One of the lead stories on the BBC News this morning was “Police in training for ‘Mumbai-style’ gun attack in UK“.  This reported that:

“UK security chiefs have ordered an acceleration in police training to prepare for any future “Mumbai-style” gun attack in a public place.

A series of counter-terrorism exercises are being held with police marksmen training alongside units of the SAS.

Police armed response units are also being given more powerful weapons.”

There is no doubt that this issue is one of the current preoccupations of those concerned with security on the British mainland (and indeed elsewhere in Europe).  There is also no doubt about how difficult this would be to cope with given the current style of British policing.

Most police officers here are unarmed.  Even in London, where the Metropolitan Police has a higher proportion of armed officers than elsewhere (mainly because of static protection responsibility around embassies, Government buildings, Heathrow airport etc), only around one in ten officers are authorised ever to carry guns and the areas where there are routine armed patrols are very limited.

In Mumbai, over a three-day period in November 2008, ten terrorists operating in pairs with automatic weapons, improvised explosive devices, equipped with GPS and apparently communicating with a remote controller by mobile telephone, killed 173 people and wounded 308.  They applied hit and run tactics, were opportunistic, took hostages and established defensible positions.

By contrast,earlier this year in Cumbria, a lone individual, Derrick Bird, armed with two non-automatic weapons went on a killing spree which left twelve dead and a similar number seriously wounded before he killed himself.

Gross that tally up with more gunmen, automatic weaponry in a more populous area and the scale of what is possible becomes apparent.  For any Western democracy, planning a strategy to deal with a ruthless heavily armed coordinated attack in a populous city is no easy task.

Current training does not equip the police to deliver the sort of response needed to deal with Mumbai-style insurgents.  And it would be the police that would be likely to be the first on the scene.

For those who think Special Forces are the answer, it is worth remembering that the time for any conventional armed forces to be mobilised would be measured in hours –  and this would inevitably mean a very high casualty rate before any intervention could succeed.

It is no surprise therefore that the BBC reports that “David Cameron has taken a personal interest in the problem ever since his first threat assessment given to him when he took office in May.”

And there are real dilemmas.  Even in London – with more armed police to draw on – dealing with multiple mobile attacks would be extremely difficult and police tactics are focused on containing an incident – usually involving a single gunman.  Exchanging fire with heavily armed ruthless gunmen requires military-style engagement and different weapons and ammunition.  Police officers have not previously been trained in this way and not all of the currently armed officers would be suitable for such a task or willing to engage in it.

Such training will take time.

And even when units of suitably trained officers have been created, having them on continuous standby will be expensive and having such units on regular patrol will mark a massive movement away from the traditional vision of unarmed British bobbies-on-the-beat.

Today’s BBC report will no doubt start a public debate on the implications of all this, but the reality is that the face of British policing is likely to be changed forever as a result – particularly if the public expenditure review means that more conventional “traditional” policing has to be cut back to pay for it.

So which senior police officer at New Scotland Yard was receiving an enormous bunch of flowers this morning?

Apparently, three London Boroughs in London (Kensington and Chelsea; Westminster; Hammersmith and Fulham) are in talks about merging all their services under a single Chief Executive.  This is expected to save up to £100 million per annum.

However, one area where there won’t be savings is in the number of elected members.  This means that the new single Chief Executive will report to three separate groupings of elected councillors (one for each Borough) with three separate Leaders.

At present there are 160 local councillors in the three Boroughs.  They are paid an iondividual allowance of between £8,940 and £10,597 each, with many getting special responsibility allowances on top ranging up to £54,227 for the Leader of Kensington and Chelsea.

All in all the basic allowances cost around £1.5 million per year with perhaps the same again on top for special allowances and other expenses.

You would have thought there would have been some savings there in the new merged authority, wouldn’t you?

Or is that Conservative politicians are only interested in cutting jobs if it affects other people?

Just back from the King’s Head in Upper Street in Islington, now re-branded as London’s Little Opera House – or as they insist on telling us the first new Opera House in London for 40 years. Rossini’s ‘Barber of Seville’ has been transformed into ‘The Barber of Salisbury’ in Robin Norton-Hale’s clever new translation with a liberal smattering of Jane Austen thrown into the libretto (‘a fact universally acknowledged’ makes it into Figaro’s opening aria, although in this version ‘a single man who possesses a good fortune more often wants a mistress’).
It’s all great fun, performed with much verve (to say nothing of much sweat – it is a very intimate venue) with some powerful voices – and no ticket more than £15 (a tad less than the Royal Opera or the ENO).

