The bomb attacks in London on 7 July significantly changed the policing landscape and heralded a new era, ACPO President Chris Fox writes in the current issue of the Association’s journal, Policing Today.
Mr Fox says that in light of the attacks the Police Service: "must prepare for action across the whole country. We must organise differently, train differently and deal with our minority communities differently. These people can and will strike elsewhere. We already know that they plan, prepare and plot across the country. We must develop a co-ordinated policing response, filling intelligence gaps, developing new tactics in the light of shared knowledge and deploying to disrupt their murderous enterprise, reassuring all whilst winning the confidence of a Muslim community who are horrified by the attacks yet naturally nervous of what mass reaction might be."
The journal also features articles on the aftermath of the July bombings by Ken Jones, the Chief Constable of Sussex and the Chairman of ACPO’s Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee, who outlines the police’s strategy to counter terrorism and by former BBC home Affairs Correspondent Jon Silverman, who considers the impact on policing methods and relations with Muslim communities.
Contributors also include John Vine, the Chief Constable of Tayside, who writes about the policing operation to safeguard the G8 Summit, Gloucestershire Chief Constable Tim Brain on people trafficking, Jim Gamble, Deputy Director of the National Crime Squad, on a new initiative to combat child abuse on the internet, and articles by Dave Werrett, Chief Executive of Forensic Science Service and Jane Earl, Director of the Assets Recovery Agency. Other articles look at Crime and Disorder Partnerships, the work of the RUC GC Foundation and, in Sue Dauncey’s regular column on legal matters, the courts’ approach to the use of the Anti Social Behaviour Act.
