Up Close and Personal – The Interplay between Information Technology and Human Agency in the Policing of the 2011 Sheffield Anti-Lib Dem Protest

Abstract

This chapter constitutes a case study of South Yorkshire Police’s (SYP’s) handling of a protest outside the Sheffield City Hall venue of a Liberal Democrat party conference on 11-12 March 2011. The demonstration occurred in the wake of a number of high-profile official reports advocating a more permissive approach to protest policing. The chapter describes and analyses two particular aspects of SYP’s ‘Operation Obelisk’: the use of social media (such as Twitter and Facebook) to keep the general public informed of ongoing or impending police activities as part of a ‘no surprises’ approach; and the deployment of a Police Liaison Team, part of whose responsibility was to complement CCTV surveillance by feeding information on the mood and activities of the crowd to a remote command cell. The study concludes that such technological innovations have a vital role to play in complementing – and moderating the negative impact of – more established methods of policing political protest.