Former New York City police commissioner Bill Bratton on the UK riots:
A U.S. law enforcement expert who has agreed to help tackle gang violence in Britain in the wake of recent riots in urban centres says the government cannot “arrest their way out” of systemic problems facing the country.
… “Part of the issue going forward is how to make policing more attractive to a changing population,” he told The Associated Press. “Los Angeles and New York have benefited from police forces that “reflect the ethnic makeup of the cities.”
“Almost everything that was done in L.A. successfully can be applied in Britain,” Bratton told the CBC. “When I left L.A. in 2009, almost 70 per cent of the city’s Latino population were rating police performance as good or very good. Two years later, it’s understood if there was a poll today, the ratings would be higher.”
Retiring Toronto deputy police chief Tony Warr on the G20:
“There was a lot of good work done,” Warr said. “Inside the wall, it was like nothing happened,” he said. “That was what the government wanted, and that is what the government asked us to do and we did it.”
…Warr said he doesn’t want to second-guess officers for rounding up 1,100 people in the biggest mass arrest in Canadian history. Only 317 of those people were charged, and a year later, only 24 have been convicted.
And he didn’t want to be drawn into a debate about why police in London, England, have arrested about the same numbers, though there has been far more violence, looting and mayhem there.
“The officers (in Toronto) felt they had grounds to do it, and they did it,” Warr said brusquely.
