For five days at the beginning of August 2011, it felt like our country was on the brink of anarchy. A protest in north London, after the fatal police shooting of a young black man, Mark Duggan, escalated into scenes of appalling violence which spread to other areas of the capital and to towns and cities across England.
The disorder that parts of the UK has been witnessing over the past week is different in many ways, particularly in its causes, the groups predominantly involved and those targeted. But there are parallels with what took place 13 years ago.
On the first night of disturbances then, in Tottenham, police in riot gear and officers on horseback came under attack from people throwing bottles and fireworks. A double-decker bus was burnt out, shops were set on fire and stores, among them Vision Express, Boots and Argos, were ransacked. There were numerous “copy-cat” attacks over the following two days, and on the fourth night, two police stations in Birmingham and Nottingham were set ablaze. In Merseyside, a dumper truck was used to break into a post office.
Just as now, it seemed as though police were powerless to stop the marauding mobs of protestors, thugs and looters. “It felt precarious,” says Phil Kay, who was Chief Superintendent in West Midlands Police at the time. “It was all quite ad hoc and spontaneous and did feel as if it was being agitated – but it was dragging in people... who got themselves caught up in the looting.”
The perpetrators were exchanging messages on BlackBerry devices to coordinate their movements – and the authorities couldn’t keep up. “Police were in riot vans but it felt like our tactics were slow and cumbersome,” says Kay, who went on to become assistant chief constable at Leicestershire Police. “We were used to dealing with a particular type of disorder where people stood and threw things at you. But it was dynamic and fast-paced and you needed a more nimble response.”
Control of the streets’ critical
The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, which reported on the 2011 riots, said the “single most important reason why the disorder spread was the perception, relayed by television as well as new social media, that in some areas the police had lost control of the streets.”
In London, where the trouble had started, there were 3,000 uniformed officers on duty on each of the first two evenings; by the fourth night, there were 16,000. The Committee concluded that the surge in officer numbers was key to quelling the disorder.
“Police on the streets is always a great deterrent,” says Chris Greany, a former Scotland Yard commander. “It’s ‘whose army is bigger?’ If you can’t mobilise quickly, you lose the advantage – that’s the lesson from 2011.”
Police forces that can’t deploy enough officers themselves can ask other constabularies to send reinforcements as part of a “mutual aid’” system which is run by the National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC). It’s a slicker operation now than in 2011 but Greany, who was once in charge of the NPoCC, warns that the introduction of police and crime commissioners in 2012 has made it harder to secure agreement on the transfer of officers between forces. “There’s a real localism now,” he says. “Would you want to lose half of your public order-trained cops?”
Thirteen years ago, when the riots started, a frosty relationship between police leaders and Theresa May, who was then home secretary, hindered decision-making. The early signs from the collaborative approach taken by Sir Keir Starmer are more encouraging, but there were indications at the weekend that the promised influx of officers onto the streets had not materialised. In 2011, video footage of groups running through town centres, breaking into buildings and attacking people, without police in sight, only served to encourage more to follow.
“We ended up mobilising officers from all over the Midlands and then the following day officers from all over the country,” says Kay, whose former force had to calm tensions during the rioting when three men died after being hit by a car in Winson Green, Birmingham. “At that point it’s about regaining a sense of control – and getting a better sense of the intelligence and where the risk is presented.”
Firing up the ‘sausage machine’ of criminal justice
What also helped end the disturbances of 2011 was the rapid response of the criminal justice system. The seeming certainty of perpetrators being caught and the knowledge that the punishment would be immediate and firm acted as a deterrent – and took troublemakers off the streets. Within five days of the first riots, 1,500 people had been arrested, while prosecutors and judges began working around the clock to process cases. One of the first to be sentenced was a man jailed for eight months for stealing clothes, sending a signal that the courts would mete out strict retribution on those involved.
“It was like a sausage machine,” says Greany, who led Operation Withern, the Met’s investigation into the disorder. “People were arrested, interviewed, charged, convicted – justice was swift. There was no magistrate willing to find someone ‘not guilty’.”
The Withern team processed as many as 200 cases a week and at one point comprised 800 officers, with close liaison between detectives and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). “A senior prosecutor was part of my team; he helped predict the defences they’d run at trial – coercion, blackmail, intrigue. That really helped us,” says Greany.
Some of the investigations into the disorder will understandably take time as detectives try to identify who was involved and gather evidence to prosecute those who’ve been detained. Twelve months after the 2011 riots, 3,100 defendants had been brought before the courts. It’s to be hoped that this summer’s disturbances do not end up with prosecutions on that scale but investigators do have some technological advantages compared with 13 years ago, in particular, the use of retrospective facial recognition software to match pictures from CCTV, body-worn cameras and smartphones to images of suspects and offenders held on police databases.
The Prime Minister referenced facial recognition in his first comments about the unrest last week, suggesting it should be more widely used by police. Although it can be deployed to compare real-time images of crowds and gatherings with a watchlist, its (less controversial) use as a post-event investigative tool is arguably where it will be most impactful in the coming weeks and months.
‘A tough task’ ahead
Over the past 24 hours, we’ve begun to see some of those alleged to have taken part in the disorder appearing before magistrates. But given there have been almost 400 arrests already it’s surprising that it’s taken so long for cases to come to court. Greany says he is “worried” it won’t be possible for criminal proceedings to be dealt with as quickly as they were following the 2011 riots given the lack of capacity in courts and prisons.
The latest figures show there are up up 67,000 outstanding cases in Crown Courts, with some trials listed for Autumn 2027, and only 700 spare places in men’s prisons in England and Wales. An early release scheme, to let 5,500 inmates out of jail after serving 40 per cent of their sentence, is due to start next month.
The news that defendants had been remanded into custody and offenders jailed, with their mugshots splashed across the papers and on TV bulletins, was one factor in helping restore order in August 2011. It was only then that inquiries and reviews could begin, in order to understand why the trouble had occurred and address the issues that lay behind it.
There will be a time for that after this year’s disorder, too. But Greany, who served in the police for 31 years, says the priority must be to support officers to bring the streets back under control. “The police have got a tough task,” he says. “The Government have got to be behind them – this week, next month, next year.”
Danny Shaw is a policing and crime commentator. He is ex-BBC home affairs correspondent and a former advisor to Yvette Cooper
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