Policing Large Scale Disorder: Lessons from the disturbances of ...

Ev w46 Home Affairs Committee: Evidence
2. StopWatch was as horrified by the riots as the rest of the country but we fear that unless the correct
lessons are learned there is the real risk that they will recur. We are therefore keen to offer what knowledge
and expertise we have in the hope that these lessons can be learned and future violence can be avoided
or curtailed.
Concerns About the Inquiry
3. The Home Affairs Committee’s (the committee) request for submissions makes special reference to the
issues of: police powers, funding, tactics and equipment. We believe that there are vital questions to answer
about these subjects. However we are concerned that the way they are framed implies an approach that is
based purely on enforcement. We feel strongly that answers to these questions that do not undermine the
traditions and ethos of British policing cannot be found simply through improving the enforcement capabilities
of the police force.
Community Relations are Vital
4. Police—community relations are vital to this inquiry. It has been claimed that the riots were the result of
apolitical criminality and therefore unrelated to a given community’s experience of policing. However, it would
seem strange to disregard the fact that riots exploded in a community (Tottenham) with a history of oversurveillance
and under-protection which have contributed to a tense relationship between that community and
the local police. The community’s reaction to the death of Mark Duggan and the subsequent handling of the
investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission seems to exemplify this.
5. It is unwise to draw simple, hasty conclusions. Nonetheless there are indications that the riots were closely
linked to the experience of policing. In community forums like London 24 residents have explicitly linked the
eruption of violence to young people’s anger at being subject to excessive stops in Tottenham, Hackney and in
Lewisham. We feel that stop and search is intrinsic to understanding both why the riots happened and how
they can be avoided or minimised in the future. The location of much of the violence corresponds to areas of
high social tension such as Birmingham, Hackney, Lewisham and Tottenham; there is a danger that the presence
of looting in outlier areas such as Barnet distorts this. At the very least it seems clear that people who burn
buildings and smash windows feel that they have little real stake in their community.
6. Dr. Ben Bradford has discussed the role of stop and search in undermining a community and an
individual’s feeling that they belong to wider society (Bradford, 2011). This must surely a prescient
consideration in the context of the riots.
7. On 7 September the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued their response to the
presentation of government policy to the UN in Geneva. The committee was a pains to highlight its concerns
regarding the use of stop and search:
8. The Committee regrets the increased use of “stops and searches” by the Police which disproportionately
affect members of minority ethnic groups, particularly persons of Asian and African descent.
9. We also feel it is enlightening to consider the event that sparked the riots—the death of Mark Duggan—
in the light of the death of Steven Lawrence as insensitive treatment of the relatives of the deceased marked
both cases. It is disheartening to see that 10 years later such clumsy handling of community and family
relations persists.
Key Issues for the Inquiry
10. We will now address some of the key issues raised by the inquiry and discuss how we feel a focus on
community—police relations and consent based policing can be beneficial in answering them.
Police Resources
11. Like many public services, the police are facing massive funding cuts. The committee have asked whether
the police had sufficient resources to deal with the unrest. We feel that the government does not have sufficient
resources to fund the police to a level that would prevent or significantly curtail the disorder witnessed in
August and that increased resource can only be, at most, a partial solution. There is also a question of the
priorities adopted by the police in their deployment of such resources they do have available. Since the riots
large-scale resources are being devoted to operations to identify, arrest and prosecute riot participants. This
heavy deployment of police in riot areas runs the risk of further incidents, such as the killing of Mark
Duggan reoccurring.
12. A more useful response to the riots would be to look at how police can improve their relations with the
community. Improved communications but also a reduction in the use and vitally in the disproportionality of
stop and search would prove beneficial here. This would reduce the sense of grievance within the community,
and in doing so reduce the burden on resources and improve safety as members would feel less resentment
and more inclined to cooperate with the police. There is evidence that they would feel more invested within
their communities reducing risk of future riots and reduce participation in the event of recurrence of disorder.