Extreme right wing:


We should not forget the threat posed by other violent extremists, particularly the extreme right wing and those motivated by racist hatred, so vividly shown in the appalling events at Finsbury Park. We are dealing here with fewer individuals, less coordinated or organised.


But every year we see some with lethal intent brought to justice. As I speak, there are 14 Domestic Extremist individuals in custody, who had lethal capability and intent.


Role of police:


In confronting these threats the police have a multiplicity of roles. We have all seen much of the police response to tragic attacks. The armed officers neutralising the threats and saving countless lives; the unarmed taking on attackers, protecting the public and getting them to safety; the hundreds at Borough Market – Met, City of London and BTP – using emergency life-saving skills and working with the other emergency services; and then the sad task of securing crime scenes and painstakingly examining every inch for evidence. This preparedness comes from years of investment, of training and exercising.


At London Bridge and Borough Market alone, over 1,000 officers were present that night – securing the scene, preserving evidence, protecting and reassuring the public. Over the following week, more than 900 officers, forensics experts and other technical staff, working alongside local people and partners, were deployed to the investigation to identify the deceased and injured, work closely with their families, to secure digital and forensic evidence, subsequently to arrest associates in armed operations and to begin to trace all relevant witnesses. All done at pace, together with our friends in MI5, in order to support victims as best we can, to ensure there is no lingering threat, no one else involved and to begin to establish for the coroner what has happened.


Contest and the four Ps:


That great work of being prepared sits under the Prepare strand of this country’s CONTEST strategy. For us it is built on years of learning, from our own and others’ experience.


CONTEST has been a powerful strategy for nearly 15 years, surviving multiple governments. It has provided all engaged in countering terrorism – in the government and well beyond – a common language and understanding of the threat, the ability to develop capabilities effectively across many complex systems, the ability to flex and surge according to need across a multiplicity of agencies, organisations and departments.


And I really can’t emphasise enough the © CI TY S ECURI TY MAGAZ INE – WINT ER 2017


number of partners involved – from the military and the FCO, to the CPS, prisons, local authorities, and education.


Clearly, in the light of this latest shift in threat, in view of the terrible attacks, there is a need to review the strategy again, and as a country we will need to step change in many areas. This is what those who work in countering terrorism have always done – the threat changes, it morphs, we must adapt with it.


The police are the one agency which contribute really substantially to all four CONTEST strands. We are also uniquely the service which works primarily very publicly, with huge transparency, but also have a large arm that can and frequently does work in the secret domain.


Our people who, day-in, day-out, build and piece together intelligence, bring violent extremists to justice, trace their finances or otherwise disrupt them are highly vetted and work routinely with secret intelligence. The relationship between our three intelligence agencies – MI5, MI6, and GCHQ – is closer than any other set of agencies in the world. In turn, the relationship between the police and the agencies – primarily, but by no means exclusively, MI5 – is unique. These dedicated officers, staff and civil servants working in the shadows deserve our thanks as much as our more high-profile teams.


The counter terrorist police network works pretty much seamlessly and interoperably across police force boundaries across the UK, hand in glove with MI5 and very closely with the government and overseas police partners across the world. This means that information being discussed on a street in London about, say, a threat in Belgium, could be passed to colleagues there in seconds or minutes. Intelligence sourced from Raqqa or Kabul or Peshawar can be considered, if relevant, by police colleagues anywhere in the UK similarly quickly.


Our collective PURSUE capability is formidable. It has been immensely successful. It is supported by strong legislation and, since the Investigatory Powers Act, real legal clarity about the basis for our intrusive work together with strong accountability and oversight.


But, the challenges are great. Increasingly, encryption frustrates our investigations every day. As Jonathan Evans, former DG of MI5, said, “knowing who someone is, is not the same as knowing what they are going to do”. We have had unprecedented numbers of UK citizens travelling to these conflicts in largely ungoverned spaces. Progress on the ground in Syria and Iraq does not necessarily translate into a reduction in threat here. And we have large numbers of apparently volatile individuals in the UK, some of whom become determined to die, who may have been inspired largely through the web and decided on methodology learned from there too.


www. c i t y s e cu r i t yma g a z i n e . com


The modern threat, more than ever, includes the encouraging of others to commit atrocious acts.


That virus can infect communities and is spreading faster and more easily due to the internet. We need to get explicit content taken down as quickly as possible.


A word about PROTECT. We have a number of resources of our own: highly trained protection officers, police patrols, armed officers, various forms of technology, barriers such as you now see on London’s bridges and so forth, protecting crowded places, events, iconic sites and the critical national infrastructure.


We work closely with the other agencies at the border to try to ensure that they are as secure as possible, both in relation to people and, for example, firearms. Equally important is our role in providing advice and relevant information to communities, religious establishments, the public sector and business, so that people can make good, risk- based decisions about how to keep themselves and their buildings safe.


We do this through a network of dedicated specialists, through public information and social media and highly successful training materials and exercises. In this, we rely hugely on the business community, and this is an opportunity to thank you – you are our eyes and ears, you work brilliantly across your own networks and, as the threat has grown, the business community has become an ever stronger partner for us.


A special thank you to the security industry – who haven’t always had plaudits! – but with 100,000 employees in London, three times more than I have police officers, your role is fundamental.


Finally, PREVENT, this has always been the hardest P. How do you stop vulnerable people being radicalised? How do you counter a pernicious narrative of hatred in the internet age? Much has been said in recent months about PREVENT as a brand…


What I can say is that I have seen huge numbers of successful interventions by PREVENT professionals that have undoubtedly turned people away from extremism.


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