Policing Blog

Mark Gibson of SAS talks about the need for smart police working during the Olympics

The London 2012 Olympic Games will be one of the largest events ever staged in the UK.  An estimated 15,000 athletes from 205 nations will take part in a total of 300 events. We can also expect a huge influx of people into the country, with Lord Coe talking about one million extra visitors. Many of these, needless to say, will be looking to spend heavily.

As a result, there is likely to be a rise in all types of opportunist offending from pickpocketing to ticket fraud, and from money laundering to email scams. When combined with normal, every day policing activity, this will likely put a huge strain on police resources.

The need for resourcing will be a major issue in the run-up to the Games, with police in London possibly drawing manpower from a wide array of provincial forces and even bringing in extra officers from back-office functions into frontline policing.

On the face of it, this makes perfect sense – after all, the surge in police numbers proved effective in combating the recent London riots. Policing the Olympics is, however, a completely different challenge, involving a far wider range of potential threats, few of which will be solved by simply putting more Bobbies on the beat.

The truth is that solving the criminal threat presented by the Olympics will require a more strategic approach, involving integration and cooperation across different police forces. This should extend not just to numbers on the ground but also sharing information and intelligence. The key is in the identification of increased risks and dealing with these before and during the Games. The ability to pool intelligence not just about antisocial behaviour – the approach to organised crime and terrorism will be critical as well.

Even when relevant data is available, it will be of little benefit unless it is used effectively. If disparate data, different structures, formats and update rates are not brought together in a way which makes sense to operatives, decision-making is likely to be slow and inaccurate and investigations will be delayed. It will be difficult for forces to predict and prevent crime.

It is not just about sharing and consolidating this information effectively, however.  Analytic techniques will be vital in order to reveal patterns, anomalies, key variables and relationships in the data, leading ultimately to new insights and better answers, faster.

Thankfully agencies are now moving towards such an intelligence-led approach. There is growing recognition that the ability to convert data and information into actionable intelligence is one of most powerful tools that the police can use in the battle against Olympics crime.

PT SecurityCorrespondent Dr Dave Sloggett on the imminent shifting of Al Queda’s ‘threat axis’

Time was when the United Kingdom Government declared that 75 per cent of all of the terrorist activity in the country could be sourced to Pakistan. The links between extremist Islamic groups in Pakistan and the United Kingdom were self evident in the bombings on the 7^th of July in London in 2005. That situation no longer prevails.

Even before Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan, the importance of the link between the two countries had started to wane. The level of activity carried by United States unmanned drone aircraft in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) which provided a sanctuary to members of Al Qaeda, had seen many of those close to the upper echelons of the organisation killed. It is difficult to see how any group could readily survive the relentless series of strikes that were decapitating the organisation.

Al Qaeda as an organisation is nothing but adaptive. It can be liked to a Hydra. Kill one of the leadership and other willing volunteers step forward to take their place – always believing in the righteous nature of their cause. Of course over time this has an impact on the operational effectiveness of the organisation.

The lack of experience that now exists in the senior management group left marginalised in Pakistan must be a major source of concern. Many who gained their combat experience in the war against the Russians in Afghanistan are now dead. Despite the enthusiasm of the younger recruits and their ardent belief in their cause, their experience and knowledge needs time to be rebuilt. Al Qaeda needs an operational pause to reassemble its capabilities.

But to admit to that would be a catastrophic publicity blunder. Many of those that professed to be willing to fight for Al Qaeda’s core were stunned by the death of Bin Laden. Some may well have begun to doubt the efficacy of their cause. Many felt that all the time Bin Laden was able to evade the Americans that this was a sign that their cause was indeed a noble one. Bin Laden’s death has caused discussion in the various Jihadi chat rooms to emerge questioning the legitimacy of what they believe. The organisation itself is in turmoil and its new leader is fighting to establish himself as the rightful heir to Bin Laden.

