West Midlands cop who was on frontline during Handsworth riots

Sep 12 2010 by Anuji Varma, Sunday Mercury

HE’S the police officer who was on the frontline during the Handsworth and Lozells riots.

Nigel Smith battled violent mobs and looters as the two Birmingham inner-city districts witnessed scenes of death and destruction over two days in September 1985.

Brothers Kassamali and Amarali Moledina perished in their Post Office on Lozells Road after it was engulfed in flames.

More than 230 people were arrested for looting, while millions of pounds worth of damage was caused to properties.

Now on the 25th anniversary of the troubles, award-winning police office Nigel has revealed the dramatic details of what he witnessed over those terrifying days.

The dad-of-two retired from the West Midlands force last year but has now returned to the Lozells beat as a Police Community Support Officer – to see an area regenerated and transformed.

“I’d turned up for the night shift but when I arrived I was told there was large-scale disorder going on,” recalled Nigel, 51. “I’d not known anything about it until I got into work.

‘‘We were all bussed over to Villa Cross and I remember leaving the vehicle and thinking that it looked as though a bomb had been dropped in the area.

‘‘It was a real mess and it was quite dark by then.

“A colleague and I were deployed to Carlisle Road.

“Our job was to maintain order at that junction.

“The ground was slippery and there was a constant ringing of alarm bells. I wasn’t scared because this was the sort of thing that we had been trained to deal with.

“There were overturned cars that had been torched and there were, of course, the looters.

‘‘I remember seeing one man with an armful of wool and I couldn’t quite understand why. Another man that I arrested had stolen an iron, which turned out to be broken.

“I think people were just grabbing as much as they could because they thought it was a free-for-all.

“Eventually, I was moved back to Lozells Road as order was slowly restored, but that’s when we started to hear reports that the Moledina brothers had been killed.