Ah, the August Bank Holiday weekend. A promising weather forecast. Off work until next Tuesday. The perfect opportunity to sit back, put your feet up, enjoy a barbecue and take a well-earned rest. Except if you’re a police officer – and especially this particular weekend.
First up are the anticipated protests – and counter-protests – outside hotels housing asylum seekers from Bournemouth to Perth, Cardiff to Leeds. Some two-dozen or so anti-immigration protests have been organised for the coming days. And, once again, it is police officers who will find themselves standing in the places in between, accused by one faction of protecting lawless foreigners and by the other of defending hate-filled racists. Refusing to take either side, and damned by both.
I’ve been there. In Parliament Square in the early 2000s, standing shoulder to shoulder with my colleagues, dressed in full riot gear, facing down violent protestors intent on storming the seat of government.
It was challenging enough then, but it is even more so now. The already daunting task facing officers this weekend is made infinitely more challenging by the grotesque hypocrisy of populist politicians who, until they were voted out at the last general election, had been arguing for – and swiftly advancing – the very thing they are now denouncing.
Then there is the rabble rousing rhetoric of online agitators who seem to care little for the truth or for the consequences of their words. Threats of violence have reportedly compelled some refugee support organisations to install safe rooms in their offices, or to move locations, or to close altogether.
And the officers who will be dealing with this incendiary mess are the same ones who would otherwise be policing local neighbourhoods. Despite what politicians of all parties would frequently have you believe, there are no boxes of additional constables kept in reserve for combustible weekends such as these. At a time when local people are expressing significant concern about local crime and antisocial behaviour, their local officers won’t be available to answer their calls.
The August Bank Holiday weekend also means the Notting Hill Carnival, that living kaleidoscope of movement and colour, that glorious and enduring celebration of African Caribbean culture. The equivalent of a full fifth of the Met’s total establishment – some 7,000 police officers – will be deployed to west London to Notting Hill to help keep the three-day event safe for more than a million people expected to attend.
But the policing of Carnival is rarely without controversy. In advance of this year’s event, some 100 people have been arrested in intelligence-led operations to ensure festival safety.
One focus of concern has been on the Met’s planned deployment for the first time of live facial recognition cameras, or LFRs, in the areas surrounding the Carnival footprint. My instinctive response to such concerns is to suggest that the innocent have nothing to fear from it; that it is being used for their protection.
Close to 350 arrests were made at last year’s event, for a range of serious offences that included murder, rape and possession of offensive weapons. But I recognise that the debate is more nuanced than “If you’ve done nothing wrong…” – and that there are genuine reservations about civil liberties and about the very real potential for the technology to mistakenly identify those who are guilty of no crime.
Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has this year given strict orders that officers are not to dance with revellers, for fear that the occasional twerk might hamper their ability to react quickly to events in the dense crowds. It is also official recognition that the police are better off avoiding activities that have the potential to undermine public confidence or to put at risk their impartiality.
I policed Carnival throughout the early 1990s and I know that, for the overwhelming majority of those attending, it is an occasion for celebration. Indeed, the policing role has always been as much about public safety as it has been about public order or violent crime. I remember vividly the unexpected surging of the crowd outside Westbourne Park Underground station: vast numbers of people – including old folk and children – caught up in the sudden movement and with no place to go. They were rescued from the crush by the skill of officers from the Met’s Mounted Branch, easing the crowd through the bottleneck and into wider spaces.
And, in the end, that’s what the entirety of this weekend’s Carnival policing operation is all about: thousands of officers deployed – once again, away from their normal duties – to keep hundreds of thousands of good people safe.
But the policing challenge for the next few days doesn’t begin and end with asylum protests and Carnival. It’s also the second week of the new Premier League season. There’s a London derby between West Ham and Chelsea, and Arsenal are hosting Leeds – two fixtures that have presented their fair share of policing challenges in the past.
I know, because I have been on duty for the first of them. Only last week, in the first half of the first fixture of the season, we were presented with unsettling evidence that there is still work to be done driving out racism from the game.
And, as it is still so often the case, it is police officers who will be asked to do that work: to protect the vulnerable, to confront the dangerous, to stand in the spaces in between, to keep the King’s Peace.
I will be thinking of all of them as they report for duty this weekend.
John Sutherland is a former chief superintendent of the Metropolitan Police. His latest thriller, ‘The Castle’, is published by Orion Books
