| 1 | 1 | | At a site near London's Heathrow Airport policemen attack colleagues with petrol |
| 2 | | bombs. This is Riot City, where the Force is now training to counter the increasingly |
| 3 | | bloody clashes on the streets of Britain. The existence of Riot City is hardly a state secret |
| 4 | | - 6000 Metropolitan police officers train there regularly and it is visible from many |
| 5 | | flights landing at Heathrow - but it is not widely advertised either. Its relative anonymity |
| 6 | | is part of the necessary security for a sensitive police installation. |
| 2 | 7 | | However, there is also a compelling public relations reason why what goes on in |
| 8 | | Riot City is not a high-profile police activity. For the site is, in police terms, the |
| 9 | | equivalent of the strategic hide-aways in which the US Air Force continuously prepare |
| 10 | | for a war they desperately and sincerely hope will never be fought. |
| 3 | 11 | | Perceptive police officers, who know that the Force has not yet overcome the |
| 12 | | 'political' image intensified by previous large-scale actions, view the prospect of fresh |
| 13 | | social tensions with horror. One senior officer - recently involved in the policing of |
| 14 | | demonstrations by nurses - said that, although the police had tried to be low-profile and |
| 15 | | project a soft image, the nurses had chanted 'Mrs Thatcher's bootboys!' at them. |
| 4 | 16 | | Police continually debate the competing merits of 'force' versus 'service' - and the |
| 17 | | outcome of that debate may have significant impact on whether fresh urban riots do |
| 18 | | occur - but once shops are being looted, cars burned, streets barricaded, the police have |
| 19 | | only one role. They become an army charged with re-establishing things as they were, |
| 20 | | and they will employ whatever force they consider necessary. |
| 5 | 21 | | Recent pictures and accusations of crass brutality not only provide a field day for |
| 22 | | police critics, but trouble thoughtful senior officers, who see months of genuine |
| 23 | | bridge-building with the community swept away in a night. A recently retired (and |
| 24 | | disillusioned) senior officer told me: 'I think the police are heading for a great crisis. The |
| 25 | | sensitive officers - those who believe they are there to serve the public and not just to |
| 26 | | catch criminals - are getting demoralised and depressed. The core of the Metropolitan |
| 27 | | Police, which is about care and compassion, is slowly being torn out. They’ll be left with |
| 28 | | officers concerned solely with enforcement. They’ll be the people who are recruited, and |
| 29 | | so it will go on and on.' |
| 6 | 30 | | A very senior officer said: 'A police force cannot operate in the face of sustained |
| 31 | | hostility; we haven't the luxury of the barrack gates to retreat behind; we are part of the |
| 32 | | community and cannot live without the consent of the public.' And indeed, there are no |
| 33 | | barrack gates. The same copper who sprints through the streets in riot gear swinging his |
| 34 | | truncheon about him, must return the following day in shirt sleeves or blue tunic to |
| 35 | | practise traditional policing. Each time the shields come out, going back to the normality |
| 36 | | of policing by consent is that inevitable bit harder. |
| | | |
| | | from 'The Sunday Times Magazine', October 15, 1989 |
