Cameron Says It’s Not His Fault

The BBC reports David Cameron: Police admit they got riots wrong

Mr Cameron told MPs that it had become clear there had been problems in the initial police response to the disorder.

“There were simply far too few police deployed on to our streets and the tactics they were using weren’t working,” said the prime minister

“Police chiefs have been frank with me about why this happened.

“Initially the police treated the situation too much as a public order issue – rather than essentially one of crime.

“The truth is that the police have been facing a new and unique challenge with different people doing the same thing – basically looting – in different places all at the same time.”

Ah, yes, the silly coppers assumed that riots were a ‘public order issue’, probably because they assumed that masses of people burning cars and throwing things at them was disorderly.

Apparently David Cameron is unaware that rioting is illegal, and criminal on its face. He was so worried about what was going on that he … remained on vacation, just like the mayor of London, but the weekend shift at the ‘cop shop’ are at fault for not calling out tanks and air strikes on the rioters, many as young as 10 years old.

The Metropolitan Police Service has about 35,000 officers to cover London and the surrounding area 24 hours per day, every day. Some percentage of the force will be on vacation or sick leave, as well as normal time off. In a normal department the weekend duty officer in charge is not going to have the authority to call in any massive number of off-duty officers, they are going to have to contact higher level officers, who may not be readily available on a weekend. The thing about ‘cop shops’ is that they have rules and procedures that must be followed, you can’t just ‘wing it’.

Oh, yes, it spite of what happened, Cameron sees no reason to re-think his plan to cut police services. He is also apparently considering a consult with Syria and Iran about cutting off social media, rather than having the police equipped to watch it to figure out where the problems are, or will be.