Faster work by Met 'may have spared Manchester riots'
Panorama looks at the day the summer riots reached Manchester
Peter Fahy said, with the benefit of hindsight "if London had been under control sooner, we probably would not have faced the problems in Manchester".
He added that his force is still tracking down hundreds of suspects from at least 300 crime scenes.
When the riots hit London, Manchester sent 100 public order officers to help.
Chief Constable Fahy said that after three nights of watching coverage of rioters on the streets of London, the violence and looting spread to his jurisdiction.
Panorama: Find out more
- Jeremy Vine presents Panorama: Inside the Riots
- BBC One, Monday, 14 November at 8.30pm
"We think it happened here because a certain group of people saw what was happening in London and decided that they seemed to be getting away with it."
Mr Fahy said that while his own force was short the 100 officers sent to London, he had no regrets about the decision.
"We knew what was absolutely critical was that there needed to be control of London. Because that was just creating more and more copycat violence up here."
He added that on both the streets of Salford, and then in Manchester city centre, his officers were taken by surprise by the level of organisation among the criminal element.
'Not enough'A preliminary report by the Metropolitan Police into its own response to the rioting found that too few officers were deployed onto the streets of London during the first three nights of rioting between 6-8 August.
About 3,000 officers were deployed across London on the first night - Saturday - plus 380 public-order officers in Tottenham and the rest of Haringey borough.
By Sunday that had risen to nearly 4,300, while about 6,000 were on the streets on Monday.
Police said their aggressive approach has helped catch looters In the first eight weeks after the rioting, Manchester police made 232 arrests and by 1 November, more than 350 people had been arrested.
About half the adult offenders so far convicted come from the most impoverished neighbourhoods in Greater Manchester and more than a third of those brought before the court were under 17.
Of all those charged in relation to the Manchester riots more than 80% already had criminal records.
Panorama: Inside the Riots, BBC One, Monday, 14