Perceptibly over the last two years the main centre point of Al Qaeda has shifted to the west. As Pakistan became a difficult place in which to operate, the Yemen became a natural focus. The underpants bomber and the parcels that were intercepted on cargo planes clearly originated from the Yemen. The Arab Spring and the uprisings in the Yemen did provide a temporary respite for Al Qaeda. They saw their chance to exploit the chaos in the country to create areas which they would bring under their control. They did briefly seize a number of towns in the southern part of the country.

Their success however was short-lived, as the Yemeni security forces used the uprisings to clamp down on the towns that has been seized by Al Qaeda. With the Americans now operating drones over the Yemen and killing the influential cleric Awlaki, the Yemen has suddenly become less attractive to the organisation. The franchise that operates in that country had global aspirations to use the Yemen as a base to mount attacks on the west and came close to succeeding on two occasions.

As is the case with a Hydra, Al Qaeda is now shifting again the centre-point of its activity. Briefly the Al-Shabab franchise in Somalia became a focus. The invasion by Kenya in the wake of the hostage-seizures by the pirates in the latter part of 2011 has changed that dynamic. Al Shabab is busy defending its own position and cannot realistically mount attacks on the west. Even the expected wave of bombings in Kenya is retaliation for the invasion has yet to manifest itself.

Paradoxically with the westward shift, Al Qaeda’s main threat axis towards the west is heading inexorably closer to Europe. With the other main franchises heavily occupied in survival mode, the threat from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is now increasingly the focus of counter-terrorism planning. With AQIM links to people smuggling and other criminal activities becoming clear, the threat axis to the United Kingdom has shifted west from Pakistan, through the Yemen and briefly Somalia towards the countries in the North West of Africa. It is to this area that the focus of counter-terrorism activity needs to shift as it has the potential to emerge as the next nexus of Al Qaeda overseas activity.

National Olympic Security Coordinator, Met Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison, talks about multi-agency preparation on the River Thames

Police boats zooming up the river alongside military marine craft and a Lynx Navy helicopter isn’t something you expect to see every day, particularly on the Thames in London. But this was exactly what happened last month, as officers from the Metropolitan Police joined forces with the Royal Marines to take part in a series of exercises ahead of the Olympics.

As we get ready for the Games, the police are taking part in lots of different tests and exercises to make sure that we have the right plans and structures in place. The aim of these exercises on the river was to make sure that our police officers and the Marines are familiar with the way the river works. This is really important because the Met and the Marines will be working with each other on the Thames to keep it safe during the Games. It was also a chance to test how our tactics work together.

Whilst the exercise was on, I went to see it first hand and chat to my colleagues about what we could learn for Games time. I was really pleased with what I saw. We had officers from both the Met’s Marine Policing Unit and Force Firearms Unit working really well with military colleagues. If you want to see what the kind of maneuvers they were doing, click on the video tab on the right-hand side of this page.

Keeping the Olympic and Paralympic Games safe and secure is a police-led operation. However it can’t be delivered by any one agency alone. We need the support of the military, and all our other partners - especially for their specialist skills and capabilities.

We’ve got plenty more exercises coming up between now and Games time, to make sure we’ve got our planning right and that we’re ready. The Olympic and Paralympic Games are a fantastic world class sporting event, and we want them, and London, to be safe and secure for everyone.

 Dr Colin Rogers of the University of Glamorgan discusses the implications of a disturbing recent news story

The recent news that two detectives from South Wales police have been disciplined for supplying a young man with cider is very sad. For those not familiar with the story, the officers apparently took the man from prison and drove him around in an effort to gain offences taken into consideration, before subsequently interviewing him while denying him his right to have a solicitor present.

This harks back to incidents in UK policing history that the force may not be particularly proud of, involving practices not dissimilar to those reportedly employed in previous decades that led to the introduction of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984.

Now, I know this will be reported as an ‘isolated case’, that the detectives have been ‘dealt with’ and so on. However, let’s reflect upon this incident for a moment and consider some important questions. Why did the officers in question consider this type of action was acceptable? Did they not think they would be found out? Where did they learn this way of working? Perhaps most importantly, has this happened before and not been discovered?

There has been much written about the occupational subculture of the police by people such as Robert Reiner, Peter Manning  and Karl Klockers to name but a few. They point out the ‘mission’ aspect many police officers have - the ‘us and them’ approach, with the police seeing themselves as the only body able to prevent the country falling into anarchy and criminality.

