UK riots aftermath – Sunday 14 August 2011

• Growing rift between the government and police officers over tactics, strategy and resources • Magistrates courts will continue to hear cases • Two charged with the murder of three Asian males from Birmingham due in court •  Senior Lib Dems call for an end to ‘kneejerk’ reactions 3.45pm: UPDATE: We are still to receive an official statement from Greater Manchester Police in regards to the armed response incident as reported by The People newspaper , but we understand that armed officers were called after a member of the public spotted a suspected firearm. GMP has told the Guardian that they believe the response was warranted. Arrests have been made in connection with the incident. 2.56pm: West Midlands Police said they have recovered a third vehicle which they believe was involved in the crash. An black Audi A3 is undergoing forensic tests. Detective Chief Inspector Anthony Tagg said: “We are now confident we have recovered all three vehicles which we believe were involved in the murder in Dudley Road in the early hours of Wednesday August 10.” 2.23pm: Home secretary Theresa May got a bit of a grilling on BBC Radio 4′s The World at One . She was asked about her use of the phrase “I ordered” in regards to her public comments during the riots. Here’s the exchange between her and Shaun Ley: Ley: [Officers] will also have heard last week the home secretary going on the radio and saying “I’ve ordered”, “I’ve ordered” that was the word you used, “I’ve ordered that type of approach to be taken by other forces and cancelled police leave”. Now the home secretary is not the general of an army. The home secretary is separate to the police and yet you have effectively said, “I don’t believe in that any more, I give orders to the police”. May: What I was absolutely clear about…was making sure that police knew what I expected of them and what the public expected from them. And the public were not happy about what they were seeing on the streets. When asked about Cameron’s appointment of US cop Bill Bratton, May appeared to undermine Bratton’s status as a special advisor. She said that alongside Bratton she would be “bringing together a group of people from across the world to learn from best practise”. On police budget cuts, May was crystal clear that there would be no reversal of policy despite calls by senior officers to do just that. I’m absolutely clear that police budgets can be cut without effecting the ability of the police to do the job that they want to do, that I want them to do, and that the public want them to do. 2.04pm: Reports from the Press Association suggest that delays at Westminster magistrates court are also being caused by “normal” defendants – in police custody for non-riot crimes – being processed at the same time. District judge Susan Williamson, hearing cases in court two said: “I don’t know how we have ended up in this rather parlous state.” 1.50pm: MP Mark Pritchard, secretary of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, has hit back at ACPO chief Hugh Orde and his comments in the press Sir Hugh Orde’s very public and ill-judged remarks underline the need for the coalition Government to push ahead with elected police commissioners. Senior officers are not a law unto themselves and should not think they have a monopoly of wisdom. At a time when national unity of purpose is required, the remarks of some senior officers do more harm than good – and reveal how out of touch some of them are. 1.36pm: The People newspaper has published a dramatic picture of a police officer holding a “semi-automatic” gun over the head of a young white male as he lays on the ground outside a branch of Greggs bakery in South Manchester. They report that: The boy…was among a group of seven aged 11 to 15 who spent 15 minutes pinned to the floor before the gun cops made an arrest in front of more than a hundred terrified shoppers. A mum of 28 who watched with her six-year-old daughter told The People: “I was absolutely petrified. You wouldn’t normally expect to see anything like this around here but then we had these riots.” Their report quotes another witness to the event: There was a group of lads sitting around on their bikes in the middle of the precinct. Then I heard shouts of “armed police” and “get down”. It was all so fast. The boys flew on to the ground and the police had the guns close to their heads. There were three armed police and about another 10 back up officers. For the next 15 minutes the lads on the ground were being searched and had names and addresses taken. The police seemed particularly interested in a bag one of them had. They tore it open but there just seemed to be boxes of Smarties and other stuff from Greggs. We have asked Greater Manchester police for further information on the incident. 1.11pm: More anger from senior cops. A statement released today by West Midlands chief constable Chris Sims contains a thinly veiled attack on “zero tolerance” policing: I continue to work with the Police Authority to develop a policing response that is consistent with available good practice but is not slavishly adopting empty slogans. The ethos of local policing has been the bedrock which has allowed collective common sense to prevail. It also contains a call for “compassion” towards the rioters: We must not at this time abandon all compassion for some of our very damaged young people who have been caught up in these incidents 1.04pm: Tory MP and novelist Louise Mensch has just tweeted this : So @JamesDelingpole excusing the inexcusable I’m afraid. Not too much of a surprise there. 