Brian of “burning” London here. It’s not looking good. Here is a primary source of information you might not have come about. Inspector Gadget is the blog of a serving policeman and it’s comments are chock full of serving police venting. (Note: for anonymity purposes he describes himself and his force as being from “Ruralshire” which is a made up name to signify he’s from a rural part of England.)
So now we aren’t tough enough with local criminal underclass youths in London.
On behalf of the British police I would like to apologise; I thought we were too toughon people in riots. I thought that if we deploy in riot gear we start riots, but my mistake, now I hear that we haven’t been doing enough deploying in riot gear.
I do apologise for missing the nano-second in which all the criticism of police heavy-handedness since December 2010 became unfashionable, to be replaced by bitter complaints about a lack of robust action. Not having recruited since last year, bereft of over $30 million from our budget and in the middle of a force reorganisation which will see us lose over 1000 staff, you will understand that Ruralshire Constabulary is not exactly in good shape to send PSU serials to London right now.
But it’s OK because according to the politicians, there will be no reduction in service from the cuts. If people think the police numbers are short now, wait until 2014 when the cuts are finished.
I feel deeply sorry for the local business people and residents who have been burned out. They hate you for the same reasons they hate us, because you have what they do not; industry, motivation, patience and morals.
Tonight will be interesting. I am hearing from so-called community leaders that stop-search is a main issue. I don’t know about you, but I think burning down a whole town is a bit of an overreaction to being asked to turn out your pockets, but there you go!
This is obviously how they celebrate Tish B’Av in the UK, or perhaps Lag Ba’Omer.