Along with this, there is the idea of noble cause corruption – although, what there is to be considered noble about corruption is beyond me. Perhaps these police officers thought their mission was to increase detections as much as possible, and that they were ‘untouchable’ in the way they did it because they were carrying out a noble mission.

This is of course conjecture on my part, but how else can these actions be explained? What is certain is that this incident denigrates all the excellent work being carried out by other officers, both in and out of uniform.

The problem is this. At a time when the police profess themselves to be ‘professional’ in their dealings with people - after all the diversity and community training available to them, after all the partnership work, education and claims of accountability and transparency - unethical and indeed potentially illegal working practices that may have been used decades ago appear to be still somewhere in the police armoury. If that is the case, it means that for senior officers, cases such as this will potentially always surface and provide the media with embarrassing and harmful stories with which to criticise the Service. 

Former Gloucestershire Chief Constable Dr Tim Brain analyses the fundamental change to British policing that was quietly ushered in last week in London

Did anyone notice the revolution last week? What revolution, you may ask. There was no shouting in the streets; no riots; no marching of victims to the guillotine. So where was the revolution?

Not all revolutions come in the form of violent overthrows of regimes. Some come quietly, perpetrated by men in grey suits, and last week's was like that. It's therefore not surprising that it passed without much notice.

It came in the form of the quiet demise of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), a corporate body with corporate responsibilities, and it’s replacement by just a single person, Kit Malthouse, one of the deputy mayors of London and chairman of the erstwhile authority.

But this is not a like-for-like replacement. Gone now, for good or ill, is multi-party consensus and in comes single person, single party focus. Operations and running the force will remain with the Commissioner, but strategy (which after all sets the operational context), budget and performance monitoring is now concentrated in the hands of ‘the Mayor’s Office for Police and Crime’. The mayor can, however, delegate the function and this is what Mayor Johnson has done. 

Add to this the power to appoint, dismiss and renew the fixed term appointment of the Commissioner and it all adds up to a powerful, unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of a single person. 

There has, in sum, been a decisive shift away from professional towards more politicised policing.

If there is any doubt that this is how it is then Mr Malthouse’s supporters will provide the evidence. For some time they have been saying it’s his hands which are now ‘on the tiller’ at Scotland Yard.

Of course, we have been softened up for this move. The process started with the alignment of the Mayor’s Office and the MPA when Ken Livingstone was mayor. Messrs Johnson and Malthouse’s policing profiles, meanwhile, have been rising for some time.  

However, Mr Malthouse's accession to office is but the beginning of the implementation of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act, passed last autumn. It is in effect a precursor to the replacement of police authorities across England and Wales by single person elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) later this year.  

There will be some check on the individual power of PCCs in the form of a Police and Crime Panel, but as this will comprise entirely local councilors it offers the prospect of more not less political involvement in policing.

In all this it is curious to note that voters in Greater London have been denied the same direct electoral opportunity that those in the rest of the country will have. Everywhere outside London, voters will at least be able to elect their PCC. In Greater London voters will have to make do with to whomsoever the mayor delegates the function.

Even these arrangements, however, may not last for very long. Later this year elections are due for both the mayor and London Assembly. This holds out some interesting possibilities – Mayor Livingstone replacing Mayor Johnson; Mr Livingstone resuming direct responsibility for policing opposite a Conservative Home Secretary; the Assembly having a majority of councilors from a different party from the mayor. The result? Yet more politics.

For one group of voters - those entitled to vote for the City of London Corporation - all this will be of no more than academic interest, for their PCCs and the Mayor’s Office for Police and Crime will not travel. Within the bastion of the ‘Square Mile’ the police authority will remain the ‘Common Council’. Even revolutions have their limitations.

Policing Today Security Correspondent Dr Dave Sloggett discusses how lessons learned from global capitalism help Al Qaeda wage its war against the west 

The global franchise model has served the Al Qaeda leadership well. It heralds from Osama Bin Laden’s own exposure to corporate business models when he read business studies at university in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden’s university career was originally intended to give him the background needed to join the family construction business in Saudi Arabia.

