Police Demand End to Annual Afro-Caribbean Festival After Officers Attacked and One Sexually Assaulted

LONDON, ENGLAND - AUGUST 30: A police officer stands by the cordon at the scene of yesterd
Carl Court/Getty Images
Peter Caddle

Police demanded an annual Afro-Caribbean festival in London — billed as Europe’s largest street party — be suspended after widespread violence, with one officer even being sexually assaulted while policing the event.

London police are calling for the tradition of the city’s annual Notting Hill carnival to end after this year’s festival saw large numbers of stabbings, assaults, and one murder.

Reports even indicate that one female police officer was sexually assaulted while policing the event, though this seemingly has not stopped the city’s leftist mayor, Sadiq Khan, from praising the festival as having “vibes” that are “immaculate”.

According to a report by The Telegraph, a total of one murder, six stabbings, and at least one sexual assault against a police officer took place at the festival over the weekend.

The publication also reports that over 200 arrests were made by police — dozens of whom were assaulted during the carnival — and that a record number of knives were seized after 441 stop and searches at the event, which had been suspended for the last two years due to COVID.

Police in the UK capital now appear to have had enough and are demanding that the event no longer take place.

“For the last two years my colleagues have spent the August bank holiday not being assaulted in large numbers. Why not? Because the Notting Hill Carnival did not take place,” Metropolitan Police Federation head Ken Marsh is reported as saying in regards to the event.

“But today we are having to again face the fallout from policing the event. The tragedy is that someone has been killed.” he continued. “But also 34 of my colleagues have been hurt after coming under attack. One female officer was grabbed in a headlock and sexually assaulted.”

“Every year we argue that this event should not take place but we are not listened to,” he went on to say. “There were 11,000 officers on duty across the weekend. For lots of them, this was their first experience of policing the carnival and they have been left extremely shocked by what they have seen and been subjected to.”

Meanwhile, another former senior figure in the London police force who has now retired claimed that the event was used by drug dealers to start fights with one another.

“The trouble is, these young men, and it is young men, they want to fight, mark out their territory and sell their drugs,” former commander of special operations, Roy Ramm, reportedly said.

“They are determined to wreck it in the evenings,” the retired officer continued. “I think it is for the community to reject this.”

Despite the complaints from officers and the widespread trail of violence left by the event, London’s leftist mayor, Sadiq Khan, appears to have been very quick to praise the event, heralding it as the “biggest street party in Europe”.

“[T]he vibes are immaculate,” the Labour politician wrote online, posting images and video from the event.

However, Khan’s positive position on the festival was slated by critics, with Brexit firebrand Nigel Farage being one of many to challenge the city’s mayor on his description of the event.

“There were over 200 arrests, a stabbing, several sexual assaults,” the former populist leader wrote, describing the carnival as a “total and utter disgrace”.

The attacks at the festival adds to the normal baseload of extreme violence in Sadiq Khan’s London with a boy, this time believed to be aged only 12, being stabbed on Tuesday.

Khan has cited the warm weather, as well as the cost of living crisis — but not his policing policy decisions — as being contributing factors to the surge in violence in his diverse metropolitan city.

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