Sussex Police count the cost of a weekend of protests in Brighton and Hove
2:30pm Tuesday 5th June 2012 in News By Ben Parsons, Crime Reporter
Police are counting the cost of one of their biggest ever weekends.
An operation to escort a march by anti-arms protesters yesterday (June 4) followed what was believed to be the single biggest deployment of officers in recent memory on Saturday, June 2.
Sussex Police refused to be drawn on exact figures but the bill for similar events in the past indicate the costs of the two operations could easily reach half a million pounds.
About 100 officers were sent onto the street, yesterday to police a Smash EDO demonstration in Brighton while more were held in reserve.
Officers from Hampshire and Surrey were brought to the city to support the operation, as well as police horses supplied from outside Sussex.
On Saturday officers from forces as far away as Warwickshire were brought to Brighton in case of large-scale trouble.
Very often police resources deter people from doing things. I’m not saying that’s the case here – we don’t know what we’ve deterred
Chief Superintendent Graham Bartlett
Police had feared hundreds of supporters of the far-right English Defence League would come to the city and clash with anti-fascist protesters.
An anti-Jubilee street party by Brighton Uncut also raised the prospect of difficulties, following lengthy stand-offs at previous events which involved the invasion of shops.
Split groups
In the end officers said about 100 nationalists were out and about in Brighton and Hove.
They did not form a single group, but about 70 anti-fascist activists challenged them on the streets.
A total of 18 people were arrested. A group of about 30 were eventually escorted to Brighton Station to leave the city.
Sussex Police said it stood down some officers on both days when it became clear there were fewer people to deal with than they had planned for.
On Saturday onlookers, Unite Against Fascism and nationalists alike criticised the police for putting so many officers on the street.
Senior officers said they did not know the total cost of the demonstrations yesterday.
Costly operation
The force denied claims that 800 officers were involved on Saturday but said the operation was likely to have been the biggest in recent memory.
In 2010 putting 200 officers on the street because of a Brighton Uncut protest at Top Shop was said have cost the force a “six figure” sum.
A Smash EDO march on May Day 2009, which included officers being sent in support from forces elsewhere in the country, cost £560,000 once Bank Holiday overtime payments were claimed.
Chief Superintendent Graham Bartlett praised event organisers and protesters for working with police.
He said: “We have had an incredibly busy weekend.
“That has meant there has been very little disruption in the city.
“The resources for big events are based on very careful threat assessments and understanding of what’s required to keep people safe.
“Very often police resources deter people from doing things. I’m not saying that’s the case here – we don’t know what we’ve deterred.
“What was anticipated was needed was what was put out on both days.
“As soon as that assessment changed resources were stood down and people went off duty when they were no longer needed.”
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Source: www.theargus.co.uk
Sussex squad announced with Horsham festival set to begin - wscountytimes.co.uk
Sussex Cricket Club have announced their squad for the LV=County Championship clash with neighbours Surrey, which begins at Horsham Cricket Club tomorrow (11am start).
The match forms part of the annual Horsham Festival of Cricket, which also includes the Clydesdale Bank 40 encounter with Derbyshire Falcons on Sunday, and hoping to impress on his old stomping ground after missing out last year will be home favourite Chris Nash.
The complete Sussex sqaud is: Amjad Khan, James Anyon, Ben Brown, Joe Gatting, Murray Goodwin, Naveed Arif Gondal, Ed Joyce, Steve Magoffin, Chris Nash, Monty Panesar, Luke Wells, Luke Wright, Michael Yardy (capt).
The hosts are currently three points above Surrey in the LV=CC Division One table, with both sides having a similar playing record so far this campaign, and Sussex have named an unchanged squad from their recent clash with Middlesex at Lord’s.
Surrey can name two former Sussex players in their squad in the shape of Rory Hamilton-Brown, who will captain the side, and Tim Linley.
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Print this pageSource: www.wscountytimes.co.uk
Sussex schoolgirl puts Olympic Velodrome through its paces - Chichester Observer
BARNHAM schoolgirl Megan Lewis has returned from a successful experience which saw her selected to represent the south east at the Sainsbury’s UK 2012 School Games.
Lewis, 14, attends St Philip Howard Catholic High School and trains with Reading-based Palmer Park Velo Cycling Club.
The games were a multi-sport event for the UK’s elite young athletes and were held in the Olympic Park.
