[Exclusive] Police respond to crowd-management 112 calls about five times a day on average, with on-site action taken in nearly 70%

[Financial News] Police were dispatched to more than 1,800 cases nationwide in response to 112 calls related to crowd management over the past year, with an average of about five calls a day across the 365 days of the year. As public awareness of safety risks from crowding grows and police prevention efforts are strengthened, there are calls for a more systematic understanding of how such reports are handled.
According to the “Status of dispatched cases following crowd-management reports, by closure code,” which Financial News obtained from the National Police Agency on the 1st, police were dispatched to a total of 1,822 crowd-management-related 112 calls nationwide from October last year through September 15 this year.
On-site action was taken in 1,256 cases, accounting for 68.9% of the total. A further 349 cases (19.2%) were handled as the same report, 78 (4.3%) were closed without action, and 58 (3.2%) involved counseling and guidance. In addition, eight cases each were closed because the crowds had already dispersed or patrols were stepped up, while two resulted in arrests.
At large-scale events, safety concerns over crowding have led to 112 calls. In May, Seongdong Police Station in Seoul received a report saying that the large number of people waiting at a Pokémon event made it difficult to control the crowd. In September, Dongjak Police Station also received a report that spectators at the Seoul International Fireworks Festival had occupied a riverside bike path along the Han River, raising concerns about collisions.
In Seoul, reports also tended to cluster at certain times. According to monthly figures submitted by the National Police Agency on crowd-management reports and dispatches at Seoul’s 31 police stations from October last year through September 15 this year, Seongdong Police Station received 82 crowd-management reports in May. In September, Yeongdeungpo Police Station received 74, Seoul Dongjak Police Station 48, Seoul Mapo Police Station 39, and Seoul Yongsan Police Station 33, among others.
Four years after the Oct. 29 Seoul Halloween crowd crush in Itaewon, public awareness of crowd safety has grown, and the safety management systems of police and local governments are also considered to have improved. Analysts say active reporting by the public helps support the police response in the early stages.
Shin I-cheol, a professor of police studies at Wonkwang Digital University, explained, “An increase in 112 calls means that access to meeting the public’s demand for public safety has improved,” adding, “If police are dispatched early, that can also help prevent accidents before they happen.”
However, under the police’s current statistical tracking system, it is difficult to separately determine the average on-site response time for crowd-management calls. Police track how long it takes from dispatching a 112 call to arriving on scene, broken down by urgency code, but do not separately classify and track data by incident type, such as crowd management.
There are calls for a more granular statistical tracking system so that accumulated report data can be used for prevention efforts, given that the risk of crowding varies by location and time.
Yeom Gun-woong, a professor in the Division of Police and Fire Administration at U1 University, emphasized, “If response times and other data related to crowd management are compiled into statistics and built into a database, they will be of great help to police crowd management in the future.”
[email protected] Kim Ye-ji Reporter