LONGARE, Italy -- How many times on television has one seen a demonstration, or protest with rioters throwing bricks, bottles and other objects against police, military or other security forces?
Being able to react to a crowd, or riots with suitable appropriate force making sure to manage a potential escalation of disorders are the topics of a course called "Crowd and Riot Control Awareness in NATO Operations" coordinated by NATO Stability Policing Center of Excellence (SPCOE).
"The CRC course is engineered to provide the basic knowledge and the foundation skills for the planning and the organization of Crowd and Riot Control operations to senior officers who can be assigned as commanders, advisors or planners in NATO or non-NATO operations," said Carabinieri Maj. Par. Emanuele Barbieri, NATO SPCOE Training Development and Delivery Section Staff officer, who works at the Lt. Gen. Chinotto Compound in downtown Vicenza.
In his role, Barbieri contributes to the NATO SPCOE training course planning process, suggests improvements, and participates in the different stages of the main NATO exercises.
Barbieri explained that the vision of their center is: to operate as a prime mover to increase contribution to alliance stability and reconstruction efforts in crisis management scenarios; provide a unique capability to NATO and nations to fill the gaps in the area of Stability Policing (SP), be an internationally recognized focal point and a hub of expertise for a Community of Interest (COI) in the field of SP and to highly contribute to the NATO strategic concept in such area.
The second edition of the CRC was held Oct. 24-28 at Longare training area. Some 32 students from 11 nations including 11 from Italy, five from Poland, five from Czech Republic, two from Turkey, Spain and Hungary, one from Egypt, France, Germany, Norway, and one American attended the event.
Lecturers came from six different nations including Holland, Poland, Romania, Spain, Turkey and Italy.
The NATO SPCOE created and conducts the course that was designed, developed and revised by CRC experts, approved by the SP Required Authority and certified as 'selected' course by Allied Command Transformation.
Additionally, Barbieri said that the course is 70 percent theoretical and 30 percent practical.
"The course, which aims at making the attendees aware of the principal aspects of CRC, mainly targets an audience from the Army, the Navy and the Air Force rather than the gendarmerie-type Forces or the MPs," he said.
He added that the last portion of the five-day course focuses on an extremely realistic live exercise where officers are directly involved in every step of the riot-control tactics to better understand the physical and psychological dimensions of this activity.
"In the second iteration of this training we had the first participation of a U.S. attendee. However, it was not the first time we had American attendees. In fact, in October, 11 U.S. students attended our "Preserving Crime Scene" course.
One of June's course attendees was Lt. Col. Michele Testa, Italian Army, USARAF G-3 Branch, who started the cooperation with NSPCOE staff right after that.
I attended their first course, and it confirmed my feeling that crowd and riot control capability should be part of the individual military background," said Testa.
"The intent with SPCOE was to tailor their class and the practical training on NATO Stability and Policing Interoperability training be suitable for the Army operations as well, and not only dedicated to MPs: this was my contribution to the great comrades working at SPCOE, who made a successful job of it," he added.
For the October course, Testa promoted Army participation, especially for U.S. service members.
"Soldiers can be involved in unexploded ordnance, improvised explosive device or chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear event while patrolling, surveilling areas and escorting convoys; there is the same probability of being involved in a crowd/riots," Testa said. He also pointed out that the course introduces fundamentals such as how to identify some individual and group behavior, aggregating reasons and type of crowds.
Italian Army Maj. Alfonso Minella, who works on Caserma Ederle as the Italian liaison officer, had the chance to participate in the October CRC awareness course and said, "It was very formative for my official preparation in NATO contests. The goal was to enhance the general knowledge about stability policing and to enable involved military and civil authorities to appropriate use of SP assets in different missions and scenarios."
There will be two CRC courses in 2017.
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