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Politics and police prove volatile mix in Britain

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:16 GMT

Source: reuters // Reuters

By Michael Holden

LONDON, Aug 16 (Reuters) - When Ian Blair quit as London's top policeman three years ago under pressure from its new mayor, he said policing and politics did not mix -- words that could apply to tense exchanges this week between ministers and senior police officers over the handling of riots across England.

"If politicians want to make tactical decisions ... they must change the law to make it happen," Hugh Orde, President of the Association of Police Chief Officers, told lawmakers on Tuesday during sometimes testy evidence he gave at parliament's Home Affairs Committee about last week's trouble.

From Prime Minister David Cameron downwards, politicians have criticised police commanders for being slow to react to the violence and looting that erupted in London and spread to other cities across the country over the next four days.

Police chiefs were especially riled at suggestions, which ministers later disavowed, that they only got their act together at the behest of the politicians, flooding London's streets with some 16,000 officers, about six times more than usual.

The police were faulted for not putting enough officers on the streets initially and standing by while looters rampaged.

"As chief officers themselves have said, faced with an unprecedented situation, the immediate police response was not enough," Home Secretary (interior minister) Theresa May said in a speech on Tuesday.

In public at least, both sides have sought to paper over any divisions over the riots.

"The relationship between myself and Hugh (Orde), as well as with the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, is very supportive," London's acting police chief Tim Godwin told lawmakers. "And the results of the (government emergency) meetings have been very effective."

But unease lurks beneath the veneer.

Police chiefs are wary of the Conservative-led coalition government's plans to make the police more accountable to the public by bringing in new elected Police and Crime Commissioners to set local force priorities.

Orde said that if these commissioners had any say in operational matters, chief constables would feel as if they had the "Sword of Damocles" hanging over their heads.

Police have been under scrutiny ever since Ian Blair, whose support for policies of the then-Labour government had irked its Conservative opponents, resigned as Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

His successor, Paul Stephenson, quit last month over the News Corp phone-hacking inquiry, while Britain's top counter-terrorism officer also resigned having come under attack from politicians about his role in that scandal.

Cameron's centre-right Conservatives, seen as tough on crime, have usually been viewed as champions of the police.

In the 1980s, police fought pitched battles with striking miners and print workers, helping Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government to change the face of British industry.

But some Conservatives now suspect that police are too politically correct, and many were angered when police searched the parliamentary offices of their immigration spokesman in 2008 during a probe into leaked government documents.

London police have been wary of going in too hard on demonstrators after a bystander died in 2009 when an officer pushed him over during anti-G20 protests.

U.S. SUPERCOP CAUSES TENSION

The quest for a new head of the London force to replace Stephenson created more friction with the government, which talked of bringing in suitably qualified outsiders and courted William Bratton, former New York, Los Angeles and Boston police chief, although he has now been ruled out.

Instead, Bratton will come to Britain next month to advise Cameron on tackling gangs, working as an unpaid adviser.

Why, Orde asked, turn to an outsider unfamiliar with British practices when Cameron had praised police leadership in Britain.

"I would not have the arrogance to apply to be the chief in Los Angeles," Orde said. "Why are we looking around, plucking names out of the air?"

But the most divisive issue remains the government's plans to cut police budgets by 20 percent over the next four years and to overhaul pay and conditions, which will increase wages for some police but leave about 40 percent of officers worse off.

May said recent events had shown that reform of the police was urgent but while the riots have died down, the verbal conflict between police and the government looks far from over.

"Having had their theories and policies completely blown away by exposure to reality by the riots, they are still pressing on with damaging 20 percent cuts to policing. Nobody's listening to us," Paul McKeever, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, the body which represents lower ranking and ordinary officers, told Reuters.

He said the cuts came on top of a planned two-year wage freeze and rising pension contributions.

"That seems to be their reward for what the home secretary said was by individual officers a magnificent job. You've done a great job, you're going to take a 25 percent wage cut, and you're going to lose 16,000 officers so it's going to be a lot harder for you to do your job," he said.

"And we're going to interfere with operational policing by saying you're going to have to target crime gangs and the like." (Editing by Alistair Lyon)