5. Surveillance and Law Enforcement

 Surveillance and Law Enforcement: Pieces of a Puzzle

Last semester, for one of my media presentations, I focused on the disaster that took place at Travis Scott's music festival, Astroworld. For those who don’t know, on November 5th, 2021, 10 people were killed and hundreds of more people were injured in a crowd surge at NRG Park in Houston, Texas. The festival was severely understaffed and was completely unprepared for the events that were going to ensue.

While doing research for the assignment, early on, I realized it was really hard for law enforcement to know when and why the surge took place. People claimed that people were being drugged, others attest that there were too many people all trying to get to the front. To find out, officials used videos and social media posts to piece together and make a timeline of what happened that night. 

For 70 minutes, the crowd endured the chaos all while calling for help. The timeline used by law enforcement began at around 9 o’clock, with a live stream from Apple Music. The video shows the crowd swaying and moving forward. Later on, Apple Music made a public apology to the victims.

pic.twitter.com/4spikwlJq5

— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) November 6, 2021 

At 9:12 a video from an audience member shows a group of people calling out “Help! Please help!” 

ppl were literally screaming bloody murder asking for help right there. #AstroWorld #ASTROFEST rip to all those who lost their life last night, it’s shouldn’t have turned out that way. pic.twitter.com/Qs3WvzmG4O

— tré⁶𓅓 (@tre5pix) November 6, 2021

From the live stream, at around 9:15, you can see the crowd surge forward suddenly. During this period people began to fall out unconscious and injuries began to appear. In the video below, you can see a clip of the audience being shoved forward.  

9:30 marked when audience members began to climb on raised platforms to inform the camera men. @CleaSena recorded a member of a crowd was yelling “Shut the f*ck up. Someone’s in there. People are f*cking dying. I want to save somebody’s life. That’s somebody’s kid. I want to save them.”  

more footage from #ASTROWORLDFest , people asking for help and to stop the show pic.twitter.com/hUc6x62A31

— clea (@CleaSena) November 6, 2021

At the same time, a golf cart flashes its lights at Scott. So, Travis asks the crowd to raise their middle fingers if they are okay and a lot of people do. Scott then proceeds to say “I want to make this motherf*cking ground shake.”

Another clip from the same time, which has now been deleted from the account, shows a woman trying to call the attention of the same cameraman. Her dialogue is inaudible. 

Around 9:42, Scott noticed someone in the crowd passed out and stopped the song to help the guy. Scott continues to perform after he sees security help the guy who was passed out.

A video from the same time shows the crowd chanting “Stop the show, stop the show!” in effort to draw attention to the chaos that was taking place in the crowd. The video also shows people pointing and waving their arms in the air.

The concert continued on for about another hour after calls of distress began. After these videos conditions only began to get worse. Law enforcement used these videos to try and figure out if there was a specific reason the crowd moved forward, such as rumors that someone was injecting concertgoers with drugs, or if the crowd got out of hand due to mass panic. They concluded that the panic was caused by the lack of space and the result was that people wanted to get out but had nowhere to go, which caused them to stampede.