Southport Riots Inexcusable

As I’ve told you I do want to focus on the broader picture across Britain. I want to be absolutely categorically clear; I don’t think anything justifies the horrific scenes we’ve just been seeing and hearing explained. There can be no excuse for grown adults to be essentially destroying in many cases their own neighbourhoods, attacking frontline officers that literally hours before were trying to save the lives of these children, you can’t go around either damaging places of religious worship, those places are very precious to many people, so I want to be clear that certainly, no conversation that I want to have tonight justifies any of that behaviour.

I’ve just mentioned because to me it is inexcusable I want to broaden this conversation now also joining the panel I’ve got Andy and Zia as I just mentioned but I also welcome tonight Shabnam Chowdry who is a former Detective Superintendent for the Metropolitan Police.

Let me start with you we’ve just been mentioning the amount of police that were harmed last night that they were abused, assaulted, hospitalized in some cases, just tell me broadly what do you think to the scenes that we saw last night?

Oh, pretty much what you said absolutely horrific scenes, totally unacceptable, 53 officers injured, eight of those seriously, four arrests out of that, four of those officers were from Lancashire police. Merseyside police actually isn’t a huge Force, they’ve got something like 3,700 police officers and that doesn’t include police staff.

Those same officers the day before were actually dealing with that situation they ran into that situation where they protected the lives of many of those young people and they probably saved some other lives so they were dealing with the aftermath of that and then back the following day, they should have really been out there with the community providing reassurance, gathering evidence, working with the senior detectives the homicide command to actually gather further evidence and get witnesses on board for that incident.

Zia Yusuf Chairman Reform UK

Zia, your thoughts? Well, obviously these were devastating attacks and my condolences go to the families of the victims, I think it’s a horrific thing for that community to have to go through, it’s a horrific thing I think for the country to go through.

I think it’s arguably the biggest horror since Dunblane that has been inflicted and so it’s understandable that emotions are running high but what I will say is underlying all of this which I think is what you’re alluding to is this deep problem that we have large swathes of this country that feel like their concerns are not being listened to, that not only are they not listen to when they espouse perfectly reasonable concerns, but they’re sneered at, they’re condemned, they’re called names their lives end up getting ruined and what happens when this sort of thing takes hold, any student of history will tell you, that resentment starts to manifest itself in unpleasant, very unpleasant and unpredictable ways.

I think as you alluded to these are deep-seated problems now in this country that we have to address indeed and we are going to address them tonight, we know I do actually believe we need to have difficult conversations in our society, too many people shy away from them.

I won’t be shying away from them but for now, Andy how do you react to what you saw last night? Well, I mean I agree with everyone else it’s a horrendous, unimaginable incident that’s happened, anything that involves violence against children is really awful and we can’t stress enough how serious and horrific the original incident was.

I think violent disorder of any kind is not the answer and there can be no excuse and no reason for that, it is not acceptable to go out onto the streets and take matters into your own hands, you have to let due process, the law, the police, people who know what they’re doing deal with these sorts of incidents. It’s not about going out and being violent or sort of vigilante attacks I think that’s really unacceptable, whatever the reasoning.

The policing Perspective

Can I ask you Shabnam from a policing perspective because it doesn’t feel like long ago at all that we saw riots happen in Harehills in Leeds, different circumstances but not withstanding that I would argue very similar activities undertaken, we saw angry mobs on the streets, we saw you know walls being ripped up, we saw a bus set on fire, we saw incredibly violent scenes but what I’m playing on my screens right now are some of those violent scenes, but we saw such a different policing approach between Harehills and Southport in Harehills.

I’m not being rude to the police officers, I’m just observing they ran away, they let that community essentially, they let that anger fizzle out for want of a better word. Last night was very different we saw batons, shields, police dogs, why are the different approach last night?

You saw what happened by which was sheer thuggery and hooliganism, I don’t buy that you know people are angry and people are not being heard, three children died, were murdered as a result of you know of what happened in the last couple of days, that does not justify anybody going along and venting their anger out, you’re not answering my question, my question is; the answer is the difference, is yesterday there was intelligence to suggest that there were likely to be some form of protest, so police came along with some of their what you call level two trained officers, so they would have had the batons, they would have had Shields, they would have had the police vans that you saw when you heard the incident.

What actually happened, the police were called to a location because children had been taken away by social services so local officers actually attended that and very quickly it was a very spontaneous incident it escalated and it got really badly out of control, the priority for those particular officers was to take those Social Services people out of that situation to prevent them from being injured, they didn’t have the resources, they didn’t have the capability and they certainly didn’t have the tools to deal with a mob.

Later on other officers did attend and they too run away, what actually they found was the mob was far too great for them and there are benefits sometimes when you look at some of the incidents, serious protests that have gone on in the past and serious violence for police officers to actually withdraw from a location. They have to look at the balance, that with protecting themselves, protecting the public but also there’s vulnerabilities of members of the public because what you don’t want is for those to turn on themselves.

Police Retreat

With respect how can the police running away be in service of keeping the public safe? The public were left to fend for themselves by the police fleeing.

The police came along to that situation and they were confronted with far bigger mobs, by that time the mobs were far too big. As I’ve explained, those kinds of organizations have very small number of resources, for example yesterday they had to call upon Lancashire officers to come down to that particular scene. Today they know that there has been some intelligence to suggest that there may be some violence, but look at these screens though because what we’re seeing you’re saying about, you know you had all this additional resource.

I am not well versed in all the different titles that you give police officers but to us you know members of the public, they just look like your frontline police officers, the majority of them like look you’ve got some specialist ones coming in now, but the majority of these officers are just dressed the way that you would encounter a Bobby on the beat, so I’m still not understanding respectfully why when you had ill equipped looking from equipment wise police officers in Southport they stood and fought those rioters whereas in Harehills they ran away from them because we’re sitting here today with two riots, both of them completely unacceptable let me be clear on that.

But we’ve got a huge police casualty on the Southport one because the police responded in a different way they didn’t run away Michelle, they withdrew and they withdrew with good reason because of the fact is the mobs were far too big for them to confront and for them to deal with.

Weak Two Tier Policing

Look, yesterday is a classic example 53 officers assaulted, eight of those seriously okay so that will give you an indication that had those officers actually stayed within that situation it would have been far more serious and it would have culminated it could potentially end up with something like a situation where many years ago we lost the lives of an officer PC Keith Blakelock let’s not forget that, remember that.

Look, the reason I’m pushing you on this is because there will be a sense one of the reasons that there is such ill feeling in society among many people is so many people will feel that currently in our society there is a two tier policing approach, they feel like I don’t know if you are a minority group that go out and protest, you will be handed cups of tea you will have the police kind of pave the way, you will hear a retreat and so on and so forth if you’re a white British working class individual you will face force.