Police Learn Wrong Lessons In Wake of Tottenham Riots

As regular readers may already know (more than able to fill up a telephone box as you are), I have something of a personal connection to Tottenham, which suffered a great deal during the August Riots.

So it was that I read with interest a report by the Police Federation that reveals a combination of bad planning and a lack of equipment made the situation far worse:

...Among the failings highlighted by the federation, which represents 136,000 officers, were chronic problems, particularly in London with the hi-tech digital Airwave radio network. Its failings were one reason why officers were "always approximately half an hour behind the rioters". This partly explained, it said, why officers kept arriving at areas from where the disorder had moved on... 

"Mutual aid officers were often dispatched without enough equipment. They therefore could not be mobilised in a public-order capacity as all the riot gear was in use," the report says. Many found that no arrangements had been made for their welfare...

Worse, it seems the police didn't know the areas effected by the riots as well as the rioters themselves:

...It adds that senior officers took charge in some places "often without having the local knowledge of the areas" making it easier to be outmanoeuvred by rioters. Only because of a nearby football match in Tottenham were mounted police available during the early disorder in north London, prompting the question "of how well Tottenham officers would have coped without this opportune support"... 

Sadly, however, it seems the wrong lessons have been learned:

...Already, signs are emerging that public order policing in the future will be less conciliatory. Last week it emerged the Metropolitan Police is training more officers to support its baton-round teams while considering the deployment of three water cannons to cover London and the south east. O'Connor told MPs that the existing reliance on cautionary tactics needed to be revised in favour of a "go forward and arrest" strategy to disperse rioters...

This is a worrying development. The real cost of the August Riots may be an ever more remote, confrontational and aggressive policing. Kettling may be the least of our concerns, if some of the thuggery perpuated by US police against Occupy protesters are anything of a preview.

Meanwhile, Neighbourhood Policing seems to have been scapegoated for fostering the 'view among criminals that police are soft', despite the obvious causes being clumsy policing combined by incompetent riot control.

The face of policing in London and beyond won't be a local policeman who knocks on your door, but hidden behind the visor of a riot helmet This kneejerk reaction will only lead to more violence and the gulf between public and police growing ever greater.

[SOURCE: The Observer]