POLICE RESPONSE:Rioters' mobility and the absence of rallying points make the situation difficult for police, writes CONOR LALLY, Crime Correspondent
WHEN SERIOUS street disturbances erupted in Dublin during Queen Elizabeth’s visit in May, they followed a reasonably familiar pattern.
Gardaí were familiar with the visit itinerary and could close roads well in advance. The outer edge of the security cordon was then closely studied and the most likely trouble spots identified.
Protesters – mainly Republican groupings – made their rallying points known on their websites to maximise turn-out. This gave the Garda crucial information.
When missiles were thrown at gardaí, the Public Order Unit and uniformed members responded in a well-drilled manner, all commanded via radio ear pieces from a central control unit studying CCTV and shots from the Garda helicopter.
As public order policing goes, it was a set piece – exactly the situation the Garda had trained for and logistically planned for.
During the Troubles, rioting in the North followed the same pattern: a riotous crowd facing down police on a defined front line.
In Britain this week, all the elements that aided the Garda in May and the PSNI down the years have been absent.
Those involved in the latest disturbances are not protesters.
While the violence was triggered after a black man was shot dead by police in Tottenham, the trouble quickly morphed into looting-based social disorder.
There has been no mass movement of people rallying in one or two key locations. Instead, gangs have engaged in sporadic violence in unpredictable patterns.
It has been next to impossible for the police to predict where rioting and looting will flare next, and so impossible to put in place an effective response.
Many people living and working in the worst-affected areas have claimed the police have been absent. In most cases, by the time the force reacts, the trouble has already moved on.
The media has faced the some problem.
Much of the footage that has emerged of looting and attacks on police and property has been filmed on telephones by members of the public who just happened to be on the scene when riots flared.
A great deal of the footage captured by professional camera crews has been of the aftermath of the violence: looted shops or buildings ablaze when the mobs have already moved on. Former PSNI chief constable and now president of Association of Chief Police Officers, Sir Hugh Orde, yesterday summed up the situation: “What we’re seeing is rapid movement of people. We’re not seeing any evidence of people standing their ground and putting us in a position where you would even start to think about water cannon.”
Orde said the police were well resourced, and insisted they would stick to their task and get results.
“We are arresting hundreds of people per night now. They are very quickly going to court. They are being convicted and sentenced.”
Most the police’s tactics to combat serious rioting are based on the principle of protest-motivated rioters taking on the police at a fixed location.
When this occurs, riot police often corral sections of crowds into corners or side streets, keeping them penned in for long periods, before releasing them slowly one by one. This tactic is known as “kettling”.
In more robust protests water cannon and baton charges can be used to disperse crowds. In extreme cases, as witnessed in Northern Ireland down the years, rubber bullets have been used.
If rubber bullets were used in England as a response to the current unrest, it would be the first time they were ever deployed by a UK police force outside the North.
However, given other policing developments thus far, the use of the controversial ammunition may not be too far away.
On Tuesday police in London used Jankel military-style armoured vehicles. Some army barracks are being used as logistical bases for the vast number of police officers drafted into hotspot areas from other parts of Britain.
In London on Tuesday night there were 16,000 officers on the streets, the biggest ever policing presence in the capital. This has led to looters taking advantage of the low policing presence in areas from where back-up has been drafted into London.
London’s Metropolitan Police and other forces in places such as Manchester and Birmingham can choose to use these responses, up to and including rubber bullets, to quell the disturbances.
However, as Orde has suggested, the lightning smash-and-grab nature of much of the trouble has meant the police have not been taken on by large groups, meaning they have had nobody to blast with water cannon or to open fire on. They literally have not been able to keep up with the rioters.
A greater use of social media by the police may have helped their planning.
One message on Twitter on Tuesday night encouraged people to gather at Salford near Manchester for a “riot” at midnight.
“Be there as 200 of our officers have been sent to London and we only have between 200 and 300 on site,” the message said.
In another case a female teenager has been arrested for allegedly using Facebook to incite rioting.