One of the innovations that entered the business vernacular at the time Bin Laden was carrying out his studies was the notion of power to the edge. This new business model was heralded as being more flexible and innovative. It avoided all the time delays of centralised decision making, allowing business leaders at the edge of organisations to grasp opportunities that arose in what is often a fast-changing market situation where centralised decision making would create inertia.

Osama Bin Laden studied this model and took the unique step of applying it to a global terrorist organisation. After all if global corporations think that power to the edge is a great model why not use it to de-centralise terror?

Decentralising the decision-making in terrorist groups was not a totally new idea. In Northern Ireland the Irish Republican Army had evolved a sophisticated approach to creating cells that would operate autonomously on the British mainland. This was driven primarily by operational security issues and fears that the movement had been penetrated at the highest levels by the British Security Services. Those fears ultimately proved to be correct as several high profile people have come forward since the Good Friday Agreement was implemented to speak of their work inside the terrorist group.

In the past, other groups such as the Bader-Meinhoff and Red Brigades all suffered from being centralised. Once the key leaders were arrested the power of those groups waned. Once the charismatic leaders had been removed little thought had been put into how an organisation could survive. Bader-Meinhoff and the Red Brigade’s focus on being against the state and what they saw as the model of capitalism prevented them from seeing what it might offer them as a business model. Osama Bin Laden had no such qualms.

When Bin Laden chose to allow franchises to emerge across the world he may have anticipated that one day the United States Special Forces would finally catch up with him. This is when the kind of corporate disaster recovery thinking that would have featured in Bin Laden’s studies also comes to the fore. When disasters happen, the agile and flexible business models enable rapid responses that minimise the disruption to its operations. By creating a global franchise, Bin Laden realised he was creating an enduring and robust business mode for Al Qaeda that would survive his death.

Despite the setback that Bin Laden’s death inevitably had on Al Qaeda’s business operations, the business model that Bin Laden created is still functioning. On Christmas Day in Nigeria one of Al Qaeda’s franchises, Boko Haram, conducted for the second year in a row a number of attacks upon Christian churches. With over 40 people reported to have been killed and many more seriously injured this was yet another example of an Al Qaeda franchise showing that it could continue to conduct acts of terrorism despite recent security clampdowns by the Nigerian Government.

Just before Christmas a wave of attacks with 18 bombs in a 36 hour period rocked Baghdad. Days later those attacks were claimed by the local franchise of Al Qaeda operating in Iraq. Despite all the hopes that many people in the Arab World have expressed as the Arab Spring brought dramatic change to the Middle East the ideology and conviction of those that take their direction from a very different form of societal model appears undiminished.

It would appear that as we enter the New Year, despite the loss of their leader, the corporate model on which he built Al Qaeda survives. The irony is that its durability is a testament to the kind of flexible and agile globalised world that Bin Laden so despised.

Perhaps Bin Laden’s lasting legacy is a profound one. Terrorist groups that adopt the Bin Laden franchise model are unlikely to be defeated as quickly as those we have experienced in the past. For western security services this has important implications. Whilst the 1^st of January is usually a point to celebrate the onset of a New Year for the emergency services, it is fact groundhog day. This, it would seem, is a clear case of plus ça change plus c’est la même chose.  

 Former Gloucestershire Chief Constable and highly-respected police historian Dr Tim Brain discusses why it might be time to take another look at stop-and-search 

So the Home Secretary has asked ACPO to review police use of stop and search in the wake of the LSE-Guardian analysis of the events of August 2011, ‘Reading the Riots’.

The study interviewed 270 rioters and found that the majority cited poverty and policing as the riots’ principal causes.  As for what aspect of policing caused the greatest resentment, it was something that has seldom been without controversy over the last 35 years – stop and search.

The LSE-Guardian study must be taken seriously, despite its relatively small and one-sided sample-base.  Its authors have impeccable scholastic credentials and its conclusions have been broadly corroborated by the government’s own inquiry ‘5 Days in August’.

