Harehills: Leeds councillor Mothin Ali tells of chaotic scenes as 2,000 people 'outnumber' police and officers forced 'to withdraw' in night of disorder

Yorkshire Evening Post

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00:00So councillor Muthin Ali, you are the councillor for Hare Hills, you were recently elected,

00:05you're the Green Party councillor. You were here last night, could you tell us a bit about

00:09what happened and how it played out?

00:11I mean, I got here around half past six, seven o'clock, that sort of time. There was a decent

00:22police presence, but they were heavily, heavily outnumbered. There was probably about 2,000

00:27people out, about 50 police officers, dressed in ordinary uniforms, so they didn't have

00:34any tactical protection, and they were given the order to withdraw. And when that happened,

00:41they were hurled at, all kinds of projectiles, bricks, bottles, anything people could get

00:48hold of, they were thrown at the police. Myself and a couple of other people, a couple of

00:52other community activists, CJ, one of the main people who stood side by side with me,

01:00trying to act as a human shield for the police, trying to protect the police, trying to push

01:05the crowd back, and allowing that space for the police to withdraw. But they weren't safe,

01:12they were in a situation where they were really, really unsafe, they had all kinds of things

01:16thrown at them. So, yeah, they needed protecting.

01:22You mentioned people were trying to de-escalate the situation, could you tell me a bit about that?

01:26So, I mean, later on into the evening, I was here from half past six, trying to calm people

01:34down, trying to stop people from causing some other mayhem. There were some community activists,

01:43some people who were residents here, trying to calm people down, trying to stop people

01:50from doing anything further. So, people from outside the area started coming in, started

01:58flooding in, they were bringing things in to burn, they were bringing, so the estate

02:03behind you, they were bringing in wheelie bins and all sorts of things to throw onto

02:07the fire. So, I tried to stop them the best I could. Yeah, I mean, there were people from

02:15outside. The locals, most of them know me, so when I speak to them, they tend to have

02:23a conversation, they tend to listen, whether we agree or not, that's a different story.

02:27But we can have that dialogue. It's people who came from outside that didn't respect

02:32our community, they're the ones who made, inflamed things, you know, and they were the

02:37ones who were actually getting a little bit violent.

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