Public Order TIG - February meeting in Athens

ENLETS’ Public Order Technology Interest Group met in Athens as part of the i-LEAD Final Conference and TIG Meeting between the 15^th-17^th February 2023.

The group’s meeting was extremely productive, and the team covered many topics in what was a brilliant occasion to address both specific public order topics, as well as the cross-cutting ‘Drone’ element relevant to sister TIGs – Counter UAS and Operational Centres.

Highlights from the gathering:

1. The exchange of experiences delivered through Case Studies provides a unique opportunity to learn about the realities, strategies, tactics and – critically – the individual technologies supporting police operations across Europe.
2. Listening and learning about colleagues’ work is an essential part of the TIGs’ activities. The goal is not to copy solutions directly but adapt them to country-specific conditions through approaches that help maximise a law enforcement agency’s potential – leveraging the resources and technologies available.
3. Connecting with sister TIGs is a powerful tool to cross-fertilise and diversify perspectives from Law Enforcement. Working with the Counter-UAS and Operational Centres TIG, we realised that there are many common topics and issues. This collective knowledge provides an enormously powerful group of practitioners learning from each other (see the example of a joint session with “eye from heaven“)
4. The Public Order group will leverage the results of both the C-UAS and Operational Centres TIGs, continuing to connect periodically to share good practices and germinate new ideas that can support each respective TIG.

8 Presentations, 12 Centuries worth of experience.

A Selection of the points covered concerning police activities related to public safety:

• Football Match case study presentation – Zurich Police (Switzerland),
• Ski Jumping Planica competition case study presentation – Ljubljana (Slovenia),
• Operation London Bridge case study presentation (UK),
• Police Crisis operations simulator in PA Szczytno – (Poland),
• Finish Independence day in Helsinki case study presentation (Finland),
• Pope’s visit to Bratislava case study presentation -(Slovakia),
• Protests in Brussels – (Belgium),
• XR Protest case study presentation from The Hague (The Netherlands)

The social programme and opportunity to visit the beautiful city of Athens and the i-Lead end conference provided the icing on the cake for a wonderful event and that helped us deliver on several points imperative to the TIG – exchange best practices, understand the current landscape across Europe and explore opportunities for technologies that can support police operations.

We have also started the process of planning the next face-to-face Public Order TIG meeting combined with an Industry Day –  in April in Poland.

If you want to join the TIG and contribute to similar events and activities, please ‘Join ENLETS’.