CROWD CONTROL

Labor shortages, inexperienced staff members and enthusiastic post-pandemic crowds have made safety planning more critical than ever. Three experts weigh in on what’s next.

By Michael Popke

THE DEATHS OF 10 FANS from compression asphyxia at November’s Astroworld music festival in Houston sparked questions that — almost six months later — had yet to be answered.

“Compressive asphyxia in a crowd is something that has happened before; that is a hazard of certain general admission events,” says Steven A. Adelman of Adelman Law Group, a sports and entertainment legal firm based in Scottsdale, Ariz. “Why did it happen at Astroworld? We just don’t know yet. The evidence is not available. But hopefully, industry professionals are asking themselves a series of sophisticated questions that really drill down to this: What does Astroworld tell me about my events?” Adelman, who also is vice president of the Event Safety Alliance and deputy chair of the Global Crowd Management Alliance, points to a pair of crowd-related tragedies in Yaoundé, Cameroon, both of which happened on back-to-back days in January 2022, as more immediate “teachable moments.”

At Liv’s Nightclub in the Central African country’s capital city, at least 17 people were killed Jan. 23 when fireworks launched inside the venue reportedly ignited the ceiling and caused a stampede as patrons panicked. The next day, Jan. 24, at least eight people were killed and 38 injured in another stampede — this one outside of Yaoundé’s Olembé Stadium, which was hosting an Africa Cup of Nations soccer match. According to news reports, adults and children were trampled as fans squeezed through a narrow entrance gate.

Adelman compares the soccer stadium stampede to the one outside Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum in 1979, triggered when a rush of concert-goers eager to see The Who pushed toward the arena’s only unlocked pair of doors. “Communication within the venue is vital,” he says. “In both instances, the mass of people outside the gates earlier than anticipated should have led operations staff to open at least some gates or doors early to relieve the pressure upon ingress. Also, communication from the venue to attendees [is vital], so there is less urgency to race in all at once.”

Meanwhile, the Liv’s Nightclub tragedy is eerily similar to the 2003 Station nightclub fire in Warwick, R.I., when flames from pyrotechnics set off at the beginning of a rock concert ignited acoustic foam in the walls and ceiling. Terror ensued as fans struggled to escape and bottlenecked at the club’s main entrance; 100 people died and more than 200 were injured.

“The lessons here are: Don’t light pyrotechnics indoors in a low-ceiling building with lousy fire suppression,” Adelman says. “Make sure that the space has good exit signage and open means of egress. Make sure that security doesn’t block certain exits because they’re reserved for VIPs or band members. Those lessons need to keep being learned.”

EVERY DAY A TRAINING DAY

Crowd safety planning is at a critical juncture right now. The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated many challenges that previously existed, with staffing issues looming largest. “The biggest threat that event operators are facing right now is the labor shortage — having enough people to safely protect these events and having a workforce that is trained to do what’s needed to safely manage the events,” says Steve Georgas, chief security officer for the Chicago-based restaurant and hospitality company Levy and retired deputy chief of the Chicago Police Department. “There’s always been a somewhat transitional workforce in the security space, but that labor is gone right now, and everyone is struggling to find it. It’s not uncommon for events to be working well short of normal on the security and ushering sides.”

“The biggest threat that event operators are facing right now is the labor shortage.”

STEVE GEORGAS

Many of those staff members have less training and experience, which means they also have less judgment in unfamiliar situations, while even veteran crowd safety personnel could still be rusty if they haven’t worked many events since early 2020.

“Good operators are going to admit they have a problem and then ask themselves what they can do to mitigate their risk,” Georgas says. He suggests greater collaboration with state and local authorities who are assisting with public safety at specific events or permitting those events. Together, critical staffing decisions can be made. “You might say, ‘Hey, normally we have eight gates so we’re making sure we get people from all directions. But we’re going to have to narrow that down to only four gates, because we can’t safely staff eight gates,’” Georgas says. “To make the same crowd flow work on four gates instead of eight, you might need to open gates earlier to get people inside earlier, which helps with the gate crush from crowds coming at the last minute.”

“You could have a very secure environment, with no external threat, but you can still have serious crowd problems within your site.”

