Three people have carried out terror attacks in central London, killing 6 and injuring at least 20.
At 22:08 last night, a white van rammed multiple pedestrians on London Bridge. Three attackers then jumped out of the van and stabbed several people. They then drove to Borough Market where another stabbing attack took place in multiple restaurants.
Witnesses reported that the attackers shouted “This is for Allah” and stabbed bystanders with knives. Between the two attacks there were six fatalities.
The three attackers were shot dead by police.
The BBC have reported that a van was driven by a male driver and was “probably travelling at about 50 miles an hour”.
London Ambulance Service Assistant Director of Operations, Peter Rhodes said:
“Our thoughts are with all of those affected by the incident at London Bridge and their friends and family. We took 48 patients to five hospitals across London and treated a number of others at the scene for minor injuries. Police have confirmed that sadly, six people also died at the scene.
We were called to the incident at 10:07pm (Saturday 3 June), with the first ambulance crew arriving within six minutes. We sent over 80 of our medics to the scene including ambulance crews, advanced paramedics, specialist response teams and an advanced trauma team from London’s Air Ambulance.
We declared a major incident and worked closely with other members of the emergency services at the scene. Our priority was to assess patients and ensure that they were treated and taken to hospital as soon as possible. I would like to thank our staff and the other emergency services who responded.
Members of the public who are concerned about friends and relatives should contact the police Casualty Bureau on 0800 096 1233 or 020 7158 0197. As we are still very busy, we would urge the public to only call us in a genuine emergency and to call NHS 111 for urgent healthcare advice.”
British Transport Police have confirmed that an officer has been serious injured:
“We can confirm a British Transport Police officer was injured as he was responding to the terrorist incident at London Bridge last night (Saturday 3 June 2017). The officer was on duty and one of the first on the scene, after he responded to calls for help from the public.
He received injuries to his head, face and leg, which, at this time, are believed to be serious but not life threatening. He is currently being treated in a central London hospital and his family are with him while he receives treatment.”
The Metropolitan Police declared the London Bridge and Borough Market attacks to be “terrorist incidents”. Multiple explosions subsequently heard near Borough Market were confirmed to be controlled explosions.
All police officers should be armed, no ifs no buts. The world has changed so must our police.
The police should be armed relative to the general population. The general population does not have access to firearms, so neither should your average patrol officer.
Most officers don’t want to be armed.
Public safety is the priority not what most officers want.
Hi Mike
I have several police friends who are serving and ex officers and the majority do not want to be armed with firearms.
We need to respect their wishes as the police in this country are the best trained in the world in de-escalation.
I do feel that more armed officers are required, but actually we need a more fundamental change, not only because of terrorism but also due to the nature of modern crime.
The UK should have a single force (FBI style) for undercover and detective work (Murders in Soham and Cumbria were not managed well by local detectives – a UK wide organisation with skills to be applied at point of need anywhere is best)
This needs to be circa 40k officer strong and not the 2-4K of the NCA (which would seem to be the organisation we would expand.
A single force structure for Eng, Scot, NI and Wales with no county borders but have organisational unit instead. This force should also be increased and a remit for community policing and intelligence gathering as I fear we have lost the ability to understand our communities never mind understand what is happening in them. I would also place police stations in schools to get kids to know the police and their work.
And Lastly, we probably do need more armed police but actually an 8 minute response is incredible in almost all circumstance.
Get another job then ,your job has moved on….
It’s worth considering, but according to reports this morning all 3 suspects were shot dead by armed police within 8 minutes of them receiving the first call. Would having an all-armed force have been faster to react, and save more lives?
There are plenty of ifs and buts.
What if that means that the extra overheads of training and regular re-certification of all officers means fewer officers available to deploy?
What if lone officers become a target for criminals and terrorists just because of their guns (that is a reality today in some countries) which would probably make things worse? We already saw that episode a few years ago when a guy ambushed that woman police officer and killed her (in the Manchester area?) . That guy was disturbed but if he could do it then how easy would it be for terrorists to do it to arm themselves before going on what would then be a much more effective (for them) killing spree.
Does that mean they always need to patrol in pairs, even in some sleepy market village somewhere which would reduce average response time and visual deterrent significantly? At the moment I think a lot of local policing is a policeman/woman + PCSO pairing and sometimes even solo patrols. The cost of upping that to a pair of fully trained armed officers would be crippling. Better to put the money into intelligence gathering.
Arming everyone would change the dynamic between local officers and the public and probably compromise street-level intelligence gathering.
Would carrying a gun make them less effective and able to intervene in more minor incidents (pub brawls etc) which are far more common than terrorist attacks even after this horrific three-since-March series of atrocities?
If all officers carried weapons all the time then how soon before the threshold before they use them lessens unacceptably? Look at the USA and the number of controversial shootings by police. Do you really want an idiot 16 year old temporarily gone off the rails and stealing a car getting shot by a cop? I bet his or her mother and father probably don’t.
