The Liverpool parade crash has brought out the best in our police
As a police officer of more than 25 years – and a Liverpool FC supporter my entire life – the events of Water Street on Monday evening were impossible to watch with anything other than a sense of abject horror. An occasion of joyous celebration turned, in just a handful of moments, into one of unspeakable trauma.
Whenever I see footage of police officers running in the opposite direction to a fleeing crowd, I remember my years in blue. The painful privilege of policing is to venture repeatedly into the hurting places: at the scenes of crimes, and of every kind of catastrophe. And, in those places, to see things that you can never unsee.
In my two and a half decades spent policing in London, I worked with endless vast crowds: at Premier League and Champions League football matches; at the Notting Hill Carnival; on New Year's Eve in Trafalgar Square; at central London demonstrations. It is a challenge at the best of times, keeping tens of thousands of innocent people safe as they sing and protest and dance and march.
I remember watching on helplessly as good-natured crowds at Carnival surged expectedly into streets too narrow to accommodate them. It was only the swift and skilful intervention of my colleagues from the Mounted Branch that prevented a tragedy. And that was on a day when nobody meant any harm.
I have been there on the other days, too: with Chelsea and Manchester United supporters intent on fighting one another outside Stamford Bridge; when violent protesters tried to storm the Houses of Parliament; when criminals tried to use the cover of crowds to commit unspeakable acts; when packed pubs emptied out onto night-time streets in a flail of fists and feet.
And, on each occasion, it was police officers who stood in the places in between, and who picked up the pieces when the dust had finally settled and everyone else had left the scene.
The morning after the horrors of Liverpool's victory parade, they were there again, on the other side of the blue and white cordon tape, attempting to make sense of it all; seeking answers and explanations for victims and their families; trying to shut out the speculation and the noise, to get to the truth of it all; and keeping an eye out for their colleagues in the process.
Because it would be impossible to do the job of a police officer for any length of time and to remain untouched – unaffected – by the things that you see and the things that you do.
I was reminded once again of that famous old Fred Rogers quote: 'When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'' On Monday night in Liverpool, that is what police officers were doing. And not just them of course, but their colleagues from the other emergency services, alongside countless ordinary Liverpudlians.
The Merseyside Police response has been criticised in some quarters, not least its decision to release details of the suspect's ethnicity and nationality, in an attempt to quash online disinformation. This was in direct contrast – a 'complete step change', as some have described it – to the response to the Southport knife attack last summer. It was the right call to make, and a sign of the times we live in.
Once again, in Liverpool, we have seen the very best of humanity – and of the police service in particular – in the very worst of times.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
18 minutes ago
- BBC News
Green-fingered Gloucestershire pupils turn £5 veg loan into profit
Green-fingered schoolchildren have risen to the challenge of growing their own vegetables and selling them for six pupils from Churchdown Village School, Gloucestershire, took part in a project to "grow £5".Ten members of the school's gardening club were given an initial budget of £5 to buy seeds to grow vegetables which were then sold at the school's farmers' market which helped to bring in a return of £400."It's essentially a business loan, so they can decide whether to keep any extra for themselves or give to charity," said club volunteer, Rebecca Henwood. Thomas, one of the young gardeners, has been growing lettuce, courgettes, beetroots and cucumbers."I've enjoyed coming back to school and seeing how everything has grown a lot more. "Every day at school I come up here and water my plants," he told BBC Radio Gloucestershire. Alfie, another keen member of the club, said he hoped to turn a profit from his crop of garlic."I was thinking I could give it to a dog charity because I love dogs and they should be treated well," he said. The club started 16 years ago and its young members have been given advice from professional gardener, Chris Evans, from Dundry Nurseries, Cheltenham. "When I was given the chance to help, I was very excited because this is like me going back to when I was their age, when I would be gardening with my dad and grandad," he said. Ms Henwood said: "Their passion for gardening has truly grown."I know one young man who's now got an allotment with his dad, and another one who saved his pocket money to buy himself a greenhouse," she added.
