Policing the Tour de France in London

5 July 2007 by Rod McLaren

There’s an interesting article on policing the London stages of 2007’s Tour de France in Pro Cycling’s Official programme, though the article itself isn’t online.

“Basically we’re creating a sterile corridor for the French to take their race through. [...] when we first went to see how things are done at the Tour, we were surprised to see the riders just mixing with the crowds. There are clearly cultural differences in policing styles, so we’re aware we mustn’t “over-police” the event, otherwise it will lose its charm.”

The prologue and first stage will be orchestrated from the Met’s Special Operations Room in Lambeth (the largest in the world apparently, with access to 10,000+ cctv cameras “as well as the possibility of access to up to 60,000 local authority cameras”).

60 officers will man the “pods” – separate sections that deal with certain areas of the Tour de France’s route during its time in Britain. There will be 60-70 cameras covering the 7.9km prologue course alone. “Each pod has three officers, a dispatchers, a writer and a controller.”

More on cross-border cooperation and the need to remain sensitive to differing cultural expectations on the part of the Tour organisation, the riders and French police:

we wanted to use barriers with larger “feet”, which we feel are safer with the crowd numbers expected, but the riders are all used to the smaller feet on the race’s own barriers. [...] We’re more bound by health and safety in the UK; we’re very sterile over here compared to the French police. [...] France’s Garde Republicaine have permission to be on the whole race, but they will be leaving their weapons behind in Calais [as they get on the ferry?!] And all backup vehicles and the race’s caravane are under the French police’s jurisdiction, but they have no powers of arrest, of course, so our own officers will be accompanying them, in case they’re needed.”

2,000 police officers are expected to be present on the ground. (Oh how I wish we’d had the deal and the time to provide them with an application that provided critical field operations information and messaging as well as split times for Millar and Wiggins ...)

Do touch interfaces increase user expectations? That soft, messy people factor