经济学人下载:平息暴乱,英国警方遭猛烈抨击

Martin Innes, of the Universities Police Science Institute at Cardiff University, says that water cannon would not be much use against the kind of “fluid, highly mobile satellite groups” that the police have faced. Both he and Peter Waddington, a former policeman and now an authority on crowd control at Wolverhampton University, are sceptical about plastic bullets (or baton rounds as the police call them). Mr Waddington says that the trouble with baton rounds, which travel at nearly twice the speed of a cricket ball delivered by a fast bowler, is that they can be dodged, leaving them to smash into other people. “Hit an 11-year-old girl in the head,” he says, “and there is all hell to pay.”

卡迪夫大学警务调查及培训组织（UPSI）的马丁．因尼斯（Martin Innes）认为，警方面对的暴动人群“不固定地点，不停流动，呈卫星状”，高压水枪不会其多大作用。彼得．沃丁顿（Peter Waddington）原来担任警察，现在是伍尔弗汉普顿大学公众秩序控制方面的专家。他和马丁对塑料子弹（警方称之为“防暴子弹”）的作用均持怀疑态度。沃丁顿认为，防暴子弹问题在于其速度仅为一个板球手快速投球速度的两倍，子弹能够躲开，有可能射到其他人。他说：“有个11岁的小女孩就被误伤到头部，警察有的赔了。”

Both water cannon and baton rounds have now been made available to the police, but they have shown little appetite for employing either. They have, however, started to make greater use of armoured vehicles to break up crowds. As for calling on the army for help, that is something that the police, politicians and the army itself regard as almost unimaginable.

如今警方已获准使用高压水枪和防暴子弹，但警方似乎并没怎么打算使用，反而开始越来越多地使用装甲车来驱散人群。至于寻求军方援助，警方、政客们甚至军方都觉得是不可想象的。

But if the police are right to be cautious over the use of crowd-control weapons, they seem to have been slow to react in other ways. Mike Waldren, a retired chief superintendent who formerly ran London’s firearms unit, blames senior officers at Scotland Yard, fearful of being charged with overreacting, for hobbling commanders on the ground. According to some reports, riot police had initially been ordered to “stand and observe” rather than confront rioters. Mr Innes says that, with a few exceptions (principally those who have served in Northern Ireland), there is now a generation of police leaders whose only experience of public-order problems involves football hooliganism and planned political demonstrations that turn violent.

不过，即使警方对于选择何种武器控制暴乱人群的谨慎态度是正确的，他们在其他方面的反应也还是迟钝了些。现已退休的伦敦枪支库前负责人麦克．沃德仁（Mike Waldren）谴责伦敦警察厅高层警官因为怕被指责反应过激而限制了现场警察的防暴行动。有些报道称，警察一开始接到是“暂不行动，观察事态”的命令而不是让他们制止暴动。因尼斯说，除了少数几个警长（大部分是曾在被爱尔兰服过役的）外，现在的警官所遇到过的公共秩序问题只不过是像足球流氓行为和本应有序的政治游行中发生的暴力事件而已。