How Police Handle Arrests in Central London March Crowds

Put them in a vehicle and get them to the custody suite.

So it is difficult if, if you're, as you see there, in the, in the-- bang in the middle of, of that group of people, and something happens, you need to step in, you then got to get yourself somewhere where a police vehicle can get to,

which isn't, isn't difficult in the middle.

And what we've got today, two big marches, so you've got a huge part of Central London that's now, that's now shut off.

So you could find yourself between the middle of the two and nowhere for you and your prisoner to go to. So it, it has to be like a, um, a, quite a definite decision, and we've got to step in at this point, at this time, to take that person out of the crowd.

But 11 arrests so far, um, huge crowds already, as we can see, going right the way back along.

Um, stewards at the front. The stewards will manage the crowd.

Now, if operationally, if there were a skirmish that broke out, I'm just speaking hypothetically here- Mm-hmm.

-in, in the middle of this- Yeah. -of this, uh, big street here, of this big throng of people, how would police deal with that? You go in.

You have to go, but you would go in almost with your, your, your team.

But how do you-- Other than, um, so you're, you're looking at it from-- I mean, we're showing people aerial pictures here- Yeah, absolutely.

-from the helicopter. Um, just talk us through how police are getting their information.

From the ground level, if you're standing at one of these, of these sort of-- this is on the, on the road junctions there, and that's, that's the bottom of the Aldwych.

So coming along the Strand now, as I mentioned earlier, Lyceum Theatre is just up, up on the side there.

Coming down the Strand towards Trafalgar Square, Waterloo Bridge behind them, so a significant number of people.

If some sort of confrontation or fight starts in the middle of the group, then ordinarily, you, you're just aware of, like, raised voices and people moving away.

So you're aware there's like a fracas going on in the crowd, so you try and get a, a, a position of elevation so you can see into the crowd.