British Police Consider Tougher Tactics against Future Riots

The British police are considering using tougher tactics to deal with future riots, a report said on Wednesday.

London’s Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) published its final report on the riots in August last year, revealing that it “is undertaking work on the use of more assertive tactics” in the future, including using baton rounds.

Plastic baton rounds would be made more easily available for officers to use during future riots, the MPS report said

Plastic baton rounds have not yet been used for riot control on the British mainland, but were extensively deployed and are still used in Northern Ireland for crowd control.

The report, called “Four Days in August”, also said that the police were considering buying three water cannons for use across the country in the event of rioting such as the one in last August.

Water cannons have also not been used for riot control in mainland Britain, and there are currently no water cannons owned by the police.

The riots began on Aug. 6 last year, two days after Mark Duggan, a man suspected of carrying a gun and wanted for questioning by the police, was shot and killed by armed officers in the north London district of Tottenham.

On Saturday the rioting was only in the north London borough of Haringey, covering the Tottenham area. On Sunday it had spread to five boroughs, and by Monday night it covered 22 of London’s 32 police boroughs.

The MPS said that up to the end of February this year it had recorded 3,931 offences, of which 1,265 were non-residential burglaries; 880 were criminal damage including arson; 467 were robberies, and 166 were arson.

By the end of February, there had been 4,019 arrests, of which 87 percent were male, and 55 percent were from a black ethnic group, and only 8 percent were older than 35.

A total of 70 percent of those arrested had previous convictions.

http://english.cri.cn/6966/2012/03/15/2724s687050.htm


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