Telegraph
22 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Britain's mad planning system is becoming more and more absurd
Across the political spectrum, we don't agree on much. But we can all agree that the UK needs more homes and must start building in earnest. So why is Labour-run Birmingham City Council demanding that Mark Jones rip down the £180,000 two-bedroom 'granny flat' he built in his back garden for his dying father? With bin strikes, rat plagues and near bankruptcy, one might imagine that this particular local authority would have different matters on its mind. Mr Jones said he believed the building complied with planning laws and lodged a retrospective planning application. But the council's officious officers found that the Sutton Coldfield IT engineer has fallen foul of their regulations as it was 'over-intensive', and have ordered it to be demolished by the end of the month. The case shows in microcosm what is wrong with Britain's planning system. Like so much that is wrong on our island, from the NHS to the post-war explosion in council housing, its origins lie with the 1945 Clement Attlee Labour government. The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act established our system of planning permission, as well as the modern system of needing consents to build on land. It also meant that all planning authorities had to come up with a comprehensive development plan. Green belts, the listing of buildings and the anathematising of building in the open countryside can all be dated back to this legislation. In some regards, we should be grateful for Attlee's innovation. Anyone who has taken the seven-hour trip from Boston to Washington DC on the Acela Amtrak train will see why. Apart from a stretch along the Connecticut coastline, the prospect out of the windows is of virtually unending urban sprawl. Or contrast the west coast of Ireland with the west coast of Scotland. While the Irish views are endlessly interrupted by the tackiest imaginable McMansions, complete with fake colonnades and naff statuary, the Caledonian vista is virtually uninterrupted. Our planning system has made large-scale developers hugely powerful to a far greater extent than in most other developed countries. Building your own house is straightforward in much of the United States. But then America is a large country with plenty of space, as defenders of the British status quo might point out. The rules in much of Europe, however, are also vastly more flexible. In France, for example, it is relatively straightforward to buy a plot of land on the fringes of a village and build a family home on it. By contrast, in the UK, to build a new single dwelling in the isolated countryside is extraordinarily difficult. One of the very few routes is via what is now called Paragraph 84 consent. This is a rule, first introduced in 1997 in the dying days of John Major's government, allowing for new country houses to be built, but only if they are of 'truly outstanding' design and 'reflect the highest standards of architecture'. We would all, I am sure, like to live in such houses – but to meet such benchmarks requires money, plenty of it. It is not something that rural Mr Joneses, middle-earning IT engineers and their like, will ever be able to afford. The British system places all the cards in the hands of the vast corporate builders, with their new housing developments. Angela Rayner's Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which is now being pushed through the House of Lords, will only make this problem even worse. It will make development easier, and that is indeed a worthy goal. It will make it easier to overrule Nimby-style objections, but its mechanisms are not there to help people who want to do their own projects. It is all about pushing through large-scale plans in the face of local opposition, be they for new homes, wind or solar farms or the latest railway wheeze dreamt up in Whitehall. It is not about allowing Sir Keir Starmer's much-touted 'working people' to realise their own building ambitions. Our planning system might seem to have been more of a success if our post-war homes were exemplars of design. But that is far from the case. Probably the only country in Western Europe that has uglier townscapes than those found in much of Britain is Germany. Walk through Cologne, and outside of its Cathedral and Romanesque churches you would be hard put to find an uglier city with less inspiring buildings. Colognians have a very good excuse. When their city was rebuilt in the 1950s from the ashes the RAF had reduced it to, beauty was not foremost on their minds. We have no such excuse for some of the horrors that urban planning has imposed on our towns and cities. And our planning laws did little to protect us from these missteps. When Nick Boles was housing minister in the Cameron government, he was evangelical about relaxing planning rules in urban and suburban areas. He wanted to allow thousands upon thousands of Mr Joneses to do pretty much as they pleased with their own land and property, and thought this would make a huge difference to our housing shortage. It would also empower local people. Such an approach would clearly be a disaster if applied to, say, the Victorian garden square of London or the Georgian terraces of Bath. They would soon be scarred with endless glass boxes and extensions which would now be on trend, but soon look very dated. If Labour really wants to empower working people, allowing the Mr Joneses to build on their back gardens could be just the thing. But don't hold your breath.
