Police arrest 140 revellers on day one of Notting Hill Carnival after colourful start to street party: Figures up 40% on last year amid Met crackdown

A total of 140 people have already been arrested on the first day of Notting Hill Carnival for offences including assaults on police, robbery and possession of weapons. 

That is 40 per cent more than the number arrested on the opening day of the world-famous street party in west London last year, when 104 were detained. 

It comes as the Met Police has vowed to crack down on crime at the event, deploying knife arches and live facial recognition cameras to locate people on watchlists.

In an update at 8pm on Sunday, the force said dozens of arrests were made on the opening day, including 15 for assaults on police. 

It added that one of its officers who was attacked sustained injuries to their hand which required hospital treatment.  

Four of the arrests made on Sunday were for sexual offences, 21 were for possession of an offensive weapon and 19 were for intent to supply class A drugs.

Another four arrests were for public order offences, 25 were for possession of cannabis and six were for the possession of class A drugs. 

Some 105 arrests took place at the carnival itself, while 35 were made on the approach to the event. 

Of the 35 arrests outside the carnival, 13 were the result of live facial recognition – a new technology being deployed by The Met which captures people’s faces in real-time CCTV cameras.

Meanwhile, more than half a dozen police officers were seen carrying one man who was seemingly resisting arrest near Portobello Road this afternoon.

Shortly beforehand, police appeared to be carrying out a stop and search on a young man who had been placed in handcuffs nearby. 

A spokesperson for the Met Police said on Sunday: ‘The policing operation for the first full day of Notting Hill Carnival has moved into the dispersal phase as crowds head home from the event. 

‘A significant number of officers remain in the area to deal with any incidents.’ 

Dating back to 1966, the carnival takes over and transforms the famous London borough for one weekend a year with the annual party.

The festival began at 6am, with festival-goers gathering for J’Ouvert celebrations, which means ‘daybreak’ in French Creole, as they paraded through the streets and sprayed brightly coloured paints and powders to get into the carnival spirit. 

Three men splattered in paint were even spotted dancing on top of a bus stop outside Ladbroke Grove station, near Portobello Road market, as celebrations got off to a very early start. 

Hundreds gathered under a bridge where they danced and launched paint into the air as Europe’s biggest street party, which celebrates Caribbean culture, got underway in flamboyant style.

Some were dressed in blue overalls to protect their clothes from the paint, while others wore their most colourful outfits or took part in a tradition from Grenada in the West Indies called Jab-Jab.

This is where they cover their bodies in black oil, tar, mud or paint, wear horns and drag chains in a satirical celebration to recognise the detrimental impact of UK colonialism and the slave trade upon Caribbean nations.

Police say they expect more than a million people to descend on Notting Hill ‘for what is one of the most significant weekends in the capital’s cultural calendar’.

Partygoers will be met with dazzling parades with masquerade dancing, soca, calypso, steel bands and huge sound systems. 

J’Ouvert – which was cancelled last year – returned at sunrise this morning but the official opening ceremony starts at 10am on Sunday. 

Sunday is the children’s day parade, with family-friendly activities and events accompanied by street dancing and sound systems throughout the day.

At 3pm on both Sunday and Monday, a 72-second silence will be held to remember the Grenfell Tower fire victims.

The main carnival parade route stretches across three miles of west London streets, passing by Ladbroke Grove, Great Western Road, and Westbourne Park. 

Attendees – waving flags of Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, and Barbados were seen blowing whistles and plastic trumpets as they moved down the iconic Westbourne Park Road, made famous as the setting of the hit 1999 film Notting Hill.

HGVs carrying sound systems and DJs are making their way Ladbroke Grove, followed by parting revellers, many wearing feather headdresses or Jamaican flags as makeshift capes.

St Michael And All Angels church steel orchestra has been among the steel drum bands keeping the crowds dancing.

One procession attendees was spotted holding a sign that read ‘respect our culture or gweh’.

Despite today being billed as ‘family day’s, the majority of attendees appear to be groups of adults and couples.

The landlady of the The Knight of Notting Hill said the pub had put up boardings as a ‘preventative measure’ after encouragement from the police and the council.

Veronica, 23, who has lived in the Edgware Road area all her life, said: ‘The pub doesn’t look as welcoming as usual – but this is our second year of being open during carnival. 

‘We haven’t had trouble before – it’s more of a preventative measure. This year I can see a difference with the policing. There’s more police around, I’ve seen more patrols. It’s been busier than last year. 

‘So far it’s a good vibe – seems like everyone is having fun today.’

Dozens of shops along the road have boarded up windows in preparation for any crime and disorder.

Tobie Chandler, the manager of the Cock And Bottle pub in Needham Road said the venue had upgraded their wooden boardings this year.

He said: ‘It’s mainly to stop people peeing in the garden and seating area. The boardings get put up every year.’

Traffic stopping bollards have been erected eastern entrance of Westbourne Park Road, along with police screening archways.

One shop keeper, closing this afternoon, said: ‘I dread it each year. It’s hell. I’m bracing myself for mayhem.’

Police are enforcing section 60 and section 60AA search orders, as well as a section 35 dispersal order. The section 60 search order runs until 2am on Monday.

