Festus Akinbusoye was formerly Bedfordshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner.
Our police officers are the line that prevents civility in our society from ebbing away into anarchy. If you think this is an exaggeration, see what is playing out on our streets in the last 10 days, with possibly more to come.
Hundreds of police officers have been seriously injured while hoodlums and thugs hijack a lawful right to protest. Many of these officers have been asked to cancel annual leave, and will likely be providing mutual aid to other police forces as operational demands require. They do not get a choice if they have the requisite public order training.
This is just one of the reasons why the 4.5 per cent pay award offer for police officers recently announced by the government is derisory compared to the 7.5 per cent awarded last year and when juxtaposed against the demands they are increasingly called to fill. I hope that any plans to make real-term cuts to the police budget are shelved.
The growing demands on British policing are not going to ease off. It is only going to increase. The funding, resourcing, and political backing must be provided if we want to have a police force that is effective and commands the confidence of the British public.
To achieve this, police leaders must transform their approach to public engagement and information sharing, not leaving this to politicians.
For example, for various reasons that range from understandable to downright conspiratorial, the two-tier policing theory is becoming an established narrative, which if simply disregarded as ‘right-wing’ crank-speak, policing will be making a big mistake.
Police Chiefs should come out and address this issue head-on using appropriate platforms, providing evidence as is their stock and trade; but most crucially, reassuring the country that policing is for all our communities and its powers will be deployed without fear or favour. So, be it a marauding mob of men wearing balaclavas shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ while smashing up a pub, to others burning cars and causing criminal damage; the public deserves to know that their police will be as robust in tackling both.
It will be a missed opportunity if police chiefs allow the perception to take root that British policing is now in the business of picking sides. Politicians have the luxury of being able to do this. They’re here today, gone tomorrow; but British policing is here to stay. It cannot afford to ignore, and thus allow the two-tier policing label to stick. Much has been done to address the narrative that it targets black and brown people. It needs to tackle this narrative too.
Another area that will need revisiting as part of the learnings from the summer of 2024 are the policies and practices around the sharing of Body Worn Video (BWV) footage, especially when an edited version of an incident is already in the public domain and widely shared in the press.
2023 guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) states:
“BWV footage of an incident can give a true and accurate account of events, context to decisions made, and correct harmful misinformation circulating online. The NPCC portfolio encourages forces to be proactive in identifying cases that can be shared to increase public transparency and build confidence in the legitimacy of our actions, but there are a number of considerations before doing so.”
While the leadership managing the Manchester Airport head-kicking incident would have been under tremendous pressure, I cannot help but wonder what impact a compliant sharing of the officers’ BWV footage could have had in calming community tensions. It could also help address the aforementioned two-tier policing theory. So why is this not happening despite the guidance giving the green light?
The threshold for sharing BWV remains high thanks to human rights laws, data protection, and GDPR. Also, given the potential pushback from the Crown Prosecution Service, Ministry of Justice, and ministers, I suspect no Chief Constable would dare want to take such a risk. This is why a system change, with political backing, is needed to allow for the proactive sharing of BWV in select cases. It is done in the United States and other comparable legal jurisdictions without weakening their legal systems or jeopardising trials.
Based on first-hand experience in uniform and later as an elected Police and Crime Commissioner, I can say that 21st-century policing is extremely challenging and unlike what was the case ten or twenty years ago. The world has changed a lot since then, but so must policing’s approach to public engagement and information sharing. Failing to do so will make that thin blue line much thinner.