It should come as no surprise that stop and search is the focus of such resentment.  It is overwhelmingly targeted on young black men who live in what used to be termed ‘the inner-cities’.  In 2007/8 the England and Wales average were 22 per 1000 population.   If you were black, however, the rate rose to 129 per 1000.  If you were black and in London it rose to 168 per 1000; if you were in the Borough of Westminster the rate was 619. (Commission for Racial Equality, 2010)

Resentment with stop and search is nothing new.  Scarman in his epoch-making report of 1981 identified the disproportionate targeting of stop and search on young black men as one of the causes of the Brixton ‘disorders’, although he emphasised that, properly conducted, it was a legitimate police tactic.

He was, of course, looking at a different legal landscape.  In 1981 stop and search was principally a Metropolitan issue.  The Met had a specific power under section 66 of the Metropolitan Police Act 1839, whereas the rest of the country relied on makeshift and antiquated legislation.  The result was that in the provinces the tactic was rarely used and never encouraged.   

Scarman’s answer, as befits a judge, was to tidy up the law, and section 1 of what became the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 was conceived.  This certainly tidied up the law, but the new power was easier to use (‘reasonable suspicion’ of possessing stolen goods or prohibited articles being sufficient grounds) and applied equally throughout the country.  Small wonder then that its use has increased steadily since 1984.

The new power proved equally controversial, as the disproportional focus on young back men simply then extended across the country.  Despite arguing that it is a legitimate tactic to combat street crime; despite new training and guidance post-Lawrence; despite excessive statistical monitoring, the power has served to come between the police and the communities of Britain’s inner-cities, adding to their sense of isolation and deprivation.

So what is the answer? Hope that politeness and courtesy will ensure that every stop and search is a positive encounter, rather than the embarrassing and intrusive experience it almost certainly will be?  Issue some more ‘guidance’?  In reality, it is unlikely that ACPO-NPIA’s 2006 ‘practice advice’ can be significantly improved upon.

No it must be more fundamental than that.  There must be a culture-shift; a real acceptance that it simply is an antiquated tactic which results in disproportionately few arrests (just 9% in 2009/10) and has a minimal affect on crime.  It is after all the 21st century and surely with ‘intelligence-led’ policing we can do better.  

But what happens if the pressure comes on and a deepening recession sees an increase in street crime?

I expect Mrs May will call for another review. 

Director of the Police Foundation John Graham explores issues around outsourcing, and looks at some crucial differences between the public and private sectors

In the current climate of austerity and cuts to budgets, police forces are being asked to do more with less and to engage more with the private sector to outsource activities that might otherwise be undertaken in-house. A larger market for the buying and selling of policing services is emerging, but before this is too hastily embraced it may be worth taking a moment to address some questions such as: what can and should be outsourced and how can value for money be ensured while upholding the standards the public expects?

One of the biggest barriers to working in partnership with private enterprise is the culture clash between the public and private sector. Whether perceived or real, essentially it all boils down to notions of ‘public good’ versus ‘private profit’. Research by Professor Martin Gill shows that some officers doubt their private sector counterpart’s ability to do the job or that they are any more likely to provide value for money. For their part, the private sector perceive the police to be ‘customers from hell’ when it comes to procurement or drawing up sound business contracts. There is still clearly much bridge building to be done.

If outsourcing is inevitable, how can one ensure that collaboration is successful and constructive? Firstly, there needs to be greater clarity over what should and what should not be outsourced. This is not as straightforward as it sounds. It will be important to ensure that outsourcing doesn’t compromise public trust and confidence. A division of policing tasks into those needing powers of enforcement (and by default discretion and accountability) and those that do not is probably more helpful than categorisation by function. So, for example, police work that needs a warrant, such as the deployment of officers, emergency response and the gathering of intelligence should probably, on this basis, not be outsourced.

But although trust in the public sector is higher than the commercial sector, the private sector has the edge in terms of customer satisfaction. Simplifying procurement (which is expensive and time-consuming) and getting contracts right could be the next step in improving partnership working. Service contracts need not be restricted to dry business arrangements but could include wider provisions that allow different types of employment practice, such as allowing the force to train contracted employees.

