UK riot police may sue for damages

Rioters attacked police with bricks, hammers and petrol bombs

LONDON, England -- Several police officers injured in rioting in a British northern town earlier this month are considering legal action for compensation.

Officers could be awarded huge compensation payments if they are successful in pursuing claims that senior officers owed them a duty of care but failed to meet it.

More than 900 police officers were deployed to keep the violence, mainly between white and Asian young people, in Bradford.

Gangs of Asian and white youths fought running battles with officers, throwing bricks, bottles, petrol bombs and fireworks.

Over 200 police officers were injured and two people -- and a police horse -- stabbed. Some 46 officers are still on sick leave.

The local police federation confirmed on Sunday that seven officers have taken legal advice and defended the decision by some of its members to consider claiming compensation.

A legal challenge could claim that officers were left wide open to the risk of being seriously injured by an angry mob, the federation said.

West Yorkshire Police Federation denied that officers were suing for "trauma," but confirmed that seven officers who suffered lower leg injuries when they were struck by lumps of concrete had sought legal advice.

Federation spokesman Richard Critchley said the Association of Chief Police Officers had been too slow to learn the lessons from previous rioting, in the Lancashire town of Oldham.

"The national Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) have been slow to react to what happened earlier in Oldham," he told the Press Association.

Officers' complaints centre on the tactics police used to quell thousands of angry rioters who hurled rocks and petrol bombs at officers, many of whom were in the front line for long periods of time.

Officers have spoken of sophisticated rioting techniques in which yobs hurled a barrage of missiles in the air to get police to lift their riot shields before throwing lumps of concrete at their lower legs and feet.

Critchley said: "Officers were in difficult or frightening positions. Some felt they were perhaps not managed properly.

"What they will have to prove somewhere along the line is that management were neglectful or lacked their duty of care.

"No proceedings have yet been instigated. We have not even had any advice that an officer may be able to establish a case against the Chief (Constable of West Yorkshire)."

Assistant Chief Constable Greg Wilkinson, the officer directly responsible for Bradford, said: "We are in an increasingly litigious society, so I am not entirely surprised by this.

"But I am disappointed. When I joined the police I expected to take knocks."

Throughout the summer violence has rocked several northern England towns, including Bradford, Oldham, Burnley, Leeds, and Stoke.