Examination of Witness (Questions 360-379)
SIR PAUL
STEPHENSON AND
COMMANDER BOB
BROADHURST
19 MAY 2009
Q360 David Davies: Is it true, though,
that officers suffered verbal abuse, that missiles were being
thrown at them over a period of eight hours and that, in some
cases, I have heard that human excrement and urine was thrown
at officers as well? Are all of these roughly accurate?
Commander Broadhurst: Certainly
the first ones. As to the excrement and urine I understand there
are allegations that some urine was thrown, but we have no evidence
of that, and probably unlikely. Excrement I have not heard of,
no. Certainly, yes, a number of officers—again not all—on
those cordons would have come under some form of physical attack,
certainly some verbal abuse but, as we have seen from Mr Brake's
report, many of them would have had a fairly peaceful time, depending
on where they were in that vicinity. Certainly those on the cordons,
at some stage, would have come under some form of abuse, if not
attack.
Q361 David Davies: Obviously, we
are all agreed, that anybody who deliberately hid their numbers
should suffer disciplinary procedures. Is it at all possible that
in the rush to get on protective clothing, which I think was given
out at some point during the protests when protesters turned violent,
numbers may have slipped off or that equipment had to be put on
in such a hurry that things may have accidentally been obscured?
Sir Paul Stephenson: If I can
give a brief answer and then I will pass on to Commander Broadhurst,
without undermining at all my statement that it is wholly unacceptable
for any uniformed officer to fail to show their identification—certainly
to deliberately do it—there are issues around the equipment
that we use, and we have now realised that. That is one of the
learning lessons. The flashes that we show on command tabs are
made to go over the epaulette and they can look like tape covering
the numerals. That is something we have learnt. We made a decision
some time ago not to actually embroider the numerals into the
various equipment—we did that on cost grounds. That may
not have been a wise thing in terms of making sure that these
things can constantly be displayed. Thirdly, I would say that
early on in the dispute on Parliament Square with Tamils, I was
out there talking to a police sergeant and, as I was talking to
him, his epaulette was undone and it slid down his shoulder. I
pointed out to him that was not what he wanted to happen when
he was talking to the Commissioner, but these things can happen.
So I make no excuses for anybody if there is any evidence that
anybody deliberately did it, but there are other reasons.
Commander Broadhurst: Certainly,
in the public order work, we are aware of the implications of
officers not being identified, because it gives the impression
that they are trying to cover up their actions, which is clearly
wrong. I had met with a couple of representatives from Climate
Camp the day before, who had again pointed this out to me. Most
protest groups will always point this out to us. Hence, in my
briefings, and I gave personal briefings to all of the supervisors
the day before, I made it clear that I wanted them to make a personal
check of everybody on their unit to ensure they had their insignia
correct. I have spoken to the Commissioner about this; I am satisfied
that I do not think any officer deliberately tries to cover up—in
this day and age they would be extremely naive to think they could
get away with something like that—but (and you make the
correct point) any officer in a public order situation, during
the course of any given day, could be expected to have, potentially,
five different outer garments from a shirt to a Met vest, to a
yellow jacket, to protective overalls, and so on. We only issue
them with one pair of epaulettes with metal numbers on, and I
am sure that sometimes in that process they do miss bits. Again,
when this issue was raised with me we challenged at least one
television company to go through their footage and identify how
many officers they could see without their numerals on; they could
not find any. Again, from Mr Brake's report, someone did ask you
that there were officers without numerals and you could not find
them. There will be some in a crowd and I suspect in the majority
of those it is because they have changed, something has dropped
off or they have fallen. It is an organisational issue but because
our officers move around probably, on average, two or three years
from one unit, perhaps, to another, from one borough, and so on,
to go to the cost of embroidering their divisional number, which
will then have to change, is a cost. I have pointed that out to
the Commissioner and he has asked me to look into that in one
of my other roles as Chair of Clothing Board, for uniforms. Other
forces do it in different ways, but they do not have the same
type of identification in terms of numbers. I think it is not
an officer issue it is an organisational issue that I need to
look into.
Q362 David Davies: Finally, there
is a perception in the minds of some members of the public that
officers are only attacked by large, heavily built gentlemen of
a certain age. Can you confirm officers are actually regularly
attacked by people of all sorts of different ages, sexes and sizes,
and if an officer says: "Get back; get back" and somebody
keeps coming towards them, they are perfectly within their rights
to push them back?
