Met commissioner: Police presence in London may remain high

Met commissioner: Police presence in London may remain high

Met commissioner: Police presence in London may remain high

Tim Godwin, the acting Met commissioner, promises to maintain the same police presence that deterred riots in London last night for as long as necessary:

"I am going to keep it exactly as it was last night. I'm going to keep that going as long as I deem it necessary.

"As I said yesterday, it was an unprecedented set of circumstances that we hadn't experienced in terms of the breadth and scale of what the officers were having to face on the Monday night.

"And it was therefore very important that we had those officers available. We had a lot of other forces involved. There were people from 30 different forces across the country coming to support the Met police and as a result of that it was a very successful policing operation.

"But, very importantly, there has been lots of community support and lots of communities standing up and saying this is just outrageous. And as a result of that, working together with the communities, London will restore its reputation quite quickly."