6.7 Crowd Control, Protest Response & C.R.S. 24-31-905 Restrictions

Crowd Control, Protest Response & C.R.S. 24-31-905 Restrictions

Unit V.I — Crowd Control (6 required hours) carries three times the hours of most Patrol Procedures sub-topics, and for good reason: Colorado's protest-response law was rewritten by SB 20-217 after the 2020 demonstrations, and the resulting statute, C.R.S. 24-31-905, imposes prohibitions found in few other states. Recruits are tested on the statute, not on generic crowd-control theory.

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1. The First Amendment Baseline

Protest is protected expression. Officers may regulate the time, place and manner of expression only through restrictions that are:

1. Content neutral — the rule cannot depend on the message;
2. Narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest; and
3. Leaving ample alternative channels for the communication.

Officers may not disperse a crowd because its message is offensive, may not selectively enforce a permit or noise ordinance against one viewpoint, and may not order people to stop recording police in public. That last point is settled: recording officers performing their duties in public is protected First Amendment activity.

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2. Colorado's Statutory Restrictions — C.R.S. 24-31-905

+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  PROHIBITED LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTION IN RESPONSE TO PROTESTS                 |
|  C.R.S. 24-31-905 — binds the agency and anyone acting on its behalf       |
|                                                                           |
|  1. NO kinetic impact projectile or other non- or less-lethal projectile   |
|     discharged INDISCRIMINATELY INTO A CROWD.                             |
|                                                                           |
|  2. NO kinetic impact projectile TARGETED AT THE HEAD, PELVIS OR BACK.    |
|                                                                           |
|  3. NO chemical agent (pepper spray, tear gas) to disperse a protest or    |
|     demonstration UNLESS officers first issue an ORDER TO DISPERSE that    |
|     is CLEAR and REPEATED, and allow SUFFICIENT TIME and an unobstructed   |
|     EGRESS ROUTE for the crowd to comply.                                 |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+

The practical consequences run deep. A 40mm launcher operator must have an identified individual committing an identified act and must aim at approved target areas — never head, pelvis or back. "Skip-firing" into a crowd and "area saturation" with chemical munitions are prohibited by statute, not just by policy. And the dispersal order is now a legal precondition, so its wording, its audibility, its repetition, and the egress route must all be documented and, in practice, captured on body-worn camera.

Duty to intervene applies here explicitly. C.R.S. 18-8-802(1.5)(a) requires an on-duty officer to intervene to stop another officer's excessive force "in the process of crowd control or riot control," and without regard for chain of command. The statute names crowd control by category — an officer cannot treat a line formation as a shield against the intervention duty.

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3. Crowd Dynamics

Two dynamics drive escalation and are exam-relevant: deindividuation, where anonymity in a mass reduces individual restraint, and contagion, where a single act of violence normalizes imitation within seconds. Both are countered by the same tactics — early identification and targeted arrest of the specific actors, visible video documentation, and refusal to escalate the entire crowd for the acts of a few.

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4. Formations and Terminology

Arrest teams operate behind the line, extract identified individuals, and return them to a processing area. Line officers do not break the line to make arrests, because a broken line invites the crowd through the gap.

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5. The Lawful Dispersal Sequence

1. Declare the assembly unlawful, on a documented legal basis (riot conditions, blocked roadway under C.R.S. 18-9-107, imminent danger).
2. Announce through a public address system of sufficient volume, in the languages practically necessary, and repeat the announcement from multiple positions so it can be heard throughout the crowd.
3. Identify egress routes in the announcement and physically leave them open and unobstructed.
4. Allow time for a reasonable person to actually leave — factoring crowd density, terrain, and the presence of children, elderly and disabled people.
5. Document the exact language, time, positions, and video coverage.
6. Only then may chemical agents be used to disperse, and only consistently with C.R.S. 24-31-905.

A dispersal order that traps people — the tactic commonly called kettling — undermines both the statutory egress requirement and the legality of any subsequent arrests for failing to disperse.

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6. Colorado Riot and Public Order Offenses

Every arrest in a crowd context must be individualized. Mass arrests without individualized probable cause, and reports that describe only "the crowd" rather than this person's specific act, are the pattern that produced Colorado's post-2020 litigation and the statute that now governs the response.