Senior officer sees tough year on demos
originally published:
3rd December 2009
Police chiefs are expecting to deal with a growing number of demonstrations over the next year, a senior officer has said.
Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison, who is charge of public order at the Metropolitan police, said forces had to be “match fit” to cope with demonstrations.
He was speaking at a conference a week after a report criticised the police for heavy-handed methods at demonstrations. In the landmark report, Dennis O’Connor, the chief inspector of constabulary, urged chief constables to abandon “unfair, aggressive and inconsistent” tactics.
The conference in London was organised to help police chiefs draw up a radical, softer approach to handling protests. O’Connor’s review had been launched as a result of the furore over the death of the newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in April.
Allison told the conference: “We acknowledge public confidence has been dented and therefore it is vital that we do all we can for the public to trust us. “I see pressures in terms of public order policing are only going to grow in the next 12 months.”
