London Bridge attack 3rd June 2017

We were in Spitalfields and Whitechapel on that particular Saturday night. Lindsay and Ingrid were dressed as Victorian tarts and we were shooting the cover for my next novel in suitable locations. After scouring the back streets for a couple of hours we ended up on Tower Bridge around 10pm.

For those that don’t know London the next bridge along is London Bridge.  We could see blue flashing lights on that Bridge and the traffic around us seemed to be slowing, becoming congested. Then my friend’s phone beeped. It was someone on twitter

“They’re attacking London Bridge” he said.

We all looked down river. We could see blue flashing on the south side of London bridge. Here on the North side of Tower Bridge traffic was now at a complete standstill. Plenty of people were milling about. Confusion was rapidly taking  hold. At this point a Special Constable appeared. He started telling people to ‘Get Back’ and ‘Stay Calm’

A small section of us ignored him. We wanted to get closer, to see what was happening. A cluster gathered on the pavement and phones were being held up and aimed across the water.

It was at this moment everything changed. How they managed to get through the gridlocked traffic I will never know. Police officers in black swarmed the area. In seconds they had the traffic moving, the area secure. Each of them undoubtedly knew his place in the bigger picture and they were not messing about.

An officer in black with his face covered moved towards out little group on the junction.

“Armed Police in the area, Get back!” he barked.

We all did so immediately. He was not to be messed with, questioned or disobeyed. It was glaringly obvious.

As we moved back and this unit of professionals moved forward. Going about the work they clearly train for to a fanatical degree, twitter announced that three terrorists had just been fatally shot in Borough Market. It was over.

It later transpired that the whole thing had lasted no more than eight minutes.

There’s an awful lot about that night I will never know but one thing I do now realise with absolute certainty is that the Metropolitan Police have worked extremely hard to make sure they can be at an incident, probably anywhere in the Capital, within minutes. They should be supremely confident they can handle practically anything because I’ve seen them and i’m convinced of it. The way they went about their business that night

made me proud. And I don’t even like guns.

Ian Parson 2017