A national plan to mobilize British police was triggered three days too late during anti-immigration riots that shook the country this summer, an official report said Wednesday, in part because intelligence assessments didn’t accurately predict the scale of the violence.
The report, which was published by the institution that oversees policing in England, underscores the challenge facing law enforcement in an era when online misinformation spreads rapidly and can result in real-world disorder.
Unrest gripped Britain for the better part of a week in late July and early August, after a 17-year-old killed three girls and wounded others at a dance class in Southport, near Liverpool. After false information about the attacker spread online, anti-immigrant and far-right mobs set fires, attacked the police and mosques, looted stores and targeted hotels housing asylum seekers.
The report, commissioned by the U.K. government after the riots, examined the response of eight police forces in areas where the unrest unfolded.
While it praised the work of officers for displaying “immense bravery in the face of extreme violence,” the report criticized the National Police Chiefs’ Council, which coordinates the response of police across the country, for not launching a national plan to tackle the riots earlier.
The mobilization effort, which involved greater deployments around the country and using more specially trained officers, was not triggered until Monday, Aug. 5. The report concluded that the council should have acted on Aug. 2, when it became clear that the disorder was escalating.
“With hindsight, the national mobilization plan should have been activated earlier,” wrote Andy Cooke, the chief inspector of policing, in the report. He added: “Once the police service mobilized resources, it did this well. The professionalism of those leading the response deserves credit. But the systems and processes they work under need to change.”
Mr. Cooke also expressed concern “that intelligence assessments didn’t predict the rising tide of violent disorder well enough. These assessments influence the timeliness of national mobilization decisions.”
A second report, to be published in 2025, will focus specifically on intelligence about the riots and how social media misinformation inflamed the disorder. “It is crucial that forces are able to better anticipate these threats so they can prepare effectively,” he said.
BJ Harrington, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for public order, said in a statement that “scrutiny and reflection must always be expected after responding to major incidents such as this summer’s major disorder.”
“The report states that, with hindsight, the national mobilization plan should have been made earlier, and this is a helpful recommendation,” he added. “Hindsight can be useful, and these learnings are important, but we are pleased that the inspectorate also recognize how complex of a situation this was for policing to respond to, and that on the whole, the service did so well.”
The riots began just weeks after Britain’s general election in July and were seen as the first test of the newly elected Labour government and Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Hours after the Southport attack took place on July 29, false claims about the identity of the perpetrator began spreading online, with far-right agitators amplifying rumors that he was a Muslim asylum seeker who had recently entered the country by boat. The attacker was later identified as a 17-year-old named Axel Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff, Wales to a family originally from Rwanda.
A peaceful vigil was held in Southport on July 30, but later that night, violence flared near the site of the attack, with a mob setting police vehicles alight, damaging property and injuring dozens of police officers. The following night, violence broke out in Hartlepool, Manchester, and London, among other places, and by Aug. 2, riots had unfolded in Liverpool and Sunderland before spreading to other locations.
The prime minister met with police officials on Aug. 1 and announced the creation of a nationwide unit that would allow police forces to share intelligence to crack down on what he called “gangs of thugs” intent on disruption.
But it wasn’t until Monday, Aug. 5 that the full national mobilization of specialized police forces was ordered — by which time, hotels housing asylum seekers had been attacked and violent clashes between rioters and police had led to injuries and dozens of arrests around the country.
The report noted that the national mobilization plan, as well as the quick identification and prosecution of people taking part in criminal violence, “was instrumental in ending the disorder and restoring peace.” But the failure to act quicker, it said, made it clear that “the police service hasn’t learned all the lessons it should have from previous incidents of disorder.”
The report also said that the police should have recognized that several violent incidents across Britain during 2023 and 2024, including displays of “extreme nationalist sentiment” and attacks on hotels housing asylum seekers, had increased the risk of disorder.
In the spring of 2024, a police risk assessment noted an uptick in cultural nationalism and a moderate increase in activity by “extreme right-wing groups” but the threat and risk of violent disorder was still described as “low.”
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