The carnival has become ‘slapdash’ and in need of better organisation according to one Lonsdale Road resident.

Venetia, 35, whose mother and father were of Guianian heritage, said the event had lost its original purpose of celebrating Caribbean culture.

She said: ‘It feels a bit dirty. It’s a lot of beer and drugs and graffiti. There used to be more kids. It needs more money and needs to go harder on the Caribbean culture.’

Aryan Ahmad, 31, manager of Blue Door Charms corner shop in Notting Hill Gate, said both the police and council recommend that the business put up boardings to protect the shop front. 

The shop worker said: ‘The police and the council came and said people might break the windows and then lay down in the glass. The shop had to pay for the boardings itself. Other businesses say the carnival has got rough. Other businesses say that is gets rougher and rougher every year.’

Monday is the adult’s parade, which is usually the busiest day where revellers wearing bright costumes and waving flags will pack out west London for a day of extravagance.   

The Metropolitan Police said yesterday that it had already arrested 100 people and taken dozens of weapons off the streets as part of an operation to deter those who pose the greatest risk to public safety at this year’s event.

There will also be live facial recognition cameras and screening arches to detect weapons at the busiest entry points. 

It comes after two people died days after being attacked in separate incidents during last year’s carnival. Cher Maximen was killed in front of her three-year-old daughter and chef Mussie Imnetu was beaten to death by charity worker Omar Wilson.

 There were four stabbings and more than 103 arrests for robbery, violence, sexual offences, drug offences and possession of weapons last year.

Police were kicked, punched, pushed, spat at, headbutted and had glass bottles thrown at them in 2024 when 349 arrests were made – the highest total since 2019. 

Residents and business owners have been boarding-up properties along the carnival route in an attempt to reduce the risk of damage. 

Commander Charmain Brenyah, the Met Police’s spokesperson for the event, said: ‘The vast majority come to have fun and enjoy themselves, to celebrate Caribbean culture, to dance, to eat and to go home with nothing but good memories.

‘Regrettably we know a minority come with less positive intentions and in recent years this has played out in the form of serious violence including three tragic incidents where lives have been taken.

 ‘The actions of this minority are totally at odds with the values of those who care passionately about Carnival and we acknowledge those, including the event organisers, who have stood up to condemn violence and serious criminality in the run up to this weekend.’

Simon Hill, Deputy General Secretary of the Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, told the Daily Mail in an interview this week that the two biggest concerns for officers were being assaulted and crowd crushing.

He said: ‘Officers are concerned about the crowd density. It is physically possible to be six feet away from a colleague and for you to not be seen or to not see them.

‘Officers are very much isolated due to density. In those isolated moments, then really they are at the mercy of the crowd – if you have people in there intent on causing harm to officers.

‘I’m especially concerned about some of our female colleagues who report being sexually assaulted. It’s just not acceptable. They don’t go to work to be sexually assaulted.

‘It must be dreadful for them. Some of our female colleagues are slight in build – they cannot defend themselves against a dense crowd.’

Mr Hill said officers worried about their ‘inability to protect the public’ in the event of a crowd crush, given video evidence from previous festivals shows the crowd ‘moving almost as a wave… of water’.

He continued: ‘It’s physically possible to lift your feet and be carried with the crowd in certain points. It’s a feeling of helplessness, that they are unable to protect and prevent that. There’s also the fear that they’ll actually be caught up in it.’

Mr Hill said officers were ‘very much at a risk of being victims of any crushing, as well as the public’.

Susan Hall, a Conservative member of the London Assembly, said in a bombshell report published earlier this month that the carnival in recent years had only narrowly ‘avoided a mass crush on the scale of the Hillsborough disaster’.

London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has warned of the risk of a ‘crowd crush’ at the carnival, saying at a meeting last month that he had ‘seen images of some of the crowds at some parts’ of the event and ‘watching them made me frightened’. 

The growing popularity of the carnival has led to politicians raising their concerns over potential crushes at the non-ticketed event, with some suggesting a move to Hyde Park.

Mr Hill backed the festival being moved to a park where it could be ticketed, although he said he accepted the ‘geographical importance of the event’ in its current location.

He pointed out that the current road layout in Notting Hill has various trip hazards such as kerbs and drains, but a park would not have as many uneven surfaces.

Mr Hill also suggested a park would have better refreshment and sanitary facilities, adding: ‘The residents come back to their front gardens being used as toilets, and that’s not acceptable.’

He said: ‘I would be surprised if there’s any event in the UK that attracts a similar number of people confined to such a small geographical space.’

The annual celebration has been running since 1966, and arrest totals have been on a rising curve since the start of the millennium. The total over the past 20 years between 2005 and 2024 is now well over the 5,000 mark.

Notting Hill Carnival has said it has worked to improve things by listening carefully to the Metropolitan Police’s concerns – leading to numerous changes this year.

Matthew Philip, CEO of Notting Hill Carnival, said at this year’s launch: ‘We’re strengthening every operational element of an already extensive, multi agency event liaison team.

‘We have more trained stewards, expanded CCTV coverage, better parade coordination, faster response systems and enhanced crowd management infrastructure. 

‘These are not tick-box exercises – they’re real commitments to care, precision and community protection run by experts.