Commander was like rabbit in headlights, says female ex-cop
A NEWLY-RETIRED police counter-terrorism officer caught up in the Manchester Arena bombing accused emergency services of failing ‘on every level’ and abandoning people ‘in their hour of need’.
Andrea Bradbury said she gave police clear descriptions of the scene and – despite being wounded – sought out the so-called gold incident commander to offer information.
Mrs Bradbury, who had retired following a 30-year career with Lancashire Police eight weeks before the attack, said the atrocity and scale of casualties were ‘preventable’.
She added: ‘It was a perfect storm of failures in terms of the security services, the event organisers and our policing and emergency services. They were unprepared and totally caught off guard.’
Mrs Bradbury had been waiting with a friend to collect their daughters when the bomb went off. She said: ‘People were left in their time of need. It was so wrong.’ Having dragged herself off the floor, looking around at motionless bodies and a scene of total devastation, she said she ‘went into police mode’.
Mrs Bradbury focused on getting her friend to safety and finding their children, then alerted emergency services. She said: ‘I called the on-call counter terrorism officer within minutes of the explosion. I made it clear that a massive emergency response was needed.’
Mrs Bradbury, who was awarded an MBE in 2012 for spearheading the Government’s Prevent strategy on extremism, added: ‘As I left the arena I saw emergency vehicles rushing to the area and I believed they were heading in, in numbers, to help people, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.’
She then went to the headquarters of Greater Manchester Police to offer further assistance before attending hospital where she needed surgery for shrapnel wounds.
At the police station she met the gold commander – whom she likened to ‘a rabbit in the headlights’. She added: ‘I could have provided so much more information, drawn a map of where it all happened, detailed where people were, and offered thoughts on how to get survivors out. They didn’t have a plan at all. People were so badly let down.’
She said that ‘despite many individuals trying their best’, failures were ‘due to a lack of communication, training, planning and preparation. It was entirely unforgivable.’