Latest news with #civilunrest
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Elite police unit to monitor social media for anti-migrant posts
An elite unit of detectives is being convened to monitor social media for anti-migrant posts. The National Internet Intelligence Investigations team will operate from the National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC) in Westminster, drawing officers from forces across England and Wales. The unit will be tasked with flagging early signs of potential civil unrest and 'maximizing social media intelligence', after last year's riots exposed gaps in police planning. Home Office ministers say it will give local commanders national support to spot and respond to online threats. The move comes as protests outside asylum hotels spread across the country. On Saturday, crowds gathered in Norwich, Leeds and Bournemouth to demand action, with further demonstrations planned. Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner warned the Cabinet that ministers must tackle 'the real concerns that people have' about immigration to prevent disorder. Critics seized on the plan, branding it 'disturbing' and warning of free‑speech infringements. Shadow home secretary Chris Philp accused the Government of trying 'to police what you post, what you share, what you think' because it 'can't police the streets' itself. 'Labour have stopped pretending to fix Britain and started trying to mute it,' he added, accusing ministers of favouring surveillance over frontline policing. The NPoCC, which led the nationwide police response to Covid lockdowns under Operation Talla, will co‑ordinate the new unit. Details of the unit emerged in a letter to MPs from Dame Diana Johnson, the policing minister, published before parliament's summer recess and were revealed by The Telegraph. She confirmed ministers were acting on recommendations from the Commons Home Affairs Committee and His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, both of which urged a nationally co‑ordinated social‑media monitoring capability. Dame Diana wrote that the new team 'will provide a national capability to monitor social media intelligence and advise on its use to inform local operational decision‑making,' helping forces to manage public‑safety threats and risks. While initial funding runs until 2026, she said future support would depend on spending priorities. A Home Office spokesman said: 'This new team will help police forces track real-time information and protect communities from incidents and emergencies before they escalate. 'As part of the government's Plan for Change, we are restoring visible, neighbourhood policing, focused on the public's priorities, including halving knife crime and violence against women, clamping down on theft and anti-social behaviour, and ensuring that people can feel safe in their own high streets.'
The Independent
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Elite police unit to monitor social media for anti-migrant posts
An elite unit of detectives is being convened to monitor social media for anti-migrant posts. The National Internet Intelligence Investigations team will operate from the National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC) in Westminster, drawing officers from forces across England and Wales. The unit will be tasked with flagging early signs of potential civil unrest and 'maximizing social media intelligence', after last year's riots exposed gaps in police planning. Home Office ministers say it will give local commanders national support to spot and respond to online threats. The move comes as protests outside asylum hotels spread across the country. On Saturday, crowds gathered in Norwich, Leeds and Bournemouth to demand action, with further demonstrations planned. Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner warned the Cabinet that ministers must tackle 'the real concerns that people have' about immigration to prevent disorder. Critics seized on the plan, branding it 'disturbing' and warning of free‑speech infringements. Shadow home secretary Chris Philp accused the Government of trying 'to police what you post, what you share, what you think' because it 'can't police the streets' itself. 'Labour have stopped pretending to fix Britain and started trying to mute it,' he added, accusing ministers of favouring surveillance over frontline policing. The NPoCC, which led the nationwide police response to Covid lockdowns under Operation Talla, will co‑ordinate the new unit. Details of the unit emerged in a letter to MPs from Dame Diana Johnson, the policing minister, published before parliament's summer recess. She confirmed ministers were acting on recommendations from the Commons Home Affairs Committee and His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, both of which urged a nationally co‑ordinated social‑media monitoring capability. Dame Diana wrote that the new team 'will provide a national capability to monitor social media intelligence and advise on its use to inform local operational decision‑making,' helping forces to manage public‑safety threats and risks. While initial funding runs until 2026, she said future support would depend on spending priorities. A Home Office spokesman said: 'This new team will help police forces track real-time information and protect communities from incidents and emergencies before they escalate. 'As part of the government's Plan for Change, we are restoring visible, neighbourhood policing, focused on the public's priorities, including halving knife crime and violence against women, clamping down on theft and anti-social behaviour, and ensuring that people can feel safe in their own high streets.'
Washington Post
6 days ago
- Washington Post
D.C. police chief halted firings of officers in fatal chase, report says
After two D.C. police officers were convicted of federal crimes stemming from an improper vehicle chase that killed a young Black man and sparked civil unrest in the city, the department's disciplinary division recommended that both men be fired, a decision that 'was not a close call' given the strong evidence against them, according to a new report by the Office of the D.C. Auditor.
