Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation

POLICING CHALLENGES
“The UK and other Western nations had
been slow to read the signs throughout the
1990s as radical Islamist-inspired terrorism
began to wreak havoc around the world.”
weeks, approval for over £60 million of
additional in year expenditure saw the
beginning of a lasting change in the way
the UK counter terrorism machinery is
configured and operates.
At this time, UK counter terrorism
remained very much geared to deal with
a domestic extremist threat, mainly from
Irish republican terrorist groups. Although
the Good Friday Agreement had been
signed in Belfast some 30 months earlier
on 10 April 1998, the peace process was
still in its infancy and the UK had not
been motivated towards a reorientation
of its counter terrorism philosophy in the
light of the emerging new threat from
international Islamist-inspired terrorism.
A growing threat
Looking back, these initial steps were
but a drop in the ocean and a full
appreciation of what needed to be done
had not yet developed. However, this
began to change as the UK and its allies
‘retuned’ its intelligence radar into the
Islamist threat. Within a year we saw the
beginning of a period where the UK
would discover wave after wave of serious
and credible attacks were being planned.
This period (2002 -2009) marked the
time when the UK fundamentally
re-engineered its counter terrorism
capability to one which is admired and
emulated around the world.
The so-called ‘Ricin poisoning plot’ of
2002 led to a police operation in which
four officers were stabbed, one fatally, by
a terrorist suspect. He was later convicted
of the murder of a police officer and of
terrorism offences based on evidence
indicating he was in the early stages of
planning a bioterrorism attack on the
London underground system.
In 2004 another conspiracy was
uncovered, colloquially named the ‘Gas
– Limousine’ plot where evidence was
uncovered of a developing plan to use gas
canister-filled stretch limousines to attack
economic key sites in New York and
potentially London.
That same year ‘Operation Crevice’
revealed a large network of mainly UKbased
extremists who had procured half
a ton of ammonium nitrate and were
planning a fertiliser-based lorry bomb
attack. Potential targets included the
Bluewater shopping centre in Kent.
These operations resulted in numerous
arrests and subsequent convictions. These
were just some of the most high-profile
terrorism investigations at the time,
behind the scenes the strengthening
intelligence machinery was beginning
to identify other individuals and groups
in the UK who were apparently intent
on encouraging, inciting, supporting or
participating in attacks in the UK or
against our interests overseas or our allies.
A number of other security service
and police operations had disrupted or
otherwise prevented terrorist attacks in
circumstances where it was not possible
to bring a criminal case before the courts.
To this day not all aspects of the threats
identified can be made public but in
2007 the Director General of the British
Security Service MI5 made reference in
a speech to “over 2,000 people in the UK
who posed a threat to national security,”
and indicated the number was increasing.
Major escalation
In July 2005, the murderous attacks on
the London transport system brought
home the cold reality, that despite
enormous efforts to strengthen the UK
counter terrorism machinery, the threat
was growing and attacks were now getting
through and innocent lives were being
lost. The use of suicide bomb tactics in
the UK added to the sense of urgency
that more needed to be done.
This marked a major escalation in
the response with new anti-terror laws
being passed which created new offences
aimed at those who encouraged, incited
and supported terrorism and introduced
measures such as ‘control orders’
(now revised and renamed as terrorist,
prevention and investigation measures
(TPIMs)). These restricted the movements
and activities of those in respect of whom
secret intelligences sources revealed an
overwhelming case that they were a threat
to national security but against whom it
was not possible to bring a prosecution
due to technical evidential issues or
without compromising sources or covert
methods to the wider detriment of UK
national security.
Developing the National Counter
Terrorism Network
New and much greater investments were
now authorised by government to further
develop capability. In this period the
police and the security service began to
develop the concept of what we call today
the National Counter Terrorism Network,
an integrated police and security service
capability with joint regional operational
and intelligence hubs throughout the
country.
As this network developed, both the
security service and the police were able to
double the number of personnel working
directly within the counter terrorism
capability. Fully operational Counter
Terrorism Units were established in three
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