Measure type: Intervention force

Measure: reaction force

Arrest of a protester in Hamburg

A reaction force is a unit of first responders with the task to react to emergencies in order to minimize impact and restore a normal situation as soon as possible.

Description

A reaction force is the last link in the reaction chain detection-perception-interpretation-formulating action-acting of the comprehensive approach. The essence of deploying a reaction force lies in intervening in an observed incident. This is done by way of first reponders, who by their action minimize impact, restore the situation to normalcy and in general also take actions to facilitate the prosecution, if needed.

Essential conditions

• For a reaction force to be effective, they need to be well aware of the situation; what parties are involved, in what way, what are their motives, goals, backgrounds and means, what has happened and where are the parties located.
• In order to get this awareness, it is essential that the reaction chain is unbroken. As often the links in the reaction chain are managed by different people or organisations, the communication in this chain is of vital essence.
• A timely arrival at the location of the incident is essential to keep the number of options to resolve the situation as open as possible; an incident can escalate very quickly, making gentler interventions inpractical or impossible.

Requirements to the urban environment

The extent to which a reaction force can operate effectively is dependent of:

• The travel time to the incident. A short travel time from the place of deployment of the reaction force to the location of a (potential) incident. traffic management measures such as incident management and Evacuation management are vital for maintaining robustness in travel times to incidents.

The duration and impact of incidents can be minimized by applying proper incident management, which requires among others a good cooperation between the agencies responsible for incident management. Incident management is used to reduce the time to detect and verify an incident occurrence; implement the appropriate response; and safely clear the incident, while managing the affected flow until full capacity is restored.

Effectiveness

The effectiveness of a reaction force against crime lies in two effects:

• the mitigating effect of authority present
• the direct actions undertaken by the reaction force to mitigatethe effects of an incident
• make contributions to the prosecution of crime (gathering evidence and leads and arresting suspects)

As such, it can be effective to all security issues that are susceptible to the presence of authority or the use of violence. These are:

• break and enter
• ram-raiding
• kidnap
• pickpocket
• rob with assault
• snatch theft
• car theft
• physical assault including sexual
• destruction of property
• arson
• grafitti
• verbal abuse, bullying

Economic effectiveness

A reaction force does not only reduce the risk of security threats, but also generates economic impact. Primarily, the economic impact of security measures are the costs of the security measures, but there are also costs and benefits regarding the secondary impact of security measures, such as displacement effects.

Being the first line of defense, public authorities spend annually billions on policing. There exist nevertheless relatively few rigorous studies by economists, political scientists, and criminal justice researchers on the impact of policing (as a security measure). According to Levitt(2004), until the start of this decade, most studies found an insignificant or negative correlation between the number of police forces and criminal offences. This is due to the fact that these studies failed to account for the fact that policing does not only influences crime, but also the amount of crime influences the amount of policing. Recent studies, therefore, conclude that more police is associated with reductions in crime. A recent study by the London School of Economics (2008), for example, concludes that police patrols are highly effective for cutting crime. Moreover, Levitt (2004) concludes that based on a crude approximation, the effectiveness of policing from a cost-benefit perspective is “attractive”. Both reports, however, do not claim that more policing should be the sole focus to reduce crime.

Side effects

Side effects of deploying an action force can be:

• the resulting publicity can detoriate the status of a neighbourhood, which can attrack more crime
• the use of violence can give a bad reputation to the local authorities
• the use of violence can in itself also cause damage and injuries
• the deployment can lead to feelings of victimization on the side of the affected public
• The deployment of a reaction force is a releatively expensive measure, as it needs to be maintaned at all times in order to be deployable when needed

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