England riots. Photo credit: Nico Hogg, http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicohogg/6018692165/
The background
Police fear a repeat of the 2011 summer riots in England and are concerned that planned budget cuts will severely impact their ability to deal with disorder, according to a new report.
The study, Reading the Riots, is the second part of a collaboration between The Guardian and the London School of Economics, and involved interviews with 130 police officers of different ranks. For the first phase, researchers spoke to rioters, many of whom blamed the police and social inequality for sparking the disorder.
The UK riots began in Tottenham, North London, in August 2011, but looting and violence quickly spread across the capital and to cities including Birmingham and Manchester. The police officers interviewed for the study described being attacked with bricks and petrol bombs.
Discover the reaction to the first Reading the Riots report at The Periscope Post.
People now think riots are fun
“Officers interviewed as part of the study said further disorder was likely, with many citing worsening social and economic conditions as the potential cause,” reported Paul Lewis for The Guardian. One Manchester superintendent said: “I don’t think anything has changed between now and last August, and the only thing that’s different is people have thought: riots are fun.”
Riots report has got it wrong
According to the Inspector Gadget blog, written by an anonymous police officer, the report should be taken with a pinch of salt: “To claim that this report is ‘the most in-depth report into the London riots yet produced’ is either nonsense or a big worry!” Inspector Gadget took issue with several of the report’s most headline-grabbing assertions, including the idea that police fear further riots: “We are not worried about further riots. We are not worried because the retail-riots had absolutely nothing to do with us. We try not to worry about things which are not within our gift to change.”
Nearly 6,000 frontline police officers face the axe
According to a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), there will be 5,800 fewer frontline police officers by 2015, said The Telegraph. And London’s Metropolitan police are likely to be seriously affected: “The Met was named as one of three forces which may not be able to provide an efficient or effective service for the public in the future.”
Government must rethink cuts
“The serious disorder last summer highlighted in the Guardian/LSE research published today, demonstrates that police officers numbers really do matter,” said Paul McKeever, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales. “Whichever way you cut it, the resilience of the police service to be able to react to whatever is thrown at it is being threatened.”
Watch footage of rioting in London in August 2011 below.