Also, look at the results. There are multiple-casualty shootings in the USA on pretty much a weekly basis and some horrendously big ones on a not infrequent basis. Having every US cop armed doesn’t seem to stop these or close them down before a lot of people are killed.
Maybe we need more armed officers and response teams, especially in major cities other than London, but arming everyone seems like a very bad idea to me. That is the point when the terrorists really have won and many important aspects of the British way of life begun to be lost.
I disagree with you, as I said the world has changed. The police need to change to meet the threat.
What if the BTP officer who was wounded last night? He would have been able to intervene and save lives.
Lee Rigby murder, police officers were on the scene quickly but we’re unable to intervene until armed officers arrived.
The attack on palace of Westminster, if the police officer had been armed he may have been alive to today.
Arm the police, no ifs or buts.
That should be, if the BTP was armed
I feel your pain Mike but I have to agree with others. we should not be changing anything as thats what these ass clowns want. We should however have more armed plain clothes officers on patrol if possible. The world has indeed changed but we can fix it without destroying our own way of life. As a start I would make it illegal to download or view ISIS jihadi crap online. 50000 uk citizens downloaded that death cult crap last year. Jail them all. All else failing I am not opposed to making somewhere in the middle east glow in the dark for the next 1000 years. Violence is the only language these scum understand so I say lets open a dialogue. Many (bleeding heart butt hurt islamist appologists may object) but I am now content to completly ignore these idiots, they are killing our citizens indeed our CHILDREN in the streets. Enough is enough.
This kind of low-tech attack could happen anywhere in the country. At the very least I think many more armed response teams are needed. Are there any figures on proportion of police who would be willing to routinely carry weapons?
I live in N.Ireland where police are armed and it does not make a difference Mike.
I carried out three tours in NI, the RUC as it was then was named was armed. It made a difference when confronted by PIRA and loyalist terrorists.
When will people wake up that PC fuelled mass immigration is contributing to this? We have allowed people who hate us, our values, culture and way of life to openly come and live here! Probably on benefits of course. Any peep of protest is “racist” according to the liberal left which pervades every part of the establishment, police, universities, and the young, who are too ignorant of life and the world to know different.
I laughed at the irony this morning of May standing outside No 10 saying “enough is enough.” Who was Home Secretary and did nothing to stop radical mosques here? Or extremist clerics openly coming here preaching hate and intolerance of infidels? Who cut police numbers? Especially armed police? Other previous Tory and Labour governments are equally to blame.
How many Jihadis have we openly allowed to go to fight in Syria, often against the west, and then come back to live here? Madness beyond belief.
Where are the lefties now moaning about GCHQ & MI5 breaching civil liberties by snooping on emails and other internet traffic as leaked by Snowden? It is for a good reason, to try to root out people like this
Saying it is western foreign policy is only a small part of the cause. I did not agree with some of the western interventions into the Middle East, but do I then go blowing myself up? Do indigenous Britons go and blow themselves up?
No, many of these are “Britons” who are more loyal to their faith and Muslim lands than their own nation.
Heaven forbid if the country is stupid enough to let Corbyn and his terrorist appeasing cronies into power next week. The situation will only get worse.
Solutions? How about these few?
1) Full Brexit, with a greatly expanded border force fully controlling just who comes into and out of
the UK. Not “racist” in the slightest. Sensible.
2) Expand the police and security services, especially armed police, a Corbyn proposal I actually agree
with. Arm first responders especially.
3) Use RN patrol boats in 1st PBS to augment our minimal Fishery Protection Squadron ships to
secure the channel especially. This should also include retaining the soon to be discarded Rivers.
4) Zero tolerance of extremist mosques and Imams. Not “Racist” Sensible.
5) Detention centres at every port and airport where “refugees” and “asylum seekers” are kept until
they are either allowed to remain or deported. And I mean deported! Not just allowed to melt
away into the community. As Nigel Farage rightly observed years ago there could be terrorists
amongst them. Just ask Angela Merkel and the EU. If necessary use military aircraft.
6) Stop this crap of self imposed segregation. Just go look at the Muslim enclaves all over parts of
Britain which are becoming no go zones for the indigenous population, where many do not even
speak English! Or even want to. We are allowing a society within a society, a state within a state,
to develop under the banner of Political Correctness. How can a nation be if its peoples are
divided? No matter what your faith or colour, people should be loyal to their nation, its values,
culture, and identify. Those that are not, well WHY are they here? To take advantage of the
advantages on offer perhaps? While rejecting the people around them who’s country they have
settled in?
Instead all we will probably get is tough words from May and calls for “understanding”
I actually agree with an awful lot of that. Not all of it, but a lot of it.
