This was kept under wraps over the weekend, as the medial concentrated on the positive aspects.
Now the police are having their say as they were in the front line.
There is not one report of an officer being hospitalised due to an injury at the carnival. So your 'several wards full of officers' is a massive exaggeration. There were 28 officers injured but not even one report that any needed to go to hospital , so I think it is safe to say they were all minor first aid only injuries. You can be 100% certain that if a officer had recieved injuries that needed hospital in patient treatment it would have been a gift to the newspapers and front page headline news!
6,000 police officers are injured in England and Wales every DAY. This is unacceptable whatever the circumstances but it is possible there were no more injuries over the course of the carnival than the police in that area would experience without the carnival.
There should be much stiffer penalties for anyone assaulting a police officer in the line of his or her duty.
//There should be much stiffer penalties for anyone assaulting a police officer in the line of his or her duty//
Back in the 60's.We had a magistrate who's sentence for assaulting a police officer was always the same i.e 6 months imprisonment.
"but it is possible there were no more injuries over the course of the carnival than the police in that area would experience without the carnival. "
Yes it IS possible....anything is possible.......but is ti likely?
I would doubt it.
hc4361, // it is possible there were no more injuries over the course of the carnival than the police in that area would experience without the carnival.//
If the Metropolitan Police Federation is calling for the carnival to be banned I’d hazard a guess that the number of police injured there exceeds the number injured during the course of a normal day’s work. If it didn’t the carnival would be no more than a normal day’s work, hence no reason to ban it.
well down on last year, then, as is the numbr of arrests. Better not highlight that, though.
Still, banning public celebrations because the public are so awful has centuries of practice behind it in London. There used to be a May fair, full of jugglers and semolina-eating contests. The authorities suppressed it, as they have done to many other fairs, and the prices of Mayfair property immediately started to rise. Result!
The football clubs pay for policing on land they own - not for policing on the public highway.
"What we are able to charge for is what the clubs actually own. So where officers are stationed on the public highway, we can't charge. For example, at Arsenal there's a road called Drayton Park Avenue in the lead-up to the (Emirates) Stadium. That's a public highway, so policing that area could not be charged for. When you get onto the concourse - anywhere where the land is owned, controlled or occupied by the club - they can charge."
hc4361 That is exactly what I have heard, most police officers look forward to the carnival and enjoy working at it. It is not considered 'the short straw' as one poster said.
“On the news there were plenty of photos and videos of police joining in and showing signs of having an enjoyable time.”
There always are, Eddie. And there should not be. They have obviously been briefed to do so because they would not normally be allowed to “join in” with events they are policing. (How many rozzers do you see wearing blue and white scarves, cheering when Chelsea score at Stamford Bridge?)
The police are not there to have an enjoyable time. They are there to ensure that law and order is maintained. Despite the narrowness of the question, the issue here is not whether or not it is acceptable to have police officers (and others) injured at such an event. It is whether or not it is desirable to hold such an event in the streets of one of the most heavily populated parts of the country. My view is that it is not and I believe that should have been made abundantly clear when the nonsense started fifty years or so ago. I’m constantly being castigated for that view but I know people who lived in the area and who had to leave their homes for four days every August never knowing quite what they would return to. So I don’t particularly care that I’m castigated for my views. The event should not be held in its current format or in its current location. Then there would be no injuries as a result of it.
Laugh of the day for pure stupidity for this answer please
//A minority of the people who go to these so called celebrations, think they have the right, to behave like their ancestors did, with no law & order. //
What ancestors would that be and how did they behave?