Former New York and Los Angeles police chief Bill Bratton will advise the British government on tackling the street gangs blamed for the violence that raged nationwide this week. Bratton, who had private talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday, said there are lessons from the United States that were relevant to the situation in England. Bratton, who since 2009 has worked for private security consultancy Altegrity and its subsidiary Kroll, is seen as having taken bold steps to cut crime rates in New York and Los Angeles.
Bratton said he believed the British government could overcome the problem, adding: "I support their resolve to seize upon this difficult situation as an opportunity to address the issues of gangs and gang violence and the resulting fear and disorder head-on." Meanwhile, Cameron has angered some senior police officers by saying he thought that initially there were "simply far too few police deployed onto the streets" in London, and that "the tactics they were using weren't working."
"Police chiefs have been frank with me about why this happened," he said Thursday. "Initially, the police treated the situation too much as a public order issue rather than essentially one of crime."
| As was noted at Instapundit, the British are policing everything except crime... |
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