Police in race row over 'Polish rioters' training
By Andrew Levy
Last updated at 1:20 AM on 31st May 2010
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Police training exercises in which officers tackled volunteers playing the part of rioting East European migrants has been branded 'a breeding ground for racism'.
More than a hundred college students aged 16 to 19 were drafted in for two violent scenarios. In the first exercise, they portrayed rioting football fans from the fictional Eastern European country Felacia.
Insiders said Felacia was a thinly-veiled reference to Poland.
riot police
Riots: The exercises were set up to help officers improve their handling of public order operations (file pic)
The second involved impersonating an angry mob of economic migrants protesting at poor wages.
Both took place in or near Peterborough, which is home to one of the biggest Polish migrant worker populations in Britain.
Civil liberties organisation Liberty said yesterday: 'It makes sense for the police to better prepare for public order situations, but we wonder why it was necessary to ask these young people to pretend to be Eastern Europeans.
No one wants a sensible training exercise to become a breeding ground for racism.'
Last week's exercises were set up to help officers improve their handling of public order operations following accusations of heavy-handed tactics during the G20 riots in London.
Codenamed Operation Iceni, they involved forces from Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex.
Last night Chief Superintendent Nigel Sunman, of Cambridgeshire Constabulary, insisted there were no racial overtones to the exercises.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1282767/Police-race-row-Polish-rioters-training.html#ixzz0pUwtm6xE
3 comments:
Why would they riot? if things were that bad they would simply return home, these people are migrants remember? most have not been here more than a few years, and as far as I can tell their home country is weathering the financial storm better than the UK.
Perhaps the odd flash mob over some local dispute as is already the case but full on riots started by them? not a chance.
perhaps the training is for a wider issue such as happened in greece?
maybe the police are going to be stationed in poland, while we end up with European police.
They just say Polish or whatever because they can't say who they really think will be burning the cities to the ground once the austerity SHTF.
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