12.46pm: The David Starkey Newsnight “racism” row continues in the Telegraph courtesy of James Dellingpole who believes that the historian’s comments were not racist. Dellingpole, picks up on Starkey’s comment that MP David Lammy sounded like a white person as opposed to a black one, and the subsequent on air retort from Starkey’s co-panellist, Chavs author, Owen Jones . On Friday night’s show Starkey said:”Listen to David Lammy, an archetypal successful black man. If you turn the screen off so that you are listening to him on radio you would think he was white.” Jones replied: “You said David Lammy when you heard him sounded white and what you meant by that is that white people equals respectable.” Dellingpole’s take is this : This is classic Owen Jones, classic BBC. Note that what Starkey is saying here is actually pretty reasonable. If you listened to David Lammy on the radio you could indeed very easily think that his educated, non-ethnically identifiable (and mildly effete) speaking voice belonged to a white person rather than a black person. But in Jones’s world – and that of his puppetmaster the BBC – the truth in these matters is no defence. 12.34pm: And whilst we are on the subject of reports and the young, here’s another massive study from the OECD in 2008 called ‘ Growing Unequal’ which found that younger people living in developed countries were more likely to be poorer than their older counterparts now than any time during the last 25 years. And this was before the downturn. 12.31pm: A comment piece by Observer columnist Will Hutton today focusses in on the situation of the young and an interesting Unicef report back in 2007 which found that British youth had the worst quality of life across 21 developed nations . The Unicef report that in 2007 placed Britain bottom of 21 industrialised countries in the way it treated its children did not only single out child poverty as a cause of the problem – other factors included the factory-like education and training system, poor relationships with family and friends, the low subjective sense of wellbeing and the risks of everyday life. Add to that picture private shopping centres that allow no public place for kids to gather, inadequate and now closing youth clubs, being routinely questioned by police just for being under 25, and being ordered to disperse, even if there are only two of them – all these impact on an entire age group. The dutiful, non-rioting young may work hard for their qualifications, degrees and apprenticeships. But they too could be forgiven for asking themselves: for what? The country is economically stagnating. For anybody young and unlucky to be trapped in one of our sprawling sink estates through the bad luck of birth, what chance is there? Are their vanishing prospects in any sense deserved or fair? And the larger question that hangs over them all – where is Britain going? 12.17pm: More on the growing row between top cops and the government. Appearing on Sky News this morning, British Transport Police chief Andy Trotter has hit back against policing cuts saying that the government should stop “pretending” that 20% funding reduction won’t affect front line services: We accept that everyone in public service has to play their part in dealing with the state of the economy. We have got to be sensible in the way we do it. But we cannot pretend that the scale of cuts we face will not impact on the front line of policing…It is simply not possible.” 11.57am: This is a very sad report from freelance contributor Rachel Pugh about an international flautist who lost lost pretty much everything including rare instruments and her two cats during the riots after her Croydon flat was burned down. An internationally-known flautist has lost an irreplaceable collection of instruments made for her, when rioters burned her Croydon flat to the ground as part of the weekend disturbances. Carla Rees, 34, is reeling from the loss of more than 10 flutes including two specially made Kingma flutes built for her in the Netherlands and on which she has based her international contemporary music career. She has also lost her music library, including a unique collection of 600 pieces of unpublished music written for her and her ensemble Rarescale, complete with composers’ comments that she says are almost as important as the sheets of music themselves. Her two cats also perished in the fire that completely gutted the building on London Road where she had her second-floor flat. The whole building is having to be demolished. “I am lucky to be alive,” says Carla, who studied at the Royal College of Music in London. She and her boyfriend had just come back from a weekend coaching the National Youth Wind Orchestra, when they encountered gangs of youths and smashed cars in the street. Fearful of the atmosphere, they grabbed clean clothes, fed the cats and booked into a hotel. An hour later, her home was in ruins. A website to help her has already been set up. 11.40am: BREAKING : Two males charged with the murder of three Asian men who were hit by a car whilst protecting local businesses in Birmingham have