Commander Broadhurst: Absolutely.
I am sure, as a Special, you have encountered that. Certainly
some of the worst scratches and facial injuries I have had was
from a teenage girl who was assaulting me whilst I was trying
to sort something else out. It does happen; it will happen all
the time. Officers are trained to deal with the threat, not the
size or age or sex of the individual in front of them; they deal
with the threat in front of them, and the techniques that they
are taught deal with that. I will perhaps speak about those later.
Q363 Gwyn Prosser: Regardless of
the merits of the tactics used—the "kettling"
and the use of the Territorial Support Group—would you accept
that, even with hindsight, the actions taken and the actions we
have seen on our television screens, etc, have hugely alienated
a great group of ordinary people who, ordinarily, would have been
naturally supportive of the police in any of these sort of actions.
Have not errors been made?
Sir Paul Stephenson: Firstly,
I will not go beyond the debate I had earlier about my comments
regarding my concern over the imagery of the actions of a small
number of officers, but it is that, and I wait to let the inquiry
judge the actions. However, I think it is fair to say that the
presentation of that, and the way in which that video evidence
looks, does stand the potential of damaging public confidence.
I think that is a fair comment.
Q364 Gwyn Prosser: Finally—from
me anyway—in this day and age where just about everyone
carries a mobile `phone and just about every mobile `phone has
a video or camera, should not part of the training of police officers
coming into those circumstances be: "Don't do anything; don't
take any action that you are not prepared to see later on the
video screen"?
Sir Paul Stephenson: I think that
has been part and parcel of the training—not on mobile `phones,
I hasten to add—since I joined the job. I think the training
is: "Don't act unlawfully; don't act unprofessionally".
I think it is just an extension of that, and as technology changes
there are different ways and many more opportunities for people
to be caught behaving badly if they choose to behave badly. It
is just an extension of professionalism.
Q365 Chairman: Commander Broadhurst,
can I turn to you now, but, Commissioner, please chip in whenever
you wish to. We are going to look at the actual events of the
day. You have had a long and distinguished career as the Gold
Commander of many events, including the marriage of the Prince
of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, so policing the G20 must
have been something—I was going to say something quite similar
but, of course, it is something quite different. How would you
rate the performance of the police? The Commissioner was very
reluctant to give the police marks out of ten. If you were self-assessing
yourself, how would you rate the performance of your team?
Commander Broadhurst: I think
G20 was marginally easier to police than the wedding which, if
you remember, had its own distractions at the time, for a number
of reasons. Again, I would be reluctant to mark myself; the Commissioner
and Chris Allison will do that for me. I would actually say that
the performance of the police officers—I would not give
them a scale out of ten because you will only hold me to ransom
over it—I thought they were superb throughout the week,
restrained, certainly in the face of provocation on 1 April, and
again, on occasions, on 2 April. Clearly, there are areas of concern,
as the Commissioner has said, which are rightly being investigated—and
quite rightly so—but, as we have heard, in any areas of
provocation when we have people abusing us, attacking us and throwing
things at us, we look for restraint. I had asked for restraint
in policing, again in those briefings, because of my concerns
with how some of this was building up in the media, and for the
most part I saw that. Whilst, clearly, every individual officer
must be held to account for his or her actions, for the most part
what I have seen on television were only the types of tactics,
in terms of techniques, that I train them down at Gravesend. So
we have heard of open-strike techniques. Now, there is one that
is being investigated I cannot go into, but I have seen open-hand
strike techniques, I have seen strikes to the backs of legs, I
have seen push-aways with shields—I have not seen anything
that has particularly concerned me in the overall of what I train
officers to do in difficult and challenging situations. Having
said that, each one of them, as individuals, has to account for
themselves, which is why, at the end of each of those shifts,
despite the fact that many of them have been on duty for in excess
of 20 hours, when they get back to whichever base they have come
from, they then write copious notes as to what force they have
used. Sometimes those notes, in the confusion, do not always bear
exact relevance to what they have done, but we do ask them to
sit down, and say: "If you have used any degree of force
at all today—be it the use of a baton, a shield, open-hand
technique, or anything else—if you were trying to protect
yourself or colleagues, you must write it down." It is for
each and every individual officer to account for their actions.