The competition aimed to mirror the Olympic and Paralympic Games, complete with opening and closing ceremonies, featuring around 1,800 of the nation’s finest young sports stars.
Lewis, who lives in Rustington, competed in three days of tough competition – two at Redbridge Cycling Centre and one at the Olympic Velodrome and the south east team picked up two gold medals and several other high places. On day one in the crit eliminator, the riders raced over a four-lap 500m course with tight technical bends and a steep climb and bend towards the finish line.
There was also a 40k race, in which Lewis started well but was then plagued by punctures and mechanical problems.
The next day, the south east team set the early pace in the team time trial, before finishing in fifth place.
Lewis was in action at the Olympic Velodrome the next day and a polished performance saw her finish runner-up in the minor final.
She then teamed up with 15-year-old Abigail van Twisk and the pair finished fifth.
She is now looking forward to the road and track season and is hoping to represent the south east at the inter-regional track competition in September.
Also ahead is the chance to ride in the Revolutions Series at the Manchester Velodrome.
Source: www.chichester.co.uk
Sussex County facing 'dramatic shortage' of physicians - Delaware Wave
MILLSBORO -- Marya Grier moved to Millsboro from New Jersey in November, and one of her top priorities was to find a primary care physician.
Although Grier, 70 and on Medicare, is on medication and needs to be monitored by a doctor regularly, she's been struggling to find care. One doctor cut back on his practice and another said it would be a six-month wait for an appointment.
For now, she's continuing to make the three-hour trek to see her doctor in New Jersey.
"It's kind of upsetting in a way," she said. "I'm certainly not in any dire straits, but if I had any issues with the medication, who would I go to? My only option is to go to Jersey, but that's a day trip and that's expensive."
Sussex County is considered a medically underserved area by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
According to the University of Wisconsin's Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's County Health Rankings, Sussex County has 157 primary care physicians and a population to primary care physician ratio of 1,208-to-1. The same figure in New Castle County is 806-to-1, while the national benchmark that has been set is at 631-to-1.
"In a perfect world, we would have at least one doctor to every 630 patients," said Megan Williams, director of Population Health at Beebe Medical Center. "The idea there is that if we had a provider for every 630 patients, (the provider) would have ample time, knowledge and resources to provide robust primary care for their patients."
Williams said one reason the county has "a pretty dramatic shortage of primary care providers in the area" is its rural setting.
"We don't necessarily have medical education or a medical school here in Delaware, or certainly close to Sussex County," she said. "By virtue of that, we don't have folks who are doing a lot of their training and education here. Right out of the gate, that puts us at a disadvantage."
Kelly Griffin, director of marketing and communications at Beebe, said the wait for a someone who uses the center's physician referral line to seek primary care is usually two to three months. More than 200 local physicians who are affiliated with Beebe and deal with family practice and internal medicine are on the list.
"Often we can help, but it depends on whether they want to travel a little bit further," she said.
Beebe actively recruits for additional primary care physicians. Marilyn Hill, director of physician services, said there are fewer people who aspire for physician positions, for a number of reasons, including the high costs to get to that point.
"It's difficult to entice people to go into it," she said. "It's very expensive to go through medical school, residency and fellowship training. You have to have a passion for it and want to do it for the right reasons."
Hill said when she recruits, she tries to promote the workplace community and the local community and focuses on the positives.
Grier said she believes the wait is so long because many local doctors are retiring and no one is taking their place.
Sussex County Administrator Todd Lawson said while there are no marketing plans at this time to bring more physicians into Sussex County, discussions with Beebe and Nanticoke Health Services have taken place with that in mind.
"We all recognize the fact that health care and our health care industry locally is being stretched right now with our population shifts, so we need to plan for that," he said.
Lawson said despite having the beach and the infrastructure, as well as being two hours away from three metropolitan areas, the county is having issues attracting the talent.
"Getting those young professionals in here is a challenge," he said. "We've had many discussions on how to combat that. I don't have an answer that we have a plan in place, but we recognize the issue."
As for Grier, she is still undecided about what she will do.
"I'm sort of hanging on the edge as to what I'm going to do next," she said.
On Twitter @JonBleiweis
Source: www.delmarvanow.com
London 2012: MI5 expects wave of terrorism warnings before Olympics - The Guardian
The digital clock in the foyer of Thames House, the headquarters of MI5, is a constant reminder to visitors and staff of the security service's main priority over the coming weeks.