I’m coming to realise more and more that (6) is probably the biggest issue. Yes, because of its lax gun laws and general gun culture the USA has many more mass shootings than us but when you look at terrorism attacks, and remembering that the USA has waged over 90% of the recent wars against Middle Eastern countries and so should, according to Corbyn’s “we bought this on ourselves with our military interventions in the Middle East” attitude, be subject to a huge number of terrorist attacks. I don’t think it is because the US security services are massively better than ours but have heard a number of US commentators say how much better integrated the Muslim community is in the USA compared to Europe (including the UK). In the USA they actually feel like Americans (for the most part) whereas in the UK there are a lot of people who don’t feel part of this country.
Having said that it’s a huge problem, you say “Stop this crap of self imposed segregation”. I hope it’s obvious from the above that I agree but how on earth do we do that?
Maybe it is telling that in the USA there seem to be US flags flying everywhere, especially from private homes, they are seriously proud of their identity.
Here its seen as racist. Look at Thornbury a few years back sneering at a Red Cross of St George, it has poisoned so many attitudes.
As for your question how, I don’t know, the UK is not the SS and we do not want to give the excuse to the loony left to say that we are.
To me, PC has totally over run common sense and national identity.
Its fairly easy I think. Lets be honest and grown up and not fall in to the “your racist” trap. Fact – the terrorists are muslim extremists. I keep hearing that “all muslims are not terrorists”, fair enough but pretty much all terrorists (causing the current problems) are muslim extremists. We should stop any more arriving and clamp down on radical clerics and mosques. When they go to jail make it solitary confinment so they cant corrupt anyone else. Isolate them from all contact like a bloody lepar. If they do not hold a valid UK passport then they get deported, no question. Our western culture is objectivly better than the barbarous crap they peddle and we need to stop pandering to this sick death cult.
Agreed. Most of your suggestions are aimed at the roots of the problem, stopping attacks before they happen rather than trying to reduce the response time to an attack down from all terrorists dead in 8 minutes to 3 or 4 minutes. That seems to me to be the most effective use of resources and the best way to reduce casualties to zero by stopping attacks completely (as far as that is possible).
As well as your ideas we also need to help GCHQ and other surveillance operations do their jobs. Should they have controlled access to metadata for all communications? Hell yes. In fact I wish they could go further. They used to be able to and did but Snowden blew a lot of that and has blood on his hands because of it.
We should also crack down on people coming back from fighting overseas with ISIS; they shouldn’t be let back into the country and their citizenship should be revoked.
Bang on Julian. If these people are “British Citizens” does that not make them traitors?
Treason.
Revoke passport and deport, or do not allow back.
Which brings me back to a point made in my long rant above, far too much talk from the likes of May and no REAL ACTION. Because anything proposed is watered down due to PC issues and rendered ineffective.
Agree.
I think we need to revisit what being or becoming a citizen means.
For me Citizenship should be earned by all members of the UK and part of that should involve creating and embedding a common set of values across our country irrespective of faith.
Too many people seem to operate outside of what are normally accepted behaviours and we need to find a way to bring society together.
Let’s be honest about this, this is not just an issue for one community or faith, but for the country. We all have a responsibility to our neighbours, family, friends, community and country.
Being a citizen should be earned not a right..
Agree. And what do we see? British passports being handed out like confetti.
Security and defence issues addressed:
1) we need huge ramping up in intelligence and security forces operations
2) prevent strategy has failed, the muslim community obviously do not feel part of the wider uk community and citizens of the UK.
3) all individuals returning or known to have gone to Islamic state, Taliban or other radical Islam terrorist groups should have their passports revoked, arrested on arrival back to uk and charged with terrorism
4) segregation in prison for all terrorists so they cannot share or spread their evil ideologies.
5) we know who a large number of these individuals are! They are on a high risk watch list. From the security services point of view it is very hard to effectively watch thousands of individuals.
so what is the solution? I think detain all those individuals on the high risk list, if not uk citizens deport them, detain them to gather evidence and investigate them and their known contacts. Only when we have no longer got doubts of the risk they pose to the public should we release them. If found to be planning or inciting terrorism or preaching radicalisation they should be deported immediately, never to be allowed back into the uk.
those that are found guilty who are uk citizens should be charged with treason. I think it is time to bring back the death penalty unfortunately for those found guilty in a court of law beyond all reasonable doubt.
either that or lock them away with an indefinite sentence for the rest of their lives.
6) the muslim community need to better integrate with the UK and accept that they are living in the UK, we have values and beliefs and those you have to respect and follow otherwise there will be severe consequences.
I think things will be much easier once we leave the EU and regain border controls and stop the jurisdiction of the EU court of human rights. I am actually a left leaning voter but cannot sit back and watch these terrorists killing and injuring dozens of UK citizens without their being consequences for those that share those views. Ultimately May is right
“enough is enough” and yes they are losers.
We are Britain and we will not cower or live in fear.