This afternoon members of the Metropolitan Police Authority had a presentation from the Metropolitan Police’s Dog Support Unit and were introduced to a spaniel trained to search out firearms and a labrador trained to look for narcotics.  These dogs do hugely important work for Londoners but it was interesting that colleagues seemed much happier to be sniffed by the spaniel than the labrador.  Now why was this?

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, has issued an important reminder about specialist policing in an article in today’s Sunday Telegraph.  In it he highlights the valuable work of the Central e-Crime Unit based in the Metropolitan Police, saying:

“Four criminals obtained the personal financial details of hundreds of people, allowing them to identify up to £8 million they could steal. They siphoned off £750,000 from 64 victims before police arrested them.

My earlier post about the disappearance of Sir (now Lord) Ian Blair’s portrait from the rogues’ gallery of former Commissioners was picked up earlier this week by the Guardian Diary.

Today they report the results of their inquiries:

“the answer from Scotland Yard is that they have been forced to take the painting into protective custody. Vulnerable to accidents or perhaps to the whims of the malicious, it needs a covering, officials say. Thus, it will be missing for a few more weeks. But here’s the thing. While most of the portraits of commissioners, from Robert Peel to Lord Blair’s predecessor Lord Stevens, have glass coverings of different descriptions, the portrait of Lord Condon, who stepped down in 2000 and survived the turbulence of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, has no apparent covering and yet would appear to have survived the years unmarked and untroubled. But then, few there speak ill of him.”

The Metropolitan Police Authority is in session and Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM is in the Chair.  He set the tone by announcing that there was a lot on the agenda and he wanted everyone to be “snappy”.  He assured the Authority that that was the way he would chair the meeting – so nothing new there.  He’s always “snappy”, as John Biggs AM discovered when he had the temerity to ask how questions to the Commissioner would be handled and got told rather tersely “I was just about to tell you that”.

It is also apparent that Kit Malthouse is irritated when he is called the DCiC (Dog-Catcher-in-Chief).  Today, he offered Authority members his own preferred acronym and let them know that in future he wants to be called the DMP (Deputy Mayor for Policing).  This has a snappy feel to it and he clearly likes it.  Someone (well, actually it was me) suggested that he should now be call the DuMP.  It will come in very handy, as in the phrases “City Hall DuMP”, “DuMP and DuMPer” or “The Deputy Mayor takes a ….”.

Another source of irritation for the DuMP is usually Jenny Jones AM.  Indeed before she had even opened her mouth his snappiness over her asking him at a previous session what meetings he’d been to led to him telling the Authority that in the last three months “he’d had literally dozens of meetings with people ranging from Secretaries of State to community groups, so -Jenny – I’ve been busy”.

However, he kept his irritation in check when Jenny Jones did speak and asked about what he could tell the Authority about the sudden dropping of a police inquiry into off-street parking in Westminster.  He immediately said he didn’t know anything about it and it would have been quite improper for him to have been involved in the dropping of such an inquiry, whether as DuMP, Chair of the Police Authority or in any other capacity.  A comprehensive answer that left unanswered what Jenny Jones was getting at.  Either it was an inept attempt to smear him or we are going to hear a lot more about it soon.

My good friend Len Duvall AM, Chair of the London Labour Party, has just told Ed Miliband that ‘the hopes and aspirations of Londoners are on his shoulders’.
So that’s no pressure then.

The controversial £9,000 portrait of former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir (now Lord) Ian Blair, has disappeared from its place in the “rogues’ gallery” of former Commissioners on the fifth floor of New Scotland Yard.

Have the Met’s finest been scrambled to recover it?

No sign, so far.

There is not even any dangling bits of Crime Scene tape and only two lonely looking picture hooks adorn the customary place of honour of the disappearing picture.

Asking around, I only heard three theories to explain the disappearance.

The first is that the picture had been removed on the orders of Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM, Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, in a modern-day equivalent of the air-brushing from pictures of those who fell from grace during Stalin’s purges.

The second is that the painting had been hung without glass in front of it and the suggestion is that it is felt that to avoid any flying-coffee-cup incidents the painting should be re-framed and re-hung with appropriate protection. 

And the final one – most intriguingly – is that the painting needs some re-touching.  In the original painting Ian Blair is pictured next to an ornate engraved glass bowl.  I am told that the only words visible on the bowl are:

“could have done better“

and it is thought that a more suitable message for posterity is needed.