ABSTRACT
The terrorist attacks that took place in London, Madrid and the United States since the turn of the century have led to a heightened atmosphere and impacted upon international counter-terrorism policies and counter-terrorism policing which, critics argue, have been used disproportionately against minority communities under the guise of protecting ‘national security’ (Awan and Blakemore 2012). Indeed, this sense of fear and anxiety manifested itself following the start of the London Olympics (2012) as the British police were quick to clamp down on any form of perceived threat. For example, an unsubstantiated claim that cigarette vapour might actually be a bomb led to armed police officers closing down one of the UK’s busiest motorways in fear that there may have been a bomb on board a bus (Evans et al. 2012). Pickering et al. (2007: 9) state that:
Although extremism, as noted in Chapter 1, could cover a wide spectrum including animal rights extremism, Islamist extremism and far right extremism, this chapter will focus on counter-terrorism policing of minority communities and the overall effectiveness of such strategies when combating extremism within a counter-terrorism context. This is because the evidence (discussed below) appears to suggest that many Muslim communities in particular have been maligned both by UK and indeed international government counter-terrorism policies (such as the cases in the US, France and Belgium) and also by the manner in which law enforcement agencies have the potential to abuse their powers. Whilst there are clearly a number of complex terrorist plots that the police are having to deal with daily it does appear that many police forces across England and Wales are increasingly abandoning community policing tactics and using counter-terrorism units to gather intelligence from within communities in order tackle the terrorist threat (for example Project Champion, discussed below).
