Policing Disasters: The British Experience

• NCJ Number: 189269
• Journal: International Journal of Police Science and Management Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Dated: Autumn 2000 Pages: 40-54
• Author(s): Maurice Punch; Geoffrey Markham
• Date Published: 2000
• Length: 15 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Historical Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This article reviews the British experience of disasters.

Abstract

In the second half of the 1980's the United Kingdom was afflicted with a series of major disasters that forced police to engage in re-analysis of how to tackle disasters and major emergencies. As a result, the four main insights of police management of disasters are: creating order out of chaos, managing the interface with multiple agencies, seeing the incident as part of a long trajectory, and treating the disaster site as a scene of crime. Police organization has to make a double institutional shift: to centralized command and control and to constructing a temporary system with external organizations. It is vital that the responsibilities and accountabilities of “command and control” are worked out, understood, practiced, and implemented by leaders trained in emergency situations. The division of labor for operational responsibilities are gold (strategic level of control and coordination); silver (tactical level at site); and bronze (implementation level). The gold commander decides what will be done; is supported by a gold control; keeps a strategic view; resources silver’s needs; maintains interagency cooperation; and starts the audit trail. The silver commander decides how things will be done, implements gold’s strategy, and is the key operational commander tackling the incident at the scene. The bronze commander implements silver’s plans and instructions. Police must develop a mindset that views a large-scale incident as long-term and think in terms of a disaster chain with three phases: pre-disaster, disaster, and post-disaster. Implications for training, operations, and interagency cooperation are discussed, as well as taking into account issues such as liability in the long term and post-traumatic stress among survivors and emergency workers. 1 figure, 7 notes and 9 references.