Baton charge

A baton charge is a way to disperse crowds of people that is used used by the police or the military in response to riots. In South Asia, a long bamboo stick, called lathi in Hindi and Urdu, is used for crowd control. Those languages call a baton charge a lathi-charge.^[1]

A baton charge involves police officers or soldiers, who charge at a crowd of people with batons and sometimes riot shields, run at the crowd, hit people with their batons, and sometimes use riot shields to push them away. The tactic is designed to cause pain or the fear of pain in the hope that people move away from the scene.