G.B. ENGLAND. London. In response to past violence in the streets of Britain, British police are fast changing. Instead of the image of the avuncular bobby on the "beat" elite Special Patrol Units are being formed in each police division, highly mobile and trained weekly in the use of firearms, and drilled in the use of riot control equipment and the management of street violence. No longer the passive force they used to be, Britain's police are becoming a highly technological force with the use of sophisticated computer networks, and specialised electronic methods of crime detection.
This has provoked in Britain a vigorous debate, questioning whether the direction they are going is in fact the right one. People argue that this new highly agressive form of policing is provoking more of the type of street violence which it seeks to dispel.

Physicist DICK LACEY has a machine which hurls bricks at a rubber head with a glycering brain which is connected to a computer "what I want to do is to assess the effects of a controlled belt on the head and develop suitable protection". Since the riots last summer, the PSRDB has been flooded with requests for better body protection ; helmets hastily purchased from the Ministry of Defence, for example, had inherent faults, allowing petrol bombs to reach the wearer's face, and they have also designed a greatly improved helmet. 1981.