British Police to Use American Tactics against Protesters

Police forces in Britain are due to use American methods to suppress protests in the country as British Prime Minister David Cameron’s new advisor said that such methods may work in Britain.
Bill Bratton, the former Boston, New York and Los Angeles police chief, who is to begin advising Cameron in September about his experiences in dealing with gang crime and street violence, said that some of the crime-fighting methods used in the United States might also work in Britain.

After withering criticism of his leadership during the unrest that recently swept across Britain, Cameron decided to hire US “supercop” Bill Bratton to help the Tory-led coalition government handle the crisis.

“I’m being hired by the British government to consult with them on the issue of gangs, gang violence, and gang intervention from the American experience and to offer some advice and counsel on their experience,” Bratton said.

The unrest in Britain began on August 6 in the North London suburb of Tottenham after a few hundred people gathered outside a police station to protest the fatal police shooting of a black man, Mark Duggan.

The country’s worst unrests since the 1980s has spilled over into major cities like Birmingham, Liverpool, and Bristol.

Hundreds of people have been arrested and hundreds more have been injured by the British security and police troops, while five people have been killed since the start of protests in the country.