It would appear that, when public order situations arise, police still prefer to negotiate with “those with influence”. From the BBC report
Police in riot gear were on standby during the trouble, but calm was quickly restored after police talked to community workers.
Somehow I escaped reading this essential school text, with its story of racism in 1930s American South. Living in Northern Ireland, I draw parallels with sectarianism, with its similar bigotry and prejudice. To Kill a Mockingbird was part of a Unite Against Hate campaign event at Parliament Buildings in Northern Ireland, which I’ve written [...] read our review »
Colin Neill’s first novel Turas peeks into a world in which many Ulster Protestants feel uncomfortable. It’s 2020 and the Irish unification that unionists and loyalists confidently predicted would never happen has become a reality. President Adams is ensconced in Phoenix Park. The newsreader reported that … a short ceremony at Stormont had confirmed the [...] read our review »
[aside]
There’s a nice one-liner in this blog piece by Nick Robinson: “Police beat up defenceless woman”.
Pete Baker,
Your italics tend to give the impression that you are surprised that the Police negotiated with “those with influence”. But given the fact that these ‘negotiations’ quickly led to calm being restored, then surely they were a good and responsible way of proceeding?
Would you have preferred the police to ignore “those with influence”, and allow the situation to grow into a riot? Surely the key objective is to restore calm, rather than to snub people you don’t agree with? And if “those with influence” really are capable of controlling the hot-heads, then getting them to do so is sensible. If “those with influence” were not involved in any criminal acts at the time, then their associations are irrelevant in this instance. If the fact of having influence is sufficient proof, for the police or for you, that the people are members of a proscribed organisation, then we’re on a pretty slippery slope. I, for one, would prefer rather harder evidence of wrong-doing before jailing someone.
Very definitely worth a look:
Heather Brooke, of “Your Right to Know” (who was the star of the MP’s expenses disclosure), has now turned her attention to PR spending by the different police authorities. This has resulted in two articles in today’s [London] Times:
Your starter for ten: Guess which force is top of the list?
In passing, I reckon that means that the PR spend (which is under the control of the separate police authorities, not directly of the Government) could have taken the strain of the “cut” in the police pay award (which is under the Government’s control, and for which the Government took the PR hit). As the other Old Bill might have said: “Shurely shomething wrong.”
The list is standardised on a “per hundred thousand population” basis:
So did everyone, down to the merest babe in arms, get their individual full quid’s worth last year?