I must say, that what I have seen, and I can only speak for myself
as the officer in command of public order, our officers did what
I had asked them to do under very challenging conditions.
Q366 Chairman: We are looking, as
a Committee, at other jurisdictions and comparing it to policing
in the United Kingdom, particularly in London. We have got the
Olympics coming up, obviously, for which you are also the Gold
Commander. If you were looking at a comparison—and I know
it may be difficult because you deal with these people on an international
basis—the way in which we police great events like the G20
and other countries (for example, the French or Swiss police—events
that happen there), which country would you suggest we look at
to see a different approach to the approach that you adopt here?
Commander Broadhurst: Practically
every country in the world is different to us. I think we are
probably one of the few jurisdictions where, in our response to
all policing, but certainly when it gets to disorder, I do not
have at my disposal anything to give me distance control. You
will see other forces, including PSNI (Police Service of Northern
Ireland), who use water cannon, they may use tear gas and they
will regularly make use of what used to be called "baton
guns" and have now been given a new name. (I will call them
"baton guns" because I think we understand that.) Although
we have access to baton guns (now called AEPs) we have never used
them on the mainland in a disorder situation because of the implications,
which means we, as a service, come toe-to-toe far quicker, probably,
than any other police jurisdiction in the world. That was one
of the learning points from Parliament Square in 2004. We were
charged, as one of the IPCC recommendations, to look at greater
distance control, and although we have talked about and looked
at the use of water cannon, I see no appetite in this country
for having water cannons in Parliament Square to keep crowds back,
which does then mean that we put our officers and our specials
and others in that very invidious situation of being toe-to-toe
with sometimes a violent and antagonistic crowd, and then having
to work out who are the decent people and who are those that are
trying to attack me. That is why I say I am incredibly proud of
the way the Metropolitan Police, the City Police and BTP—and
Sussex Police, because they were there helping us as well—managed
that very difficult situation on 1 April. To put 1 April in context,
whilst, clearly, it has caused us concern and is why I am here
now and speaking to HMI and others—and quite rightly, to
learn the lessons—if you put the disorder and violence that
was seen that day into the context of other demonstrations such
as Poll Tax, May Day in 2001, it is nowhere near on that scale.
I think, again, if this Committee were to look back at the media
coverage on the day, you would see most leader commentators saying:
"This is pretty low-key; it is not building into what we
thought it would; the police have been quite restrained and, in
fact, have come under attack themselves", and you will see
lots of footage of police officers wearing flat caps and ordinary
beat helmets. My view of life is this all changed, clearly, after
the death of Mr Tomlinson, which is clearly very sad and needs
to be investigated, but what we have seen since is the media and
others only honing in on the officers in full kit, responding
in the way that I have trained them, and the actual day itself,
which passed off relatively unscathed, is not commented on. The
other thing I think I need to put into context—you spoke
about other events that I have done—is I would say that
this week of the G20 (if that is what we are going to call it)
was probably the most complex policing event the Metropolitan
Police and our partners have undertaken, certainly in my length
of service. What many people forget is that the issues that we
are talking about, quite rightly (and we need to learn the lessons)
were only a small part of a very challenging week, as the Commissioner
has said. If you think of the other events, we had the State visit
of the President of Mexico, the first visit outside the United
States of the new President of America, the Heads of 20 other
nations; we had, on the day of the events that we are talking
about, 19 demonstrations, in 17 of which the organisers came and
spoke to us and we had no problems with; two did not and we had
problems with (that is a very important point that I will come
back to); we had 14 demonstrations the following day and, of course,
the G20 summit. The backdrop to everything that we are talking
about here on disorder, for me as the Gold Commander, I had 20
of the world's top leaders, we had 48 protected people in all
and we had run out of protection officers and escort officers,
and we had to go to mutual aid outside London.
Chairman: It sounds like an extraordinarily
difficult operation. Can I ask colleagues to ask questions briefly
and, also, the witnesses, if you could be brief in your answers?
Would you prefer these events not to happen in London? Would it
be better to take them to some remote place and get the leaders
to fly in on their helicopters, or whatever, or swim there, if
necessary, if we are being environmentally sound? Far away from
the metropolis to enable it to be policed in a different way.
Would that be a better suggestion?