Telegraph
6 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Policing must be seen to be even-handed
The first of Robert Peel's nine principles of policing, set out as long ago as 1829, is 'to prevent crime and disorder as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment'. The then Home Secretary was responding to the great fear of the authorities in the aftermath of the French Revolution: the mob. Once disorder gets a hold, dealing with it becomes increasingly difficult, requiring recourse to the Army, as happened in Northern Ireland in 1969. The simmering resentment felt in parts of the country about the way illegal migrants have been imposed on communities with no consultation whatsoever is not yet at that level. But as Nigel Farage said this week, we may be on the edge of serious civil disobedience, yet no longer possess the means to contain it. We depend on the police to keep matters under control, though in truth much of the fault lies with the Government. Labour promised that hotels would no longer be employed to house illegal immigrants and yet they are now being used more than ever. In Epping, a hotel has become a target for local protests by people no longer prepared to accept scores of young men being foisted on them. The residents are exercising their rights to object to a set of circumstances over which they have no control and about which they were never consulted. When they hear themselves described as racist thugs they are entitled to feel aggrieved. Essex Police, which has been criticised for the way it has handled days of protests, claims to have been even-handed. But by escorting pro-migrant demonstrators to the hotel, essentially to confront local people, the force's impartiality is open to question. Moreover, it has unwittingly encouraged extremists from the Left and Right to descend on Epping to cause the very trouble the police are meant to prevent. The force must be seen to act in an even-handed way while ensuring the two sides do not end up fighting one another in the streets. No one pretends this is easy but it will require the sort of adept policing that has not been the forte of Essex constabulary, to put it charitably. In the end, the fault lies with the abject failure of the Home Office to find realistic alternatives to hotels for migrants who have crossed the Channel. It is time the ex-military camps, that were once going to be used to incarcerate and process the arrivals, were reopened.
The Independent
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Angela Rayner's critique of Labour's performance is short on solutions
Angela Rayner has a reputation for being forthright – and, according to the 'readout' of the last cabinet meeting before the summer recess, she has had some punchy things to say to her colleagues about the state of the nation. Reflecting on the riots that swept the country after the Southport tragedy almost a year ago, Ms Rayner is blunt about the government's collective performance. The official summary, itself a bowlderised version of her remarks, records her comprehensive critique about the causes of the civil unrest: 'Economic insecurity, the rapid pace of de-industrialisation, immigration and the impacts on local communities and public services, technological change and the amount of time people were spending alone online, and declining trust in institutions was having a profound impact on society.' Those factors were certainly at play in the riots last July, and are still in evidence now, notably in Epping, the Essex market town where an asylum seeker has been charged with sexual assault. There have since been signs of trouble at another hotel requisitioned by the Home Office for migrant accommodation, in Diss in Norfolk. As has been noted, these are the kind of 'tinderbox' conditions that the authorities need to treat with great care, and which have already resulted, in the case of Epping, in agitators turning up, and in unjustified attacks on the police. Ms Rayner is right to confront her colleagues, and indeed her own department, responsible as it is for 'communities', about the frustrations felt by the public and the widespread disaffection that will continue to build unless the government 'delivers' some tangible evidence of the 'change' in their lives promised by Labour at the last general election. This is most obviously so over immigration, though not confined to it, and the slow progress in 'smashing the gangs', ending the use of hotels to house migrants, and clearing the backlog of claims the government inherited. Where Ms Rayner may be faulted is in making such concerns so public at such a sensitive time – in the context of a palpable sense of unrest and the threat of another round of summer rioting. That is the context of her words. Obviously, she has no intention of having her implicit warnings about more riots be in any way a self-fulfilling prophecy, let alone inciting non-peaceful protest, but that may well be their practical effect. The timing of what she said is unfortunate and clumsy. At a moment when Nigel Farage – who is shameless about exploiting grievances – is stirring things up with overheated claims that 'we're actually facing, in many parts of the country, nothing short of societal collapse ' – this is no time to be adding to the sense of unease. With no sense of irony, given the tacit encouragement Mr Farage offers to the protesters, the Reform UK leader talks about 'lawless Britain' where 'criminals don't particularly respect the police and they're acting in many cases with total impunity'. The Essex police, faced as they are with an impossible job of controlling a mob and in enforcing the law impartially as it stands, will not have thanked Mr Farage for his words. Still less will they welcome Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who intends to descend on Epping in the coming days, with all that entails. Ms Rayner ought not to be adding her voice to these sorts of tensions. The other, wider criticism of Ms Rayner's reported assessment is that she is long on analysis but short on solutions. She rightly says that Britain is a 'successful, multi-ethnic, multi-faith country', and that 'the government had to show it had a plan to address people's concerns and provide opportunities for everyone to flourish'. For her part, she is going to produce her own Plan for Neighbourhoods, but she must also take her share of the blame – there is no better word – for the government's collective failure to create a sense that it has a cohesive plan or programme for government to solve the various challenges she identifies. One year on, there is still a sense that the government lacks a 'narrative' of what it is doing and why. People wish to see progress and understand how the sacrifices they make in paying higher taxes will prove worth it. The tangled web of 'missions', 'tasks' and 'priorities' that Sir Keir Starmer weaved as he entered government last year has not so much unravelled as been forgotten. Irregular migration, stagnant living standards, the public finances and the NHS, again facing renewed and deeply damaging industrial action, are intractable challenges that successive governments have been defeated by, and they will inevitably take time and resources to improve. The public needs to be reassured about that. As Ms Rayner indicates: 'It is incumbent on the government to acknowledge the real concerns people have and to deliver improvements to people's lives and their communities.' The good news for Sir Keir, Ms Rayner and their colleagues is that, riots or not, they still have three to four years to show that this Labour government works. If not, then they know how disastrous the consequences could be, because they were inflicted on the Conservatives not so long ago.