BBC News
29 minutes ago
- BBC News
Call-outs for specialist prison squad increase 44% in two years
There has been a sharp increase in the number of times a specialist team that deals with serious incidents in prisons has been deployed in England and Wales, the BBC can National Tactical Response Group (NTRG), was called out 823 times in 2024 compared with 570 deployments in 2022, according to a Freedom of Information Prison Officers' Association (POA) said there had been problems with concerted indiscipline - an incident in which two or more prisoners act together in defiance of lawful instruction - and government said it was investing more in specialist teams to deal with serious incidents. 'More violent incidents' The NTRG, which is also sent into young offender institutions and immigration removal centres, is a highly trained unit used to dealing with serious incidents such as prisoner barricades, hostage taking and violent April the team was deployed to Lowdham Grange prison after reports that one inmate threatened to take another Willetts, from the POA national executive committee, said: "There seems to be an increasing need for this group [NTRG] to be deployed due to frequent callouts to address rising prison violence and an ever increasing prison population."Concerns about prison safety were highlighted by the latest Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures, which show the number of staff assaulted in adult prisons across England and Wales hit a new peak last year. The government said a trial into the use of tasers would be launched this summer for specialised officers dealing with serious incidents in prisons.A recent landmark review by Former Lord Chancellor David Gauke recommended some prisoners could be released after serving just a third of their sentence in a bid to ease prison overcrowding. One former prison officer in Kent, who wanted to remain anonymous, told BBC South East about the volatility in some jails."I've been assaulted myself and I've witnessed colleagues having their life changed because of an assault that wasn't even directed at them," he not his real name, said the service had been impacted by the loss of a lot of experienced staff over the last decade."I think the biggest tool the prison service got rid of was experience. And unfortunately, you just can't buy experience," he said."You can't get people that come through the gates fresh out of college and expect them to have the same experience as someone that's been in the job for 20 years and knows how to deal with someone." Steve Gillan, the POA's general secretary, said: "Our members need better training and a return to basics of putting security and discipline first and foremost."We need proper protective equipment and better staffing levels to deal with overcrowded prisons."There is no doubt that there's been a major increase in incidents at height. "Prison officers cannot deal with these without the correct equipment and training, that's why NTRG staff are brought in to deal with such situations." The MoJ said a large proportion of recent NTRG callouts are for incidents at height, which are recorded for any incident taking place above ground level, but are not necessarily violent or prison governor John Podmore said protests at height and incidents at height tend to be caused by prisoners who are angry or frustrated."At the moment it's highly likely and logical that such incidents would be on the increase because there are a lot of prisoners who aren't getting out of their cell or getting access to education, employment and training," he said."In these scenarios frustrations will be on the increase, prison staff are very often less able, because they're new in the job, to deal with such incidents, and that's why they can manifest themselves in protests at height."One of the reasons can be prisoners who're in debt because they've been taking drugs and they want to get out of the prison, so if they go on a rooftop protest, there's a very high likelihood they'd be moved out of the prison and for the time being moved away from their debt." President of the Prison Governors' Association Tom Wheatley said the NTRG deployments showed the pressure on the prison system. "They're very full, not all prisoners are in the places they are supposed to be, they've become frustrated and they protest," he said."NTRG come out to incidents at height, prisoners climbing over the railings on the wings, so they're at threat of falling or jumping."As frustration rises so does the amount of time those specially trained staff are deployed."They [NTRG) have particular training and skills, they can safely rescue prisoners at height and if there's a large scale disturbance they come in as part of the team that comes in to deal with that."The government recently said more than 1,000 inmates would be released early to free up spaces, as ministers grapple with an overcrowding Secretary Shabana Mahmood said a £4.7bn investment would fund more prisons. A MoJ spokesperson said: "This government inherited prisons in crisis and the Lord Chancellor has taken immediate action to ensure we can lock up dangerous offenders, protect the public and make prisons safer for our hard-working staff."We have a zero-tolerance approach to violence which is why we are investing more into our specialist teams responding to serious incidents and providing staff with the tools they need to keep themselves safe."
