance demo.

 

[detective-boy]

The police said 2000. Then they said 3000. They finally upped the estimate to 10,000 total. Not at a certain time but the total of protesters.

My point was "Have you seen the actual media release?", not someone's hearsay account of it.