A new report, released today, called Reading the Riots has revealed that senior police officers were surprised that no officers were killed in the disturbances that swept across England last August.
Click here to view Figure 1.
The report, commissioned by the Guardian newspaper and London School of Economics, also revealed that police officers fear similar disturbances could happen in the future and that there were failures in communication that led to officers not being deployed.
Over 130 police officers of all ranks were interviewed by researchers in anonymous interviews for phase two of the Guardian-LSE research, which also saw interviews taking place with some of those involved in the riots.
Other key findings from the interviews included:
- Officers of all ranks were surprised by the extent and nature of the violence directed towards them.
- The Metropolitan Police did not activate a national alarm system to call for more resources until the third day of the riots. Officers from other forces complained that their radio systems were incompatible with those used by the Met and they were slowly or poorly deployed as a result.
- Police defended their tactics which focused on the protection of life over property with most believing that their tactics almost certainly reduced the overall number of injuries and deaths.
- Police were generally happy with their equipment and training and do not believe they need additional powers to tackle rioters. Frontline officers complained most of a lack of food and water.
- Police in cities outside London, including Birmingham and Manchester, were better prepared for the scale of the violence and were deployed in proportionately greater numbers. Officers from the Met accept that they were mobilised too slowly initially.
- Some special constables and British Transport Police without riot equipment were deployed to the frontline due to resources being stretched so thinly.
The findings of the research were seen by the BBC’s Newsnight programme, and will be discussed in tonight’s (Monday 2nd July) episode.
Speaking to the programme Chief Inspector Ade Adelekan responded to criticisms that Police stood back while rioters were left to loot property.
He said: “We did everything that we possibly could with the resources that we had to try and protect life as well as property, but at some point I had to make the difficult decision it was life – it was always going to be life above property.”
Failure to understand social media
Other officers admitted that the sheer scale of social media activity, particularly that on the encrypted BlackBerry Messaging system, overwhelmed control rooms with intelligence that they were unable to sort through effectively.
This supports the view of an internal report published in March called 4 Days in August which stated: “The Metropolitan Police Service engagement, intelligence and operational response plans were not sufficient to prevent or respond to the unprecedented scale and speed of the unfolding disorder in the summer.”
Police did however believe that their decision to rely on CCTV evidence had been proven to be correct with over 3,000 prosecutions, reinforcing the view of a study commissioned by network video solutions provider D-Link that concluded CCTV was becoming more acceptable to members of the public following the disturbances.
The full findings of phase two of Reading the Riots are being published by the Guardian this week.
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