appeared in court this morning. This is from the Press Association: Joshua Donald, 26, from Kelsall Croft, Ladywood, appeared before magistrates charged with three counts of murder. Donald and a 17-year-old male from Winson Green, who cannot be named because of his age, were arrested on Thursday and were charged late last night after police were granted extra time to question them. Donald, who appeared in court sporting a beard, wearing dark jeans and a black hooded top, spoke only to confirm his name, age and address. In the hearing, which lasted less than five minutes, District Judge Michael Wheeler said to him: “It is said that on August 10 you murdered Shazad Ali, it is also said you murdered Haroon Jahan and you also murdered Abdul Musavir.” Mr Wheeler told the defendant his case could not be dealt with at magistrates’ court and he was to be remanded in custody to appear at Birmingham Crown Court tomorrow. As Donald was taken down by a dock officer a woman in the public gallery mouthed “I love you” to him. The 17-year-old defendant is also due to appear in court today but the case has yet to be heard. 11.34am: Apologies for that technical hitch. The comments section has now been turned on. 11.19am: An update from my colleague Matthew Taylor who is at Westminster magistrates court today. He says that two court rooms are sitting and that they have 60 cases to get through – a fair whack for any day let alone a Sunday. He describes the scene as “low level chaos” with many of the lawyers including those from the CPS lacking the right papers. Hearings were supposed to start at 10am but proceedings are already running over an hour late. Court officials have told him that they expect to be there until late afternoon but a security guards thinks has been told he’ll be there until 8pm. 11.06am: Here’s Cameron’s retort to Orde in the Sunday Telegraph. Asked by columnist Matthew D’Ancona whether he was all for zero tolerance and new policing strategy Cameron replies : Yes, I do. This is why I am so keen on police accountability, where you see police chiefs accountable to elected representatives, as you do in London, I don’t think it is any surprise London was one of the first places to introduce that sort of beat-based policing with a far greater degree of zero tolerance. 10.49am: Sir Hugh Orde, head of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), has given an interview to the Independent on Sunday about the appointment of Los Angeles ‘super cop’ Bill Bratton who has been brought in to advise David Cameron on ‘zero tolerance’ style gang policing. The interview contains some firm words for the prime minister: I am not sure I want to learn about gangs from an area of America that has 400 of them. It seems to me, if you’ve got 400 gangs, then you’re not being very effective. If you look at the style of policing in the States, and their levels of violence, they are so fundamentally different from here. “What I suggested to the Home Secretary is a more sensible approach, maybe to look across far wider styles of policing; and, more usefully, at European styles – they, like us, are bound by the European Convention. My sense is, when we’ve done that, we will find the British model is probably the top. We will not get things right all the time. It’s sad it takes an event like this to counter some of the more negative attacks on policing which is totally unjustified. As background Orde, who is generally well respected and has a lot of public order experience having spent years in Northern Ireland, is one of the current contenders for the position of the head of the Met. It is also worth noting that he and his other senior officers have been brewing since the start of the year over government plans to introduce elected police chiefs – a move to a more US style of policing. 10.35am: Good morning. Welcome to continuing coverage of the aftermath of the riots which began striking English cities eight days ago. Here’s a brief round-up and what’s happened and what’s to come: • The rift between the government and police officers over tactics and policing strategy has continued to widen. The appointment of US senior cop Bill Bratton to advise on gangs and policing strategy has caused a strong reaction from ACPO chief Sir Hugh Orde . • In continued unprecedented opening hours, magistrates courts around the country will be sitting today and hearing cases . Also expected in court are those charged with the murder of the three Asian males from Birmingham who were killed after they were struck by a car while trying to protect local businesses. •  A number of magistrates’ sentences are causing controversy , most notably that of a 24-year-old mother of two who received six months for handling a stolen pair of shorts . Harsh sentences and plans to evict rioters and their families from council housing have cause serious disagreement between members of the coalition as senior Lib Dems call for an end to “kneejerk” reactions . • Operations around the country to arrest those involved in the looting are expected to continue. The latest figures from the Metropolitan police are that 1,401 people have been arrested with 808 being charged with offences. UK riots Police London Crime David Cameron Theresa May Birmingham Manchester Shiv Malik guardian.co.uk

Posted by on August 14, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.