The video footage of the con­flict be­tween the po­lice and sec­tions of the Panora­ma crowd on Sun­day seemed a bit un­re­al at times, as if it were not hap­pen­ing here but in some state where po­lice have the li­cence to ill-treat cit­i­zens. Po­lice beat­ing peo­ple with ba­tons and a cou­ple go­ing out of their way to man­han­dle mem­bers of the pub­lic sure­ly car­ried ac­cept­able polic­ing meth­ods to an ex­treme. Now this is said while recog­nis­ing that polic­ing an event such as the Panora­ma se­mi-fi­nals is no stroll in the park. It calls for tough and de­ci­sive ac­tion, but not the use of what many peo­ple are call­ing "ex­ces­sive force." In par­tic­u­lar, the ac­tions of one of­fi­cer, seen very clear­ly on video fol­low­ing a pa­tron in­to the crowd, the lat­ter hav­ing been pushed back, and con­tin­u­ing to use his fist to in­flict fur­ther blows on the civil­ian re­al­ly pushed the polic­ing meth­ods over the bor­der­line. More­over, that is what was cap­tured by the alert cam­era crew on hand, but there could very well have been more of the same which was not shot by the cam­era.

If chair­man of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty, Gillian Lucky, has not seen the video shown on tele­vi­sion and the raw footage not shown, she must do so im­me­di­ate­ly by mak­ing a re­quest for copies. The au­thor­i­ty's mem­bers can then ex­am­ine and re-ex­am­ine in mi­cro­scop­ic de­tail what tran­spired and so not be put in a po­si­tion to de­pend on what the of­fi­cers will say. The po­lice have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for pub­lic safe­ty in such sit­u­a­tions, but they must not seek to car­ry out that job by tak­ing ad­van­tage of cit­i­zens and oth­ers. Such be­hav­iour can­not be con­doned in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety. But as has been re­port­ed, the ug­ly in­ci­dent on­ly arose be­cause of the con­fu­sion and pos­si­ble over-sell­ing of tick­ets for pa­trons of the North Stand to move freely be­tween that fa­cil­i­ty and the par­ty area called "The Greens." Re­ports are that the par­ty area be­came over­crowd­ed and pa­trons who had paid for the right to be there and in the North Stand got high­ly in­censed when they were told they could not en­joy both fa­cil­i­ties; and un­der­stand­ably so.

With al­co­hol flow­ing, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of miss­ing their favourite bands and/or miss­ing out on a choice piece of par­ty­ing, the pa­trons must have been ter­ri­bly up­set when of­fi­cials be­gan to cur­tail their free­dom to move back and forth. When you then fac­tor in­to that po­lice of­fi­cers push­ing and beat­ing as a means of re­strain­ing them, it is easy to see how things could get out of hand. On the part of the po­lice of­fi­cers faced with re­strain­ing the rage that would have built up, the point made by pres­i­dent of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion, Sgt Anand Rame­sar, that the pop­u­la­tion must look sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly on of­fi­cers con­front­ed by such crowd anger, is well tak­en.

How­ev­er, Car­ni­val crowds, the polic­ing of Panora­ma and the kind of be­hav­iours ex­hib­it­ed on Sun­day did not start yes­ter­day. This is not the first year that po­lice of­fi­cers have faced the chal­lenges of con­trol­ling a large crowd in the Sa­van­nah. If of­fi­cers have not been prop­er­ly trained to man­age such sit­u­a­tions, whose fault is it? Has the as­so­ci­a­tion pe­ti­tioned for such train­ing for its mem­bers over the decades of stag­ing Car­ni­val shows? It is re­al­ly in­con­ceiv­able for the as­so­ci­a­tion to ex­cuse what ap­peared to be in­ap­pro­pri­ate polic­ing meth­ods on the ba­sis of lack of train­ing in the specifics of Panora­ma. It is a well-known sit­u­a­tion: thou­sands of peo­ple want to en­joy them­selves both to par­ty­ing and to hear pan. What is more, they do so in the process of con­sum­ing large quan­ti­ties of al­co­hol. These are facts of life, they hap­pen every year and the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices should have been ready to ad­dress an in­ci­dent like the one that took place on Sun­day.