Ultimately wider work is needed to improve collaboration between the police and the private sector. It is needed especially around clarifying the kinds and levels of responsibility the private sector might assume. This would provide a greater understanding of the implications of privatising certain aspects of policing, securing appropriate regulation, relaxing some of the more complicated procurement processes to allow greater flexibility in the provision of services and, perhaps most importantly, finding out what the public wants from the police (and only the police) and why. 

Although money is the driver for outsourcing it should not dictate whether services are surrendered to the private sector. This must be a carefully guided, value-driven process and for this reason Home Office guidance is keenly awaited. 

Policing Today Security Correspondent Dave Sloggett examines some of the motives of mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik

The appearance in court of self-confessed mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik on the 14th of November was his fourth since he committed the atrocities in Norway on the 22nd of July. For Breivik this is the start of what may be a number of dramatic courtroom appearances.

On that fateful day it would appear that Breivik had meticulously planned the operation in which 77 people in total died. First a huge car bomb had targeted the Government offices in Oslo. Eight people died in the initial blast. The scenes in Oslo reminded many of the attack on the Hoover Building in Oklahoma on the 19th of April 1995. This was two years to the day after the Waco siege was ended by the FBI. Unlike its perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, Breivik had not chosen a specific date to conduct the attack as an act of remembrance.

Despite the obvious visual comparisons, memories of acts of right wing extremists had dimmed. Many observers across the world were quick to make assessments that the bomb had been planted by Muslim extremists. That assessment changed as Breivik was arrested on the island of Utoeya. His killing spree had lasted 95 minutes.

During the attack he had made two phone calls to the Police. In the first call he introduces himself as ‘Commander Anders Breivik of the Norwegian anti-communist resistance movement’ and claims that he wants to give himself up. In the second, about 20 minutes later after he has killed yet more people, he first claims to be a member of the Knights Templar and goes onto state that ‘I have completed my operation….so I want to surrender’. This is important. At no point during the attack did Breivik seem to want to die. Indeed he went out of his way to tell the police that he was ready to surrender when they arrived on the scene.

Such was his desire to live that Breivik has claimed that he tried to call the police ten times but only got through twice. These are not the actions of a madman. They are those of a person who knows precisely what they are doing. The reference in the second phone call to the Knights Templar clearly evokes memories of the Crusades. The images of the members of the Order leading the armies into battle in the Holy Land, was clearly something Breivik wanted to see recalled by those watching the media. The nature of the dialogue that took part in the calls is being used by the defence at his hearings to question his state of mind when he carried out the attack.

Of the 550 people attending the camp on the island 69 were dead. Breivik had simply gunned them down in cold blood. It was a ruthless act of mass murder which catapulted him to the top of the official rankings of spree killers. He was literally in a class of his own.

Unlike many of his fellow spree killers, Breivik was still alive. Many chose to die at their own hands or to force the police to kill them in an exchange of gunfire. For them, their moment of fame is often short lived. Not many people remember the names of the gunmen who killed the teachers and school children in Dunblane or at Hungerford. Those that happen in other parts of the world in Finland and the United States are even more distant. The public’s reaction to such events is to express immediate horror at what has occurred and then simply to move on. As Andy Warhol once suggested ‘everyone can get their 15 minutes of fame’. His implication was clear, for the vast majority fame does not last.

As the police finally arrived on the island he quickly surrendered. They had taken 50 minutes to initially deploy, 20 minutes to drive to the island and a further 20 minutes to find a boat to make the one kilometre crossing to the island. As armed officers raced ashore the gunman meekly surrendered.  He was not about to die in a shoot-out with the Norwegian Police. He had other plans. That was to get the opportunity that many in his peer group in the list of spree shooters never had; to keep coming back to court to remind everyone about his grievance and to have his time in the media spotlight.

Thus far unlike McVeigh who was executed for his crime that strategy has worked for Breivik. His courtroom appearances are dramatic and yet calculated – like the planning he put into the attack. He is clearly determined to work the Norwegian judicial system as much as he can – milking it for every opportunity to state his case and explain his actions.