DR. G. KEITH STILL

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Other options include installing more portable cameras at gates, on walkways, and in parking lots, which would allow officials to properly gauge the crowd and be nimble with moving staff around to help manage that crowd. “You also might have to adjust attendance expectations,” Georgas adds. “If you are projecting 40,000 people but from a staffing perspective are not going to be able to manage that crowd, only sell 30,000 tickets. These are the kinds of discussions I’m assuming most operators are having while they’re trying to figure out the labor market.” Additionally, Georgas suggests utilizing supervisory staff members from other departments, if necessary.

“Can you tap into your concessions service supervisors and make them evacuation captains to fill the void?” he asked. “They should be part of your ongoing emergency action plan, anyway. But if you’re going to do that, make sure you’re providing the training that’s necessary so they can be successful. Explain their duties and responsibilities, and make sure those people are comfortable. In the end, everybody plays a role in safety and security.” Indeed, training should remain a top priority — and not just via such organizations as the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security (NCS4). Consider daily interactions with crowd safety employees an opportunity for a quick pop quiz. “It takes me 30 seconds to ask a simple question: ‘If we need to evacuate, what are you supposed to do?’” Georgas says. “If that person knows the answer, great. Reinforce that positive behavior. If they don’t know, you’ve found a hole in your plan, and you can take another couple minutes to fix it. We’ve got to go to the next level every day. Every day is a training day, and every conversation can be a training conversation.”

AN EYE-OPENING MOMENT

Crowd-management issues often can get slotted under the umbrella term “security,” but that’s not accurate, points out Dr. G. Keith Still, a visiting professor of crowd science at England’s University of Suffolk, who has written two textbooks on crowd safety (including Applied Crowd Science, published earlier this year by Routledge). He also teaches the NCS4 Fundamentals of Crowd Safety Level 3 qualification course and other online courses. Security refers to hardening access to prevent malicious intent, while safety involves protecting people against negligence or unsafe practices, such as allowing too many people into a confined space, not regulating or monitoring crowds, or failing to identify such obstacles as trip hazards.

“You could have a very secure environment, with no external threat, but you can still have serious crowd problems within your site,” Still says, adding that individuals in his classes are both traditional students interested in crowd management as a career, as well as professionals already in the field — from venue operators to first responders. “When I define the differences between security and safety in one of the modules, it’s usually an eye-opening moment.”

Still, who this year plans to add more course offerings to the crowd risk analysis programs he hosts on his website, claims that even well-trained professionals can become complacent.

“We find people that run events and have not had an incident or a fatality, or they’ve had a close call or a near-miss, but they think, ‘We’re good.’ That’s fundamentally the underlying risk attitude that we’re trying to address,” Still says. “It’s called conditional bias. It’s like these event operators are driving while using their mobile phones. They feel reasonably confident because they’ve never had an accident.” Still likes to tell the story of a senior police official who joined the control team at the original Wembley Stadium, where Still worked at the time.

“He had a tactic that had worked well at another stadium and said, ‘I know what I’m doing, because I’ve used this particular tactic for years,’” Still remembers. “He tried that tactic at Wembley, and everybody in the control room suddenly realized thousands of lives were at risk. So that’s where experience in one environment does not map onto another, and that’s what we teach. I can’t give you the experience of standing in a control room making decisions, but I can give you the knowledge and the theory so you can make the right decisions when you’re in that position.” Another factor that should be top of mind in planning discussions is the return of large crowds for everything from marathons to concerts and sporting events after two years of smaller (or even no) gatherings. Still warns that during the re-normalization phase, some attendees no doubt will over-zealously celebrate the lifting of facemask restrictions, while others might become contentious with added-safety protocols still in place, such as cashless transactions.

“With budget constraints, coupled with inexperience, coupled with events restarting and enthusiastic crowds — you can see that there are challenges ahead,” Still says. “And you need to factor that environment into your overall safety planning. I’m excited that things are starting again, but I’m also very cautious. We don’t want to rush into an event that isn’t appropriately staffed or hasn’t got the right professionalism behind the planning.” l

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How Incentives to Change Crowd Behavior Have Often Failed When It Comes to Fans Rushing the Field of Play

BY GIL FRIED Professor, University of West Florida

WAY BACK IN 2004, the Southeastern Conference (SEC) passed rules fining teams when their fans stormed the field. It was hoped that these fines would change fan behavior. It was assumed that schools would try to prevent or minimize the likelihood of fan crowd rushes to avoid having to pay a fine. Crowds rushing the field were a concern not just for fans possibly injuring themselves, but also for players, coaches, officials and others who could be injured. As would be expected, the fines did not work as they were hoped. When crowds rushed the field, instead of the schools paying their own money, crowd funding was used to raise money so the universities would not need to pay out of their own pockets. As is normally seen with crowds, other conferences joined the bandwagon, and then various conferences adopted similar rules and penalties. These penalties were increased by the SEC during the 2015 SEC Spring Meetings and are supposed to be imposed for violations in all sports sponsored by the Conference. Institutional penalties range from $50,000 for a first offense to fines of up to $100,000 for a second offense and up to $250,000 for third and subsequent offenses.

