Police missed clues about dangers of far right before summer riots in England
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Intelligence gaps, especially around social media analysis, led to failures, report finds. Police intelligence missed clues about the dangers posed by the far right before the summer riots across England, a police chief has said. Andy Cooke, the chief inspector of constabulary, also said police were too slow to mobilise after disorder broke out, meaning some violence wasworse than it would otherwise have been, with the chance to thwart some of it missed.
In an official report, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) said officers were too often poorly equipped in the face of violence, and some of the 300 police injured had to take themselves to hospital. The report said police had failed to learn lessons on the 2011 riots.
The violence broke out in late July after the murders of three schoolgirls at a dance class in Southport were exploited with false claims about the suspect spread online. The report said police needed to be more robust countering misinformation. Cooke said that should include combating bogus claims from politicians, including Nigel Farage.
The Reform UK leader claimed after the first violence had broken out that the authorities could be hiding important details about the killings. Cooke said: “There were gaps in their intelligence functions, especially around the analysis of social media and other dark web media, and no one understood or could counter the emerging cause and effect of that misinformation and disinformation.
