Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation

THE ROLE OF POLICE
“People are understandably nervous
about proposals that would turn a
nation of citizens into suspects.”
over the pond, surely it’s that populist
visibility can undermine community
credibility to disastrous effect?
Policing priorities become skewed by
political point-scoring and operational
independence will be sorely tested by
commissioners responsible for everything
from budget-setting to hiring and firing
Chief Constables. At the extreme end it is
difficult to see how legitimacy can be built
and minority-ethnic interests protected if
a far-right commissioner is elected.
The reported desperate attempts of
the Home Office to entice ‘celebrity’
candidates to stand reveals the policy has
yet to capture public imagination.
And as for the principle justification,
ironically, the ethnic and geographic
diversity of Police Authority membership
(drawn also from both sexes) allows for
more representative public involvement
than this new brave alternative.
Where police accountability is
concerned, the official response to the
tragic deaths of Ian Tomlinson and
Mark Duggan suggest the government
would have been better advised to focus
on reforming the IPCC to give it the
independence, competence and bite
necessary to be a trusted police watchdog.
As Peel foresaw, political interference
in policing rarely ends well. The
over-centralising instincts of the last
government left officers striving to meet
targets that, combined with a raft of
new police powers and criminal justice
short-cuts, meant rights were abused and
professional discretion undermined.
In addressing these failings there has
been some progress. Following Liberty’s
victory in the Court of Human Rights,
discredited stop and search without
suspicion – under the old section 44 of the
Terrorism Act 2000 – has been replaced
with a more sensible and truly exceptional
power.
The DNA database is going to be pared
back to remove the DNA of innocent
men, women and children that is currently
held. Bloated pre-charge detention periods
that put us embarrassingly out of step with
the rest of the free world have, thankfully,
been reduced.
But blanket stop and search powers still
remain under section 60 of the Criminal
Justice and Public Order Act 1994 and
give rise to dangerous tensions between
frontline officers and minority ethnic
communities on the sharp end of their
discriminatory impact.
Data retention
In any liberal society, the appropriate
limits of police power provokes perennial
debate. To the coalition’s credit there has
been less posturing on law and order – but
the ever-expanding shopping list for new
criminal justice powers now appears to be
being drawn up elsewhere. It is Whitehall’s
worst kept secret that the security agencies
have been campaigning for the blanket
retention of all our communications data
for future use and mining. People are
understandably nervous about proposals
that would turn a nation of citizens into
suspects and a public backlash has put
the brakes on the scheme. Whatever the
supposed merits of the plan, those familiar
with previous experiments involving
blanket surveillance and disproportionate
policing powers will know how they
served to stoke resentment and mistrust
– grievances that are inevitably directed
at the police, rather than the less visible
agencies. This alone should make the
service wary of becoming the public
face of a reform, which would so
fundamentally alter the relationship
between the citizen and the state.
Police accountability
Finally, British policing has long been
rooted in public – rather than profit driven
– service. Policing – and the maintenance
of the rule of law – is surely one of the
core constitutional functions that any state
must provide. Yet the government now
supports outsourcing everything from
police investigations and detentions to
non-judicial disposal, patrols and crime
scene management to private contractors.
Alarm bells should ring for anyone
committed to police accountability to
the public they serve. Long before G4S’s
omnishambolic Olympic performance,
comparable privatisation of other core
public services such as immigration and
deportation told a cautionary tale.
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