Was Southport predictable?
Small scale? They’ve been large scale disorders.
Standing behind the shields is how you’re trained to protect yourself. Tactics involve cordons, running lines to take junctions (there was a clip from Hartkeoool).
You have to consider cell space-you arrest lots of people, what do you do with them. Every arrest will take 4-6 officers to arrest/detain, transport and book them in-then prepare a prisoner handover/statements, so you can quickly lose your capability to manage the incident. Often better to arrest in slow time.
The Met did employ snatch squads but that was a planned protest with a prescribed location that never really escalated-partly due to lack of masonry. But the Met is a huge force with much greater capacity for this -hence Starmer’s guarded response when asked about losing control in Hartlepool.
Police don’t routinely have loads of PSU officers sat round waiting to be deployed -they are largely taken from response shifts who are either running job to job, just ended their shifts or just beginning them-or heaven forbid on leave or rest days.
Approx 20% are trained-it’s voluntary.
I was a PSU Inspector for a few years-for a voluntary job, I was made to do it-and I didn’t get extra pay, I lost days off, albeit most of the time sat in a van bored.
But I also ran spontaneous incidents which included trying to get staff in to make up a PSU (22 cops)..it takes hours.
My impression from Starmer was saying that forces would cooperate (mutual aid-Merseyside needed officers from 3 other forces to provide PSUs) including from now having officers ready to be deployed-that will involve significant cost/officers having rest days/leave cancelled.
Its perfect, but it’s how it is.
