Police have been banned from dancing at Notting Hill Carnival as 7,000 officers and staff are bracing for potential carnage this weekend.
The Metropolitan police have said they believe grooving to the music could distract or slow down their officers from responding to outbreaks of crime.
The growing popularity of Europe’s biggest street party which celebrates Caribbean heritage, arts and culture has become a big problem for Scotland Yard.
Last year, carnival arrests hit their highest level since 2019 as 349 people were detained including for violence, theft, sexual offences and assaults on police.
The Met confirmed the dancing ban to The Guardian and in a statement said: ‘Carnival is an iconic and spectacular event which attracts hundreds of thousands of people every year to party and celebrate Caribbean culture.
‘But it is also an event where there have been numerous concerns about crowd safety and crime. As a consequence, almost 7,000 officers will be deployed to this year’s event. They are there to keep revellers safe, not to join in the revelling.
‘We want officers to positively engage with the carnivalgoers while staying vigilant at all times and remaining able to respond and intervene swiftly as necessary. They can’t do this if they are dancing.
‘The standards of behaviour expected as part of the policing operation will be communicated clearly before the event, just as they have been in recent years.’
The Metropolitan police have said they believe grooving to the music could distract or slow down their officers from responding to outbreaks of crime
The growing popularity of Europe’s biggest street party which celebrates Caribbean heritage, arts and culture has become a big problem for Scotland Yard
Police have been banned from dancing at Notting Hill Carnival as 7,000 officers and staff are bracing for potential carnage this weekend
Amid escalating levels of violence Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Ward, police commander for this year’s event, said the carnival’s size creates ‘unique challenges’.
The Met has faced increasing pressure to ensure the safety of revellers after Cher Maximen, 32, was stabbed to death by Shakeil Thibou, 20, in front of her three-year-old daughter last year; while chef Mussie Imnetu, 41, was murdered in the street.
The annual celebration has been running since 1966, and arrest totals have been on a rising curve since the start of the millennium when they stood at 158 in 2002. The total over the past 20 years between 2005 and 2024 is now well over the 5,000 mark.
This year, police want to identify ‘violent gangs’ planning to attend and urged anyone with information of individuals intending to engage in violence to come forward.
Cher Maximen (left), 32, and Mussie Imnetu (right), 41, were both murdered at last year’s event
A series of 31 anti-terror concrete barriers were installed on Portobello Road last month by Kensington and Chelsea Council to help deter vehicle attacks in the popular market area of Notting Hill following counter-terrorism guidance issued by the Met.
But the council said these ‘hostile vehicle mitigation measures’ will be removed for two weeks from today to ensure ‘people can move freely and safely during the event’.
Susan Hall, a Conservative member of the London Assembly, said in a bombshell report published earlier this month that the carnival in recent years had only narrowly ‘avoided a mass crush on the scale of the Hillsborough disaster’.
London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has warned of the risk of a ‘crowd crush’ at the carnival, saying at a meeting last month that he had ‘seen images of some of the crowds at some parts’ of the event and ‘watching them made me frightened’.
