It is the biggest single investigation West Midlands Police has undertaken since the Birmingham pub bombings in 1974. Crime Correspondent Mark Cowan meets the detectives who continue in their quest to hunt the looters involved in the city’s recent riots

The bank of laptop screens flickered with a multitude of shocking slow-motion scenes showing looters rampaging through shops in Birmingham.

Under the critical eye of the ranks of investigators, the library of violence was played, paused, re-wound and played again in forensic detail in the hope of identifying a split-second breakthrough.

The room could easily pass as a temporary office of an anonymous firm.

But it is the nerve centre of the largest investigation carried out by detectives since the city centre was hit by two explosions at the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town, killing 21 and injuring a further 182 in November 1974.

For in this room, these frame-by-frame dissections are providing the crucial evidence in the quest to bring to justice those whose “greed” led to unprecedented scenes of looting.

Each recognisable face gets added to the wall, a rogues’ gallery of suspects.

Along the corridor, teams of detectives are taking the images and working round the clock to identify them.

At the same time officers are trying to complete the comprehensive case files for those offenders who have already been charged, and compile thorough evidence packages for those on bail.

Seven weeks into “incredibly complex investigation”, led by Det Chief Insp Steve Reed and his deputy Det Insp Paul Dromer, it is these competing priorities that would test the mettle of the most organised of incident rooms.

Using violence between opposing football fans as an example, Det Chief Insp Reed said the typical response would be to run a reactive investigation to identify those involved.

“But here we are having to concurrently run proactive and reactive investigations. And because it hasn’t really been done on this scale before we’ve had to create procedures and processes as we’ve gone along,” he said.

“We have a number of offenders who have been charged, offenders on bail who are due to come in who we have to process information for.

“Then we have running concurrently an investigation into the outstanding offenders we are trying to identify through CCTV, forensics, witness accounts, intelligence and other investigative means at our disposal.”

He added: “The challenge is the unprecedented level of demand. It is like spinning plates, running three different investigations all at the same time.”

West Midlands Police recorded a total of 507 offences during the 48 hours of violence that exploded on the streets of Birmingham city centre on Monday, August 8 before spreading to other parts of the city, as well as West Bromwich and Wolverhampton.

Chief Constable Chris Sims said it was the decision to “maximise the number of arrests” and remove rioters from the streets to invoke a sense of deterrence that helped restore calm so quickly.

Within the first two nights 280 people were arrested. By the close of the week that number had leapt to more than 500. It now stands at 622 suspects. Of those, almost 200 have been charged, more than 300 released on bail.

Det Chief Insp Reed was handed the task of bringing those rioters to justice when he walked into work on the morning of Tuesday, August 9.

He described the pressure and the workload of the first two weeks of the operation, codenamed View, as similar to the first 48 hours of a murder investigation repeated, like Groundhog Day, over and over again.

Reflecting on those sleepless nights, he added: “The first 48 hours of a murder investigation is the most intense. We had that level of demand constantly for the first two weeks. It’s the only thing I can equate it to.

“The sheer scale of the investigation is unprecedented, the challenges are unique. But that is why we do this job.”

With little time to pause for breath, the investigative team were out that day swooping on suspects linked to the looting through CCTV intelligence, making arrests and recovering stolen property. They also recovered five guns.