Police failed to realise the significance of a series of events leading up to the summer riots and there were gaps in intelligence linked to social media and the dark web, a watchdog has claimed.
His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services has published its report into how police forces dealt with disorder that broke out after the murder of three girls at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport, Merseyside.
It found that a number of events in 2023 and 2024 were indicators of potential future disorder, but this had not been reflected in police intelligence assessments.
The report said these incidents ‘involved extreme nationalist sentiment, aggravated activism or serious disorder’.
Chief Inspector of Constabulary Andy Cooke said no one understood the ‘cause and effect’ of disinformation.
He added: ‘So the police failed adequately to denounce it or mitigate against it in real time to deter or curtail the disorder.’
It comes after some middle class people with well-paid jobs ‘lost everything’ when they got drawn into taking part in the summer riots, a Labour policing chief said.
Matt Storey, the commissioner for Cleveland, said in November they had ‘really settled lifestyles’ which had now evaporated.
He said he will be going into prisons to speak to those convicted to ask: ‘Why did you do it?’
Mr Storey suggested some of the ‘mindless violence’ had been carried out by people who held anti-police views.
The latest figures show that policing the disorder over the summer cost £31.7million – but this sum is expected to increase once all forces who provided mutual aid cover report their own data.
Over a 12-day period, officers clocked up more than 40,000 hours of public order shifts, the National Police Chiefs’ Council said.
So far 1,590 people have been arrested, of whom 17 per cent were aged under 18.The total number of charges brought is 1,015.
Of the arrests made so far, 99 were for offences committed online.
Mr Storey was speaking at the National Police Chiefs’ Council conference when he suggested why some people decided to join in or start the chaos, The Telegraph reports.
In Middlesbrough he said the riots had largely been started by people who wanted to ‘exploit’ the Southport killings so they could ‘voice offensive views and prejudices’.
While he claimed some with anti-police views had started the carnage in Hartlepool.
‘[Police] have told me of people who had really good jobs, really settled lifestyles, middle class, and have lost everything because they basically got drawn into it,’ he said.
‘I think that restorative justice work will be really important in a preventative sense, because we need to make sure these things don’t happen again.
‘And that’s not going to happen if we don’t understand from the people who did it why it happened in the first place.’
He said he would be going into prisons to understand why some people hold prejudice views and how to educate them to make them not have those anymore.
Mr Storey said much of the violence was motivated by hate and racism, with people exploiting the Southport tragedy to give voice to prejudiced views which they already held.
His assessment came as Britain’s head of counter-terror policing revealed the Southport riots were ‘turbo-charged’ by foreign bots.
False information about the alleged perpetrator of the Southport attack received more than 27 million impressions on Twitter as violence erupted in 27 towns.
Matt Jukes QPM also criticised ‘unhelpful’ commentators who know that certain information cannot be released while legal proceedings are active but presented this as ‘evidence of cover-up and conspiracy’.
Mr Jukes said there was a misconception that the ‘thought police’ had arrested hundreds of people for voicing their opinions.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is among those who have claimed there has been a cover-up over the Southport murders of three young girls in July.
‘The reality is the hundreds and hundreds of people who were arrested were arrested because of their suspected involvement in violence, criminal damage, direct harms in communities,’ he said.
The vast majority of misinformation spread online was driven by people within UK communities, but foreign interference played a huge role in stoking violence, Mr Jukes added.
A Mail investigation revealed obscure platform Channel3Now spread false rumours that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker and on an MI6 watch list.