Disorder review findings published

24 October 2011

• The changing nature, scale and speed of the events made it unprecedented to anything seen by the MPS before.
• Therefore this created significant challenges for the police.
• Officer numbers were increased each day based on the information and intelligence received, however with hindsight the MPS did not have enough officers available on the first night, despite the service mobilisation plan being activated and fully implemented, and the additional officers did not arrive quickly enough.

• Inter-operability between MPS officers and those on aid from other forces worked with the radio system Airwave functioning successfully.
• At this stage the review has found no evidence of senior commanders requiring local commanders to not make arrests if offences were taking place; indeed 450 arrests were made over the three nights of disorder.
• The review will cost the options of making water cannon available to the MPS, although it should be noted it does have limitations on what it can be used successfully for.
• The criminal justice response was a successful one, including extending court hours.
• The volume and speed of information on social media was unprecedented and therefore challenging to manage for intelligence purposes.

We are responding to these through:

• Changing the way officers will be mobilised to enable more (Level 2) public order trained officers to be mobilised more quickly.
• Reviewing how we can improve force mobilisation across other functions such as investigation, intelligence, logistical support and use of Specials.
• Reviewing options to increase the number of public order trained officers, their vehicles and equipment.
• New technologies are being considered to see if they could provide additional tactical options.
• Embedding of successful criminal justice system practices from the disorder into business as usual.
• Specific investigator training in investigation involving large scale disorder.
• Training and improved facilities to enable the quicker capture of evidence from large scale events.
• We are reviewing the MPS systems for co-ordinating, assessing and prioritising social media content for intelligence purposes.

Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens said: "Thoroughly reviewing disorder that touched almost every part of London was always going to be a significant task and we are progressing this as quickly as we can. We are committed to being as open as possible so that we, our partners and the public can properly understand what worked, what didn't and what we need to do differently.

"Today's report provides some high level emerging findings and we will publish more detailed findings as the review further progresses."