Met officer in charge of policing event says ‘I don’t really care what we arrest them for’ as more than 650 people are held

The Metropolitan police have arrested 656 people suspected of planning to cause trouble at Notting Hill carnival, the commander in charge of policing the event has said.

Dave Musker, the Met’s gold commander for the bank holiday weekend, said: “I don’t really care what we arrest them for, I’ll be [as] lawfully audacious as I can to get them off the streets.

“So whether they’ve got heroin or they’ve got other class A drugs, [are] drug dealing, [or] serious violence takes place at carnival, we will try to target them and get them off the streets.”

Pre-charge bail restrictions have been used to prevent some people from coming and force some people from the north Kensington area to stay away from their homes during the event, the Guardian understands.

Play Video 1:19 Police are preparing for ‘any eventuality’ at Notting Hill carnival – video

Musker’s comments came after the Met drew ridicule and accusations of racism by publishing a tweet linking a heroin bust in south London to the carnival. The grime artist Stormzy replied to the force: “How many drugs did you lot seize in the run-up to Glastonbury or we only doing tweets like this for black events?”

Musker said concrete blocks and steel barriers would surround the event area to ensure it remains safe at a time of heightened concern about the risk of vehicles being used in terrorist attacks. Officers will check members of the public for knives and corrosive substances as they arrive.

However, he said there was no intelligence to suggest the carnival was at risk of a terrorist attack, nor that the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire had raised the risk of public disorder.

While extra officers will be stationed around Grenfell Tower in a “ring of care”, overall police numbers will stay the same as last year, with about 15,000 shifts worked over the two days. This works out as about 6,000 to 7,000 officers on duty each day.

The Met has also faced criticism for plans to trial facial recognition technology at the carnival for the second year running. Civil rights defenders last week urged the Met to scrap the trial, which they said has no clear legal basis and threatened a “significant interference with the right to private life”.



Musker said he was “not blind to the fact that this is a controversial tactic”, adding that the Met had consulted with privacy groups such as Big Brother Watch “to ensure that what we are doing is proportionate, legal and effective”.

“It’s not loaded, it’s loaded with people who we know are involved with criminality, who are wanted,” he said. “It’s not a speculative search tool.”

However, Big Brother Watch denied having meaningful consultation with the Met, having only met with the force once in 2016 to discuss the trial at that year’s carnival. “We did not provide assurances of proportionality, legality or effectiveness of the technology,” Renate Samson, Big Brother Watch’s chief executive, said. “These are assurances which can only be made by legislation or regulation by parliament, not by a conversation with a campaigning organisation.”

One Ladbroke Grove resident caught up in the pre-carnival operations said police had arrested him after finding him in possession of frankincense.

The resident, who preferred to not be named, was told he could not attend the carnival and must report to a police station in Clapham, south London, between 6pm and 9pm on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.