Q367 Mr Winnick: I would suggest
Leicester myself!
Commander Broadhurst: Not necessarily.
I think we, in the metropolis—the Met Police, the City and
BTP—are used to handling these big events. I do have a concern,
that is documented, that we were not consulted on the venue itself
nor on the date, which did cause us some concerns. At the end
of the day, we can police it. My own view is this may have been
better placed in a more secure central London building—Lancaster
House, for instance, or others—but wherever you put this,
any other force would face the same kind of issues that we have.
Q368 Chairman: And the cost, in the
end? What was the cost of policing the G20?
Commander Broadhurst: The latest
cost—and bear in mind that there is a drag factor as we
pick up some of the real costs of overtime and other bits as they
filter in—was in the region of £7.2 million.
Q369 Chairman: To come from where?
The Government or out of your budget?
Sir Paul Stephenson: We have not
yet established precisely from where, Chairman.
Q370 Bob Russell: That is cheaper
than the Tamils!
Sir Paul Stephenson: Can I just
support what Commander Broadhurst has said there? It was a very
challenging security environment at the ExCel centre, but London
is an iconic city that does run extraordinary events, and against
all extraordinary events this was the most extraordinary, and
I think Commander Broadhurst has fairly accurately outlined the
scale of the challenge and what was achieved without undermining
what we have previously said about proper investigation.
Q371 Mr Streeter: I would like to
say well done, Commander Broadhurst. You did not have long to
plan it. If you had longer would you have done anything differently,
and were there any surprises? Did it go according to the plans
you had been able to put in place, or did things take you by surprise?
Commander Broadhurst: I think
had we had longer to plan it we would not have done anything differently,
we would have just had more time to actually get the plans in
place better and more accomplished. There is a difference between
having too much time to plan and too little. Three months was
probably a bit tight, in terms of some of the detail of planning.
So I think, no, we would have stuck to the same plan and, for
the most part, the week panned out as predicted. The summit itself
was a success; the world leaders came and went. I even got a personal
`phone call from the Prime Minister thanking us, which I think
shows the level of concern that there was in government about
the potential for disruption to the summit, and all that goes
with it. We would have done much the same but to have had two
or three more months would probably have been preferable.
Q372 Mr Streeter: Commander Broadhurst,
you mentioned earlier that one of the hard things is working out
who are the decent people and who are those who are going to attack
you. I think this is an issue for all police forces, on any occasion.
We had evidence the last time we met from a young man whose name
I have forgotten, who was sitting down on the floor and was then
punched in the face. Mr Abbott. I believed him. To me, he came
across as a perfectly sensible, decent person who was not a trouble-maker.
If I could just encourage you to read the transcript of the evidence
that he gave, I thought it was very powerful, very believable,
and that is the kind of thing for which the odd officer has to
be held to account, if I may say so.
Commander Broadhurst: I will read
it, sir, and I have read many of the other incidents which, as
the Commissioner has said, cause us concern, which is why we need
to learn and see how we can better improve that particular tactic.
Q373 David Davies: Are there any
alternatives, do you think, to "kettling" if the police
want to work with protesters? I saw on Police Review recently,
there was a report about some country in Europe where they actually
put uniformed officers into crowds of that nature and used them
to try and calm things down a little bit. Have you looked into
any of these alternatives, or do you think "kettling"
is the best way to deal with potentially difficult situations?
Commander Broadhurst: I think,
like everything else, the tactics must fit the situation in front
of you, which is why containment, as we would call it, was not
a pre-determined tactic; it was something that best suited the
circumstances. If you think here, the circumstances are an unlawful
demonstration, four marches moving off without consulting the
police, without authority, as it were, under the Public Order
Act, where the protesters, on their own website, had the declared
intent of "stopping the City". I say "stopping",
not "damaging" or "trashing". At no stage
in advance of this did I talk about violence, but a very clear
intent of "stopping the City". By that, on their sites,
they were quite openly saying they would occupy buildings, clog
up entrances, get into offices, sit on photocopiers, block junctions—stop
the City working—which, in itself, would have caused a great
deal of economic damage, and is patently illegal. The concern
of the City businesses was a return to 1999 and the J18 disturbances
that left £13 million worth of damage. Given that that is
the apparent mindset of the protesters, and given that this is
not an organised protest so to find out about it you have probably
read some of those websites, I think we are entitled to think
that at least a section of that crowd—and the crowd turned
out to be quite decidedly larger than we or the protesters had
anticipated, for whatever reason. The Silver Commander and the
Bronze Commander on the ground took the opportunity that when
the four groups came together, and to be honest I thought they
would do what is, essentially, a European tactic—by meeting
in four places they would have gone off in four different directions
and caused lots of little disturbances that would have stretched
the policing; as it is, for whatever reason, they came together.