At first it was set to count down to zero, to coincide with the arrival in the UK of the Olympic torch in May. It has now been reset to a date nearer the start of the Games in London next month.
Leave has been deferred so the agency has a full complement of staff. Some non-essential duties, such as training, are likely to be suspended so there are extra bodies on hand during the busiest periods of the summer.
The Olympics has already proved a huge test for MI5, just as it has for Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch.
The threat to the UK is more diffuse now than four or five years ago, which reflects the disintegration of al-Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the scattering of extremists to places such as Yemen and, to a degree, Somalia.
With less infrastucture to rely upon, there has been a growth in the phenomenon of the "lone wolf" terrorist – homegrown self-starters, some of whom have researched how to become a terrorist by reading Inspire, the online magazine published by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Inspire has essentially told its followers to get on with it, rather than waiting to be asked or trained.
The loners are far harder to identify, but the police and MI5 are also aware of hundreds of networks in the UK and abroad, a small number of which pose a credible, if not immediate, terrorist threat. Some of them have been trying hard to launch an attack here over the last five years without success, and the question facing investigators is whether they can realistically try any harder for the Olympics, when security will be far tighter than usual.
Security, that is, around the Olympic village and at the venues. If there is a group out there plotting an attack, or a loner with a gun considering a rampage, they would not have to pick a sporting arena to disrupt the Games – an attack anywhere in the UK would have a huge impact.
Liaising with a myriad of other agencies across the world has been a big task: keeping them up to date with security plans in the UK, reassuring those with extra concerns – with the US and Israel thought to be chief among them – and cajoling others who should have them. Giving advice to the Home Office about who can be given security accreditation for London 2012 has involved sifting through 500,000 domestic and foreign applications – another monumental effort.
MI5 has been in a period of expansion and transition, which has coincided with, and to some extent been accelerated by, the need to protect the Games.
The security service has not recruited extra people specifically for the event because it was growing anyway after the 9/11 and 7 July attacks. Its staff of more than 3,500 means it has doubled in size in a decade, and numbers will be supplemented further with help from MI6, the secret intelligence service, and GCHQ.
The Guardian understands that MI5 has not set up a specific Olympics unit because it believes the systems it has in place are robust enough, and that it would be wrong to draw a distinction between terrorism and Olympic terrorism. Improvements in investigating methods and updates to IT systems are said to have made a real difference.
Scotland Yard and MI5 remain hopeful that the likelihood of an atrocity remains low, but as the weeks pass, they acknowledge that attitudes to risk will inevitably change. Managing these "collapsing timescales", as investigators call them, are likely to test officers to the limit, even if no specific plots are found.
In the days before the Olympics start, their teams are likely to be deluged with extra intelligence from foreign agencies, who will feel less inclined to vet potential information before it is passed on. The network of MI5 agents in the UK may also start to provide more intelligence too, for the same understandable reasons. The front end of this intelligence funnel has been expanded to cope with the extra material, with all the usual criteria applied; is the intelligence specific, is it credible, who is the source, and just as importantly – is there anything that can be done with it?
This "triage" process will help to distil the reports, and if there is any lingering concern, the police, MI5 – and potentially the Crown Prosecution Service – will have difficult judgments to make.Scotland Yard and the security agencies can convene executive liaison groups to discuss the most serious potential threats.
The questions they will have to ask include, can we let this situation run any longer? What risks are we taking if we do? Should we disrupt and do we have enough evidence to arrest and charge?
Nobody is talking openly about them, but it is believed the number of the most serious potential threats does not appear to have increased in the last few months. But some still exist.
Over the last 10 months, the police have made a series of counter-terrorism arrests in places such as Luton and Birmingham, and more are likely to follow. The threat from international terrorism is currently rated as substantial – the third highest of five levels. This is set by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, based within Thames House, though it is independent from MI5. When planning for the Olympics, it was presumed the level would be at the second highest available – severe.
If the threat level rises in the coming weeks, it will not be to keep people on their toes, sources say. It will go up because credible intelligence has emerged that is causing investigators immediate concern. That does not mean there is a specific plot afoot; but it might mean, with time running out, and risks to be managed, the police will make an early move. The police expect bomb hoaxes and stunts this summer, which will cause irritation. But if that is the sum of the disruption to the Games, then no one at Thames House or at New Scotland Yard will be too discomfited.
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
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