Hue and cry

If it's true we get the police service we deserve, what have we done to deserve the one we've got?

The current 'crisis in policing' is not confined to the UK but is, most notably, playing itself out in the USA too. In both countries a series of catastrophic policing failures has undermined trust in the integrity and impartiality of the police. In other developed countries, if not actually identified as a crisis, there are issues with policing, but maybe that's as it should be in any mature democracy. Eternal vigilance must be an essential part of the deal between citizens and the law enforcement agents whom they pay to protect them and their property, and keep the peace. It's a trade-off between unfettered personal liberty and societal stability - the voluntary surrendering of some individual 'liberties' in exchange for the assurance of safety and security - which we celebrate as 'the rule of law'.

The founder of modern British policing, Sir Robert Peel, understood this only too well when he instituted the Metropolitan Police in London in 1829. The so-called 'Peelian Principles' have been hugely influential in the development of modern policing, perhaps the key amongst which is the concept of policing by consent. Peel believed that the police were citizens in uniform: "the public are the police, and the police are the public". He was at pains to make this clear as the founding ethos of his police force but it was not without its controversy, as he knew from the experience of those who had tried, and partially succeeded, before him. 

The precursor organisation to 'the Met' had been a proto-police force set up in 1749 by magistrate and playwright, Henry Feilding, as a body of law-enforcement officers of the Bow Street Magistrates' Court in the City of Westminster. Popularly known as the 'Bow Street Runners' this small contingent of paid officers was finally absorbed into the Met in 1839. But setting them up had been highly contentious, with many in England seeing a state-funded police force as being a nasty foreign (particularly French) concept, designed to spy on citizens and oppress their liberties. But, as London approached one-and-a-half million inhabitants. making it the world's most populous, and richest, city and thus increasingly vulnerable to criminal activity, its implementation became both an imperative and inevitability.

Current calls for the de-funding of policing in the USA and splitting-up of the Met into smaller, more manageable, units in London undoubtedly reflect widespread anxiety and anger at how far modern professional policing has moved away from the 'citizen' model. People now feel alienated from the police and increasingly view policing as something done to them rather than for them. And this feeling becomes acute the more marginalised the community involved. Small wonder that minority ethnic people, the young, women and girls, migrants, LGBTQ+ groups, environmental protesters, strikers et al no longer (if they ever did) see the police as protectors of their civil rights. In fact, looking at that long list, one could be forgiven for thinking that support for the police is now in the minority. I doubt this is yet the case but the trend is a worrying one, and must be worrying for the police too. If it isn't, it damned well should be!

Tinkering with police reforms is clearly not the answer. The culture of police forces (nowadays, in a classic excercise in window-dressing, referred to as 'services') needs to change radically. How can more minority ethnic, female, LGBTQ+, disabled recruitment of officers be encouraged when the prevailing 'locker room' culture has been exposed as being toxically racist, misogynistic, homophobic and ableist? It's tempting to say a root-and-branch reform of policing is necessary but maybe a return to its roots would be instructive. We obviously don't want to encourage vigilantism but a return to greater citizen involvement and participation is perhaps the key. Taking the law into one's own hands is seen as an inherently bad thing but should we not all be actively engaged in protecting our own rights and freedoms?

The American jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, famously said "your freedom to swing your arm ends where my nose begins". In other words, exercise of our personal freedom should not infringe anyone else's. We should be concious, and respectful, of other people's freedoms. It's a self-denying ordinance if you will. Unfortunately, policing best behaviour, individually and collectively, is a duty we have willingly abdicated to professionals to carry out on our behalf. If we don't like the way they are doing so we will need, to use the clichéd phrase, to take back control.

I was lucky enough to be a Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator in 'the good old days' of Ken Livingstone's Labour London Mayoralty, when he introduced the local policing model of one sergeant, two police constables and three Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) per ward. When one considers there were twenty wards in my Borough and 32 Boroughs in London, one appreciates just what a huge commitment to community policing this was; one which incoming Tory Mayor, one Boris Johnson, quickly dismantled. Officer numbers fell from 4.1 per 1000 Londoners to 3.3, the lowest figure in twenty years. The system Livingstone instituted was responsive and police presence on the streets visible, there was also grassroots democratic accountability via regular ward policing panel meetings and Neighbourhood Watch meetings. In my ward we also had LGBTQ+ police liaison meetings. Halcyon days indeed!

Except they weren't, of course. Superficially London policing was more accountable and transparent than it is now but, clearly, the underlying institutional problems were there all along. The crass mishandling of police statements around high-profile cases continues, as witness the recent revelations about missing person, Nicola Bulley's intimate personal health issues. (Is it remotely conceivable that the police would report as a material consideration a missing male having erectile dysfunction issues?) 

The shocking cases of rape, bullying and hate crime, against colleagues and vulnerable members of the public, even murder committed by serving officers in the UK and US, did not come out of nowhere and are not a recent phenomenon - they go back decades. But now they are in the public domain and, as I set out at the start, policing in this country is a public service.

We, the public, must regain control.

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