A couple of miles from our huge new police station, there is another large station that has been around for many decades. It's not far from a retail park which houses the computer store where I bought this machine, a couple of electrical retailers, a carpet store and a furniture store.
During the rioting, other areas had experienced looting of electrical stores and arson of carpet stores. This is the tale of how disaster was averted by some resourceful coppers.
Police Constable Gordon MurphyPC Gordon Murphy, 30, and five other officers had just two shields to protect themselves from the looters in Catford on Monday night.
The officers, based at Catford police station, charged – in a bid to scare them off.
The father of one, who lives locally, said: ‘Once they had thrown missiles at us, they then rushed directly towards us, shouting and screaming.
'Their intention was to run at us mob-handed to frighten us to run away. We decided, as they ran at us, to rush back at them, with only six officers running back at 40.
'The mad thing is, they all ran back, so we didn’t even have to make contact with them.
PC Murphy said that other local police officers had been deployed to deal with incidents elsewhere in the borough before they could come to the assistance of those in the retail park, whose stores include Comet, Carpet Right, PC World and Currys.
However he said that he felt 'proud' to have been part of the team who saw off the gang,
'When you police the local area, you get to know people, you do get quite protective of your area and have a pride in it.’
Ridwan Haibe, team manager at the Curry's shop, added, 'They did a fantastic job. We really appreciate the service that they have done for us. Six of them against 50 youths is quite impressive.'
We have some great community officers here..they know most of the kids by name, and have even been known to join in when we have clean-up days etc, so they can't all be bad
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty funny, they probably never expected 6 cops to charge them.
ReplyDeleteThat's brilliant. Makes sense, people will react based on the reaction of others. I don't envy any law enforcement, especially in situations like what is happening in the UK and nice to read that the ones that should be in control, are.
ReplyDeleteYay, cops!!!
ReplyDeleteGood for the cops! I know how you feel about cops, Val. But yes, there are some among them who are good people. This was a great story.
ReplyDeleteNice to hear some good news come out of a the chaos. Continue to stay safe.
ReplyDelete