An in-depth study into the experiences of police officers caught up in last summer's riots reveals that they were woefully outnumbered, leaving many in fear of their lives.
In London they were so stretched that some
volunteer police without riot training or gear joined the front line. But radio problems meant riot police from other areas were held back and not deployed to deal with the violence.
Some 130 officers police took part in the LSE-Guardian newspaper study.
The BBC's Newsnight programme has had exclusive access to the results of the study:
Reading the Riots | UK news | The Guardian
It involved interviews, most of them conducted anonymously, with officers of every rank who were deployed during the unrest in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Salford and Liverpool.
Their accounts reveal that:
- Officers on the front line, who were often outnumbered and under-equipped,
feared that they would be killed. Senior officers were
astonished that no police died during the unrest
- Officers of all ranks were shocked and surprised by the extent and nature of violence directed at them, as well as the speed with which it escalated, with many describing it as the greatest physical and psychological challenge of their careers
- There were particular problems in London, where the system of "mutual aid" between forces failed to bolster the available resources at a critical time, with the
Metropolitan Police not activating the national alarm system to call for more resources until the third and final day of the riots
- Numbers were so stretched in London that volunteer special constables and British Transport Police with no riot equipment or training were used on the front line
- Once officers from other forces did arrive, many were not allowed to deploy to the front line because their radio systems were not compatible with those used by the Metropolitan Police, preventing them from being deployed to outbreaks of violence
Many officers from all ranks expect a repeat of the riots and are concerned that they may not have the resources to cope with future unrest on such a scale.
The riots broke out in Tottenham, north London, on 6 August, two days after the fatal shooting by police of 29-year-old Mark Duggan, and subsequently spread to other parts of the capital and other English cities.
Four consecutive nights of looting and arson left five people dead and led to more than 4,000 suspects being arrested.
In the aftermath of the violence
police were accused of standing back, allowing rioters to think they could act with impunity, and thereby encouraging further unrest in other areas.
But officers interviewed for the study said their tactics were misunderstood and that in the face of severe danger they were concentrating on what mattered most - safety.
In Tottenham the outnumbered and under-equipped police on the ground when the violence broke out
had to face a barrage of bricks, Molotov cocktails and other weapons for two hours before back-up arrived.
"We did everything that we possibly could with the resources that we had to try and protect life as well as property, but at some point I had to make the difficult decision it was life - it was always going to be life above property," Chief Inspector Ade Adelekan, who was in charge on the ground, told BBC Newsnight.
Officers interviewed in the study reported seeing rioters armed with machetes and said that they were convinced that given the chance the rioters would kill them.
Inspector Andre Ramsey, who led the police who reinforced the Tottenham officers, said his biggest fear had been of having a police officer separated from his or her colleagues, "and if that had happened, I have absolutely no doubt that there could have been loss of life".
The senior officers interviewed for the study, in particular in the Metropolitan Police, accept they struggled to deploy sufficient numbers of officers to contain the violence during all three days of rioting in London.
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