Riot: A Behind-The-Barricades Tour of Mobs, Riot Cops, and the Chaos of Crowd Violence

Veteran street cop Loren Christensen explores one of the most frightening yet fascinating occurrences of modern society: riots. In Riot, Christensen leads you deep inside angry mobs and brings you along with the cops who clash head-to-head with them in the streets to show you in riveting detail what a riot is, how and why it happens, who participates and what it feels like to be in the middle of one. You will learn about:

• the powerful psychological influences that affect everyone involved, from street cop to bottle thrower to business owner
• typical conditions that set the stage for a major riot, and common triggers that set the violence in motion
• the many kinds of riots - race, sports, prison, political - and how they are all equally intense, destructive and deadly

Through his own experiences as a military and big-city police officer on the front lines of riots; interviews with protestors, cops, reporters, prison guards and a host of other players; and the words of experts on crowd psychology and mob violence, Christensen paints a graphic portrait of the riot experience in the streets of America and around the world.