Mike King

Flashpoints Revisited: A Critical Application to the Policing of Anti-globalization Protest

The Flashpoints model, developed by David Waddington and colleagues in the late 1980s, has been utilized to examine various public order occurrences, ranging from urban rioting, industrial unrest and animal rights protests of the 1990s, primarily focusing on the United Kingdom, with some examples from the United States of America. This article revisits and reappraises the model in the light of critical debates both directed at the model itself and more generally concerning the policing of social protest. Specifically, we take on board relevant factors from these debates in order to enhance the model, before applying it to a comparative study of two cases of anti-globalization protest in Canada: one being post-Seattle, but pre-Genoa (the 2001 Quebec City Summit of the Americas); the other being post-Genoa and post 9/11 (the 2002 G8 protests in Ottawa).

Coping with disorder? the changing relationship between police public order strategy and practice—a critical analysis of the Burnley Riot

This article identifies significant recent public order policing strategy change on the part of the public police—first, in recognition of the dynamic relationship between disorder and policing, and second, concerning a more flexible conceptualization of the traditional “riot curve”. This would potentially move the policing of social disorder away from a situation of what Wright refers to in Policing: An Introduction to Concepts and Practice (2002) as “simply coping” with conflict towards one of “managing” it, being part of the process of transition for policing generally from modern to late‐modern. For a fundamental shift to occur in the public order policing arena though, such policies would need to be carried through in practice. Our critical analysis and “recontextualization” of a riot that took place in Burnley in 2001 suggests that in this instance, at least, this has not (yet) taken place.

Riots and social protest in an age of austerity

The last issue of Policing & Society devoted purely to policing and public protest was in 2005 (Volume 15 Number 3). Not only did both of us contribute to this, but so did three of the other authors here. However, although two of the papers in the present issue compare recent developments with other events that occurred in 2005, this collection is not a simple retrospective. Rather, it focuses on social disorder and protest in Europe and North America at a time of increasing economic austerity. The issue opens with two contributions concerned with the English 2011 riots, which started in Tottenham, N. London, after the shooting of Mark Duggan by police on 4th August and rapidly spread to many other parts of the country. Duggan had been a minicab passenger when he was killed by an officer from the Metropolitan Police’s CO19 (Firearms Command) acting under the auspices of the then Trident Command unit which has in the past primarily focused on black gun crime. What followed was a clear lack of effective coordination between the police and the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC 2012) concerning releasing information regarding the shooting: misinformation as to the circumstances being given to the Press Association by an IPCC spokesperson and the police failing to inform Duggan’s parents of his death (indeed, his mother heard the possibility of this on television news) (p. 17). The interview given by the IPCC spokesperson only served to confuse and inflame matters more, this claiming that there had been ‘an exchange of shots’ (House of Commons Home Affairs Committee 2011, p. 6). Although this was in fact wrong (the only shots fired were by the CO19 officer) and later stated to be neither police nor IPCC ‘official press lines’, the story was never ‘actively rebutted’ (Metropolitan Police 2012, p. c24). In turn, Duggan’s family and about 40 community supporters marched from Tottenham’s Broadwater Farm Estate to Tottenham Police Station on Saturday 6th forming a group of about 100 in total demanding to know what actually happened and to see a senior police officer. Eventually, after the family members had left, apparently unhappy with the delay and lack of meaningful response by the police, there was, what the Metropolitan Police review recognised as, a distinctive ‘step change’ in which some of the gathering crowd started throwing ‘multiple missiles’ at the police station and burning two police cars (Metropolitan Police 2012, p. 17, 32). The Riots, Communities and Victims Panel’s (RCVP 2011) interim report found quite decidedly that the main immediate cause of this escalation was the ‘information vacuum’ on the part of the police and the IPCC (p. 11). The 6th August rioting in Tottenham continued and by early the next morning had spread to neighbouring areas and by the following evening to other parts of London including Brixton in the south of the city. A total of five days of rioting took place in 66 areas of England, actively involving between 13 and 15,000 participants and in which 5 people died (RCVP 2011, pp. 10 11). Policing & Society, 2013 Vol. 23, No. 1, 1 5, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2012.731274

Birmingham revisited – causal differences between the riots of 2011 and 2005?

Despite the nature of the Birmingham 2011 riots being rather different from those which occurred in the Lozells area of Birmingham in 2005, this article argues that the underlying causal factors are broadly similar for both. The 2011 riots followed disorders in London after the police shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham and entailed elements of social protest, opportunistic looting and an instance of gang violence, resulting in three deaths. In contrast, the Lozells 2005 disorders comprised of an explosion of inter-minority conflict during which two persons died, following a rumour of a sexual attack by members of one community against an individual from another. Drawing from interviews with police, the article examines these events and the policing operations. It concludes that the causes of both events lie rooted in socio-economic factors, in addition to a history of police–community tensions. These are considered in turn, as is the role of police–community liaison and engagement in containing the 2011 riots from escalating even more. The potential negative impacts of current economic austerity measures are also questioned.