{"id":5501,"date":"2011-09-16T15:09:53","date_gmt":"2011-09-16T15:09:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tat.reddaisytrading.co.uk\/index.php\/2011\/09\/16\/city-riots-police-chief-denies-they-failed-to-protect-residents\/"},"modified":"2011-09-16T15:09:53","modified_gmt":"2011-09-16T15:09:53","slug":"city-riots-police-chief-denies-they-failed-to-protect-residents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2011\/09\/16\/city-riots-police-chief-denies-they-failed-to-protect-residents\/","title":{"rendered":"City Riots: Police Chief denies they failed to protect residents"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Chris Sims gives evidence to Home Affairs Select Committee<\/h3>\n
WEST Midlands Police chief constable Chris Sims has hit out at claims police failed to protect residents on nights of rioting in Birmingham in which three men were killed.<\/strong> <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Giving evidence to a Home Affairs Select Committee, Mr Sims denied his officers were \u2018watching\u2019 rather than responding to disturbances in areas where shopkeepers were left defending their businesses.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Three men \u2013 Haroon Jahan, 21, and brothers Shazad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31, died in the early hours of August 10 after they were struck by a car during riots in the Winson Green area of the city whilst protecting businesses from potential looters. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Five men have been charged with their murder. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Mr Sims reacted to earlier evidence given by MP\u2019s Khalid Mahmood and Shabana Mahmood, and Handsworth resident Amrick Ubhi who said communities felt they had been \u201cforgotten about\u201d and \u201clet down\u201d by police. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Addressing Mr Sims, Home Affairs Select Committee member Keith Vaz said: \u201cChief Constable, people died in Birmingham, they were individuals who went to protect their own shops because the police were not there, and the evidence we received was that the police were \u2018watching\u2019 what was happening.\u201d<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Mr Sims responded: \u201cWell I dispute that evidence of police watching. By the end of the first evening we had arrested 130 people, by the second evening that had more than doubled, and those arrests don\u2019t happen by police officers watching.\u201d<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Giving evidence earlier, Amrick Ubhi, Centre Director for the Nishkam Centre on Soho Road in Handsworth said as the police presence increased in the city centre and around the Jewellery Quarter rioters made their way into Handsworth.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you had was the whole place turned up on its head because people were standing outside trying to protect their properties and didn\u2019t believe or think that the police were responding quickly enough,\u201d he told the Committee. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cThe perception, even at that time, right on the coalface, was why is the police protecting the city and the jewellery quarter but not coming out to protect us?\u201d<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

MP Khalid Mahmood echoed similar sentiments. He told the Committee: \u201cThe real serious issue was that people were saying that the police are just standing by and our shops and properties are being looted, nobody\u2019s taking any notice. We\u2019re calling the police, we\u2019re asking them to do something and nothing is happening. <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cThis led to a number of people coming back out from the houses to stand outside their properties to protect them. That, to me, was a very, very grave position-where you\u2019ve got people ready to defend their properties against these people.\u201d<\/div>\n

\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Sims gives evidence to Home Affairs Select Committee WEST Midlands Police chief constable Chris Sims has hit out at claims police failed to protect residents on nights of rioting in Birmingham in which three men were killed. Giving evidence to a Home Affairs Select Committee, Mr Sims denied his officers were \u2018watching\u2019 rather […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}