In court he has thus far shown no remorse. His statements about being a commander of the Norwegian resistance movement echo to the heroics of a very different breed of people in World War Two. Many of them died opposing Fascism. His actions will remind many of the older people in Norway of just how the Nazi’s treated those who opposed their views. Mass slaughter was one of a number of weapons of coercion that they were to use to try and bring a restive population to heel. Breivik’s delusion and disconnection with reality appears total. He is a man who inhabits a very different world with values and beliefs that do not chime with the vast majority of people in Norway.

That said he will be afforded the opportunity to return to court after the judicial system has determined his right to stand trial. Anyone who has seen the man standing in the dock can have little doubt about his sanity. Whilst many in Norway might wish that Anders Behring Breivik would be certified, limiting his courtroom appearances, that seems unlikely. Sadly for those that died their relatives and the wider population it would seem that Breivik has several more courtroom appearances to make before finally he is consigned to history.

Police sciences expert Dr Colin Rogers looks at how the causes of this summer's riots are all too familar 

The recent reports published by the Riots Communities and Victims Panel into the 2011 summer riots in August throughout England coupled with the recent publication by the Guardian newspaper (based on interviews and social network transcripts) on the same subject has once again thrown up some interesting points in the search for discovering the root causes of the disturbances.

Media reports have, of course, focused on the sensational or provocative, in order to increase interest, and dare I say revenue. Yet an important point not overly reinforced by the media, is that both publications believe that ‘there was no single cause of the riots and there is no single solution’.

While the authors of the Riots Communities and Victims Panel report believe that the riots were triggered by one incident, the death of Mark Duggan, it also suggested that there was a history of antipathy between some members of the black community and the police and that underlying tensions in the community had been rising for some time.

This is also promoted by the research conducted by the Guardian newspaper who cite, amongst other grievances, anger over the shooting of Mark Duggan alongside common complaints relating to peoples everyday experience of policing again citing stop and search powers as being problematic.

In addition, both reports suggest that the reason why the riots spread is, in part, because of the lack of police response to initial incidents, thus giving rise to the belief that the police did not have the capacity to deal with them.

These reports are of course far more detailed than the highlights portrayed by the media and are well worth a read. Despite the fact that one could criticise the Guardians report for methodological issues (after all, individuals tend to rationalise their seemingly irrational behaviour when spoken to after events), there are clear similarities in both reports that should raise cause for concern.

Further, what strikes anyone who remembers the Brixton Riots of 1981 are the similarities in these reports to the report on those disorders by the Rt. Hon. The Lord Scarman, OBE in November 1981.

Allegations of initial inactivity by the police were levelled on this occasion also, but Scarman, having heard the evidence believed that, "Any fault lay in an inability to muster adequate numbers of officers, properly trained and equipped, sufficiently quickly, rather than in a failure of either police will or of operational judgement". It may well be that the police response in the summer can be summed up in the same vein.

Like the summer riots, one incident seems to have been suggested as being the spark that led to the riots in 1981. Operation Swamp, the mass stop and search operation in the Brixton area which apparently led to the disorders, again coupled with a background of alleged deteriorating relationships between police and community was highlighted as being a major cause.

Clearly there are many similarities in both reports that suggest reasons for the riots. The question is this. Why, after all the years of increased work in the field of diversity training, partnership working, community initiatives and ‘lessons learned’ from such incidents as the Stephen Lawrence murder are incidents such as these being blamed on basically the same reasons? Why does stop and search feature in all the reports as being particularly problematic? Why do deteriorating community relationships feature so prominently?

Can it be a drift has occurred whereby a more ‘hard line’, ‘total policing’ approach is prevalent , encouraged by a political philosophy that rarely seriously talks about community safety partnerships but revels in the rhetoric of pure enforcement policing, coupled with a lack of funding for these activities, has influenced this? One would hope not.

The answers to these questions are complex and need much more consideration than there is space for here. Clearly, if fault is the word then maybe there are faults on both sides of the discussion. What appears clear, however, is that ‘lessons learned’ from historical incidents do not necessarily translate into action and that ghosts from the past can and sometimes do revisit us and make life uncomfortable for everyone.