My view is, and I support this whole-heartedly, that if their
intention was to cause as much disruption to the City as possible,
containing them is the most sensible option. The only alternative
to containment is dispersal, which is the opposite. In other words,
you push the crowd back and get them to disperse in small groups
so they go their own ways. I have heard some evidence given by
the PSNI that, essentially, that regularly occurs in Northern
Ireland, but of course they do it within estates where people
go back to where they live; what we would be doing would be pushing
people through the City where they have already avowed their intention
to be disruptive. We saw in J18, as we dispersed them (we can
show you video footage) back in 1999, when we got our tactics
wrong, they caused lots of damage as they went; going over Waterloo
Bridge smashing the windows of every car they went past. So there
are alternatives. I would be very reluctant to put police officers
into a potentially violent crowd because I am then putting them
at risk. So there are a number of tactics, but essentially you
come down to either contain your crowd or disperse your crowd,
and on this occasion to have dispersed it would have been manifestly
irresponsible of me because it would have led to the very thing
they wanted to do.
Mr Streeter: Thank you for that very
comprehensive answer.
Q374 Mrs Dean: Commander, are you
satisfied that all the officers on frontline duty on 1 April had
received sufficient training and gained sufficient experience
of policing events of this type?
Commander Broadhurst: No, I am
not. A number of reasons for saying that: first of all, I take
great pride in the way they acted, and I would always stand by
that. The vast majority—clearly one or two need to be investigated,
I do not deny that. However, if you look back at the history of
London we have, very fortunately, not had large-scale disorder
now for a number of years. Parliament Square in 2004 was probably
an outlier and if you go back to 2001, before that, those of you
that remember, if you go through the 1990s or 1980s, we tended
to have summer after summer, almost, of some form of large-scale
disorder. That means I now have a workforce of relatively young
people that we draw from bear in mind we do not have riot police,
as some commentators would have; these are officers taken from
the borough environment, one day policing Sutton High Street and
the next day called into central London. Our level 2 officers,
that is the public order trained ones, of which I have 2,500,
only now get, because of time constraints on us for training,
two days' training a year. So they get two days' training a year,
and the vast majority of those, I would hazard a guess, have never
faced a situation as violent as that. If you go back earlier in
the year, again, we faced some even more violent situations in
some of the Gaza and Palestinian protests. So I do have a concern
that some of our officers have not faced that. I would like to
train them more but, of course, we just have not got the time
or the ability to train the numbers we need. That is why, again,
I think, that the restraint I saw from officers, who were probably
clearly quite scared, and had perhaps not faced that type of situation
before—and it may also be why one or two of them, as you
have seen on television, may have used inappropriate force at
times. Again, I would say that was probably more fear and lack
of control, whereas our experience in the past is the more we
experience these things the less quick officers are to go to the
use of force, because they understand more the dynamics. So I
do have that concern, and that is for us to work on, obviously,
as a service.
Q375 Mr Winnick: Do you accept that
one of the ways in which it is most important for the public to
have confidence is that any statement issued by the police should
be a reflection of the actual events?
Commander Broadhurst: Absolutely,
sir.
Q376 Mr Winnick: Do you accept at
all that the statement issued by the police on 1 April regarding
Mr Tomlinson's death did not reflect that?
Commander Broadhurst: The statement
issued by the Metropolitan Police? There was only one statement
issued by the Metropolitan Police.
Q377 Mr Winnick: Do you stand by
that statement?
Commander Broadhurst: I wrote
it.
Q378 Mr Winnick: You wrote it, you
take responsibility for it and you in no way consider that it
was inappropriate in any way whatsoever?
Commander Broadhurst: I stand
by my statement, sir, which was this—if I can just go through—
Q379 Chairman: Is it a long statement?
Commander Broadhurst: No.
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