It’s physically impossible to maintain a 24-hour watch on everyone that might just be thinking of doing something like this, and it’s entirely possible that people who do aren’t making themselves obvious to the authorities anyway. How and with what support Abedi got hold of his bomb is still not public knowledge, but you don’t need much of a trail-leaving conspiracy to get hold of a van and some knives.
How? What is different about a small group planning an armed robbery and a small group planning a ramming attack with knives? To conflate the two things, the IRA were famously as much a criminal gang as a terrorist organisation. Fond of drug running and bank jobs. When the police force failed to stop the IRA bombings that was a failure? but when they failed to stop the bank jobs that was not?
Assuming you know they are suspects in the first place or that you are able to predict they are high risk rather than one of the thousands of radicalised people who merely talk the talk.
But this is not a “gang” it is a loosely linked association of disparate groups who may or may not show up in the intelligence traffic and even if they do there is never going to be enough resources to fully chase down every threat and never enough information to fully assess whether the threat they represent is credible.
They do stop attacks, all the time. Five major incidents in just the last few weeks. Or are you saying that all attacks must be stopped for the police and intelligence services to be considered successful?
In a world of imperfect information and finite resources you simply cannot get it right every time and not doing so is not necessarily a black mark for the police. As the IRA famously said, they only need to get lucky once…and no matter what we do they will.
Interesting that both the Manchester bomber and at least one of the guys from London Bridge had been reported via the anti-terrorist hotline.
A resources issue, or assessment, or Prevent?
This, from Saturday night, was at least bang on the money.
Who knows until inquests and enquiries are completed (and even then we may never know the full story)? But a simple combination of resource constraint - which there will always be - and somewhat unspecific evidence in the initial report would be enough (“My neighbour’s got religion and getting very bossy about what everyone should and shouldn’t do”, or even “He looked daggers at me when I said Daesh were wicked”, isn’t quite enough to justify 24-hour surveillance and a dawn raid to turn their home over).
The BBC was pointing out this morning that the hotline gets literally tens of thousands of reports (22,000 last year). The resourcing requirement to triage and thoroughly investigate every remotely credible threat would be staggering.
Then what’s the point of it?
The fact the authorities have foiled many, plots. The process they use does produce results. It just doesn’t give certainty and no process can.
It is lovely to be wise after the event, how many equally disturbing reports have been reported to the police and how do you suggest which ones should be given priority?
The issue atm is home grown terrorism. The austerity cuts cost 20,000 police jobs with the emphasis on those vital community part-time police ‘shops’ and community policing - that is dedicated police teams in dedicated communities.
These are the people best placed to assess threat levels and to ensure processes are followed. Instead, Theresa May gave the public a bullshit phone number.
To be fair, a counterterrorism hotline is an excellent idea. But it’s not foolproof, you will always have to prioritise what tips you follow, and in no way does it replace actual police on the streets.
An opportunity missed to do what, exactly? Unless it’s full on hate speech, it’s not illegal to talk to people in parks.
What level of pre-emptive action do you want taken against potential terrorists?
But the ‘Keep Calm’ posters were the second in a series of three. The first (‘Your courage’) was so ill-received the distribution of the second and third posters was cancelled.
Any use today is ironic or a satiric parody.
Ah, Mr Out-of-Touch, again.
Do you know of the existing funded mechanisms to try and de-radicalise those identified as at risk?
I’m not talking about about the original poster
As I acknowledge, but the original message still captures the general mood of the UK response to terrorist attacks. That truly is how many people feel.
If you’re going to snark at me, perhaps you might make sure you’re quoting something I said. The sentence you ascribe to me is from a post by Steophan.
And those halcyon days of bobbies on the beat and community harmony meant attacks were impossible? like 7th July 2005? Were there not enough resources then? Or is it just possible that it is a little complicated than a bald numbers game?
Depends what was said during the subsequent altercation (which isn’t reported), but the conclusion doesn’t exactly follow from that initial piece of evidence. Unless we’re now supposed to go all reverse-Iranian and prosecute people for proselytising for any aspect of a religion that isn’t CofE.
I am addressing Steophan. Not sure what happened there. Apologies your name was included.
Eh, it happens.
And Trump has tweeted (what else) a slam on the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, about the attack.
Just fuck right off, Mr Trump.