Police Chief: Riots 'Took Us By Surprise'

London's police chief has admitted with hindsight he wished he had more officers on the streets at the height of last month's riots and the scale of the disorder "took us by surprise".

Acting Metropolitan Police commissioner Tim Godwin defended his force's handling of the unrest in the capital, which spread to other cities in England, as he appeared before a committee of MPs.

Mr Godwin said: "With hindsight I wish I had more officers on the streets on that Monday night to respond to what was 22 boroughs of serious disorder.

"We were not expecting that level and spread, that copycatting of sheer criminality."

He added: "The number of sites of disorder was not something we had witnessed before and that took us by surprise."

He also said: "We need to do something about the fear of crime in inner cities. We've got to empower citizens in the inner cities to be able to stand up against the criminals."

Mr Godwin said: "I think this is a wake-up call for the criminal justice system.

"We have in London been seeking to speed up justice, make it more relevant, make it more relevant to communities, and that's something that we need to do.

"The amount of people who have previous convictions does pose questions for us."

Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens added that Scotland Yard had 500 officers working on the inquiry and some 20,000 hours of CCTV footage still needed to be viewed.

Appearing earlier before the Home Affairs select committee, London's mayor Boris Johnson said the new Metropolitan Police commissioner will be announced on Monday.

Those in the running are understood to include Mr Godwin, Strathclyde's police chief Stephen House, the former head of Merseyside Police Bernard Hogan-Howe, and Acpo chief Sir Hugh Orde.

Shortlisted applicants will face questioning from the Metropolitan Police Authority today and will also be scrutinised for the job by the Home Office.

Selectors are keen to secure a replacement for Sir Paul Stephenson in the wake of the phone-hacking investigation and last month's riots in London which also spread elsewhere in England.

Mr Johnson told MPs that "four exceptional candidates" have come forward and it is now a question of "whittling that down".

The committee hearing comes after Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke blamed the riots on the failure of the penal system.

Mr Clarke declared that the current system had not managed to stop "a feral underclass" from reoffending.

He revealed that 75% of over-18s charged with involvement in last month's unrest had criminal records.

Writing in The Guardian, he claimed the "broken penal system" had failed to stop the "criminal classes" from reoffending.

He said there was "a feral underclass, cut off from the mainstream in everything but its materialism".

He wrote: "It's not yet been widely recognised, but the hardcore of the rioters were in fact known criminals.

"Close to three quarters of those aged 18 or over charged with riot offences already had a prior conviction.

"That is the legacy of a broken penal system - one whose record in preventing reoffending has been straightforwardly dreadful."

He added: "In my view, the riots can be seen in part as an outburst of outrageous behaviour by the criminal classes - individuals and families familiar with the justice system, who haven't been changed by their past punishments."

Senior politicians, police chiefs and legal figures have expressed widely differing opinions about how rioters and looters should be punished.

On Friday, director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer warned that offenders involved in the riots should be treated in the same way as other criminals.

Concerns have been raised that some of the sentences handed down were too tough.

In one example, two men accused of trying to incite unrest via Facebook were each jailed for four years.

But Prime Minister David Cameron has praised the "tough message" the courts have been giving.

Mr Clarke, speaking to Sky News, hailed the "swift, strong justice" but he added "the idea that the length of sentence is going to solve the problem is simplistic nonsense".

Recent figures released by the Ministry of Justice show more than 1,500 people have now appeared in court over the riots.