London’s annual Notting Hill Carnival, a multicultural street festival notorious for rampant criminality, saw scores of arrests prior to midnight on its first day, including multiple sexual assaults and attacks on police officers.
As of 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, the Metropolitan Police confirmed there had been 85 arrests, for the following crimes:
- Assault on a police officer (10)
- Robbery (1)
- Criminal damage (2)
- Public order (6)
- Possession of an offensive weapon (26)
- Drugs (18)
- Sexual assault (11)
- Assault occasioning Grievous Bodily Harm (GBH) (1)
- Assault occasioning Actual Bodily Harm (ABH)/Common assault (4)
- Other (6)
The carnival continues tonight, with Sunday having been the Children’s Day portion of the event.
It returned to London for the first time since the onset of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic last year, accompanied by a number of violent incidents. These included a policewoman being sexually assaulted by two men in a crowd and a rapper being stabbed to death in an attack which resulted in five arrests but no charges.
Far-left Labour mayor Sadiq Khan claims the carnival is “part of the fabric of our city,” where “we don’t just tolerate our diversity – we embrace and celebrate it” – but the Metropolitan Police Federation, which serves as a union for rank-and-file London police officers, has long lobbied for it to be shut down.
“Every year our brave officers come under attack at this event. Colleagues dread policing it. And yet nothing changes,” they complained in 2022.