Recently, both the Big 12 Conference and the Southeastern Conference fined member institutions for failing to control crowds at basketball games. The University of Texas was fined by the Big 12 Conference this season after fans stormed the court after a victory against the University of Kansas. The conference specifically examined the university’s court storming plan and how it did not provide adequate protections to safeguard visiting team personnel.

Similarly, the SEC announced a fine against the University of Arkansas for a violation of the league’s “access to competition area” policy when Arkansas fans stormed the court after an early February win against Auburn University. This was not Arkansas’ first brush with the conference and violating this rule. The university was fined $250,000 for a third offense, as Arkansas was fined earlier this past academic year for a violation following its football game against Texas.

These fines, and how frequently they occur and how frequently fans (primarily students) rush fields and courts, clearly show that these penalties do not work. That led me to explore what might motivate people to change their behavior. This is important because over the last 20 years we have seen an uptick in strategies such as fan codes of conduct, banning fans from venues, increased security presence, increased use of technology, and other strategies to improve crowd behavior. Thus, what works? An article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives titled, “When and Why Incentives (Don’t) Work to Modify Behavior” (Uri Gneezy, Stephan Meier, and Pedro Rey-Biel) published in 2011 (doi=10.1257/jep.25.4.191) examined whether incentives to pay students to receive better grades or encourage them to read actually worked. Sometimes incentives will do their job and encourage students to improve their performance. Other times the incentive will do the exact opposite and discourage strong performance. As an example, offering incentives for improved academic performance may signal that achieving a specific goal is difficult, that the task is not attractive, or the student is not a strong student, and they need a reward to do well. Furthermore, once the motivation is removed, will there be interest in continuing to do well academically? Sometimes there was short-term success from incentives, and at other times, the long-term change was not seen for years. This is where intrinsic and extrinsic motivation both need to be

explored to help determine what might motivate someone. The same holds true for punishment and what might motivate someone to stop a certain behavior.

Red light cameras are a good example. These cameras often provide for significant fines if a driver runs through a red light. Instead of slowing down traffic and reducing the number of injuries, these cameras often caused more speeding and more accidents with people trying to get through a light as fast as possible or to slam on breaks to avoid a fine, thus resulting in an accident. This is an example of the law of unintended consequences.

One interesting study highlighted the potential backfiring of penalties. In one experiment, an Israeli daycare began charging parents a small fine for arriving late. The result was an increase in the number of late pick-ups even in the short run. The parents did not initially know how important it was to arrive on time. When the parents registered for the daycare, they did not have a penalty for arriving late. The relatively small fine signaled that arriving late was not very important. Thus, parents took to arriving later and paying the fine. The question is does a fine work to change behavior? There are numerous studies that examined the benefits of exercise, yet many people do not get enough exercise. Similarly, there are numerous studies that people know the harm caused by smoking (or alcohol or other possible vices), yet people often continue and justify their behavior for various reasons.

So, what does this mean to fines for crowd rushes? The first thing to realize is that there is a tangible benefit for a behaved crowd, and that is a safer environment. Many fans do not think anything will happen to them. Thus, public service announcements (PSAs) from fans who have been seriously injured could be a benefit. Furthermore, PSAs played throughout the game on scoreboards can be effective if the message is from peers, star athletes and head coaches. Students especially might change their behavior if they realize that they will be prosecuted or subject to prosecution under a school’s codes of conduct – which could include being expelled from a university.

The reason why one rarely sees professional sport field/court incursions is that the penalty would be significant and harsh. When schools are fined, the students do not see the harm to themselves. If students were to be personally fined or otherwise punished, they might change their behavior. I am not trying to be a stick in the mud, and as the saying goes, it is all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Well people have been hurt, and there will be more harm in the future until rules/policies are changed.

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