London, 2019-03-23: Two Million Friends of Europe

Put it to the people pic.twitter.com/12Bo1VrpMu

— Led By Donkeys (@ByDonkeys) March 23, 2019

2 million friends or Europe enjoyed an early Spring Saturday in London.

 

Actually, Brian, they do. Always. For operational reasons. They used to release them, but they stopped as it was contentious. But they still give unofficial estimates privately. And they always do two calculations. The first is based on special calculations and a rule of thumb >

— Alex Andreou (@sturdyAlex) March 23, 2019

>assumed density of 3.5 people per square metre. They then, however, continue updating this estimate with a second stage calculation that looks at people still joining the back of a march and an updated density ratio based on how long a demo takes to get between two fixed points>

— Alex Andreou (@sturdyAlex) March 23, 2019

>That is why final estimates often differ. Because some matches are much more tightly packed and slow moving than others. This updated ratio can change the calculation dramatically. In this case, the 1m estimate first surfaced before the front started moving. After that point>

— Alex Andreou (@sturdyAlex) March 23, 2019

>and this is very important, the police advised the front of the march to start moving annhour earlier than they had intended, because they were experiencing “unusually high density and rate of people joining at the back” and became concerned. People continued arriving in a>

— Alex Andreou (@sturdyAlex) March 23, 2019

>regular stream for at least two more hours. And according to everyone on the march it was unusually tightly packed and slow moving. This makes the original 1m estimate, very unreliable. But having released it, I suspect, organisers did not want to update, as they would face>

— Alex Andreou (@sturdyAlex) March 23, 2019

>accusations precisely like this. 1m is a great, iconic number anyway. At the end of the march the police unofficial rough estimate to organisers was closer to 2m. Had this confirmed by two separate sources. It may be wrong, but it’s more reliable than the static 1pm figure. END

— Alex Andreou (@sturdyAlex) March 23, 2019

 

They use software and aerial footage that basically counts a line of people and multiplies them by the volume of the location. I was told by contacts in the Met that two million was their estimate (I posted this but took it down as I can't prove my sources).

— UK4Europe #FBPE 🇪🇺🇬🇧 (@UK4Europe) March 24, 2019

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