When the Management of the Critical Incident Goes Wrong

A critical incident can be defined as ‘any incident where the effectiveness of the police response is likely to have a significant impact on the confidence of the victim, their family and/or the community’ (Cambridgeshire Police Force (UK), Critical Incident Policy, p. 2). There is a wide variety of potential critical incidents but this chapter focuses on situations which have been created by groups of individuals involving negative interaction with law enforcement agencies.