Home Secretary orders Black police deaths review

Policing by consent is the most cherished principle that informs and gives credence to our consent for the police to take whatever lawful action is necessary to maintain the Queens peace.

First articulated by the father of modern policing Sir John Peel over a hundred years ago, this important maxim was accompanied by another equally important ethic, and that is, the public are the police and the police are the public.

Combined, these two cornerstones' of ethical policing are the bedrock on which the whole edifice of British policing rests.

Once public trust and confidence in policing begins to decline or is seriously undermined then the very basis of the legitimacy of policing is called into question

The issue of suspicious deaths in police custody remains a critical fault line in police community relations and the maintenance of trust and confidence. A recent Independent Police Complaints report has shown that the number of such deaths has increased by 60% moving from 11 in 2012 to 17 2014.  The report found that eight of those who died in 2014-15, and half of those apparently committing suicide after custody, had mental health concerns. Over a third of those who apparently committed suicide following custody, had links to drugs or alcohol.

The Home Secretary Theresa May MP is set to announce a review on Thursday in Brixton.  From what we know we expected the review to cover the lead-up to deaths, the immediate aftermath and how families are helped or supported during official investigations.  It will look at whether police officers properly understand mental health issues, the availability of appropriate healthcare, the use of restraint techniques, and suicides in the first 48 hours of detention.

I think generally this inquiry is to be welcomed as a means of providing the victims of families who have suffered such tragedy, an opportunity to have their stories heard -shining a bright light on the procedural inadequacies of the investigatory and judicial systems.  Marcia Rigg the sister of Sean Rigg who suffered from mental illness, died in Brixton Police Station in 2008 also has some reservations,

What I want, and I speak for myself and on behalf of other families, is that this review is effective and brings real change on the issue of deaths in custody, and how families feel and how we are treated, and that there's proper accountability."

Let's just pause here and remember two important aspects of Sean Riggs case.

One the IPCC investigated his death in 2008 and concluded that'

... there was no evidence of neglect or wrongdoing and that the police had acted "reasonably and proportionately."

Following an Inquest that delivered a damming narrative verdict and concluded that Police had used 'unsuitable and unnecessary force' in arresting Sean Rigg the IPCC was forced to recant its original recommendation.

Two, in 2010 the IPCC was again found to have failed to properly investigate the death of another mentally ill London man, Olaseni Lewis, led to the High Court quashing the watchdog's original findings.

Metropolitan Police and Lambeth Police Sergeant Paul White has now been charged with lying to the Inquest and will face prosecution after telling the Inquest jury that he had regularly checked on Sean Rigg's health whilst he was detained in a van outside Brixton Police station.

However, the jury was shown CCTV footage that proved conclusively that Sergeant White never went near the van, never mind carry out a risk assessment.  He was also heard telling the police doctor that Sean was "feigning unconsciousness", thus "misleading" the doctor about the seriousness of the situation.

These systemic failures are reflected more broadly in the lack of statutory force attached to Coroners' comments following Inquest verdicts.  Thousands of sensible and informed recommendations given by Coroners can and are routinely ignored.  This systemic weakness is reflected more broadly and can be detected in the fact many public inquiries, reviews and their recommendations have either withered on the vine or been totally ignored and left to collect dust on shelves of bereaved families, police stations and Whitehall civil servants.

Some of the key questions here are:

• What is the nature and scope of the review?
• Will it look at why previous inquiries, reviews and their recommendations have not been implemented?
• Will it include deaths in immigration centres for examples? Are the families and their lawyers built into the heart of the process?
• Who will Chair this review and what statutory powers will it have?

It's a cautious welcome from me, but there is much more for the Home Secretary to consider if Britain's black communities are to see the restoration of trust and confidence in British policing.  Whilst the Home Secretary has confronted the policing culture of racial profiling that sits as a running dog to instutionalised racism, there is a campaign of resistance led by the Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan Howe to allow the Met to continue targeting black young people for disproportionate stops and searches.

Citing recent rises in violence Hogan Howe argues that the Home Secretary's demand in seeking a reduction in the illegal and unfair use of the powers has led to an increase in youth violence.  The Met police disproportionately use this intrusive power far more than any other police service in the UK, all of whom coincidently enjoy, both lower rates of stop and search, and of violence.

Embedded in the genetic culture of the Metropolitan Police is the view, that any interference in the discretion of officer use of this power is to be fought tooth and nail.

It's the equivalent of the Met's Maginot line and is linked to the macho policing culture and philosophy reflected in their belief that 'We (the police) run the streets'.

This shameless use of victims in this way is tantamount to a racist propaganda campaign and scaremongering by the Met.  Shroud waving for political purposes is a well worn police tactic.  Its use is never ever pretty and rarely justified, but to see the Commissioner seek to defend discriminatory policing practices using the bloody cloak of knife crime victims is disgusting.

The Met Commissioner knows very well that knife crime, youth violence, teenage murders and the use of stop and search have all been higher in the recent past.  Both were very much higher in 2004/5 whilst I was Policing Director for the Mayor of London.  Those figures began to decline because London's black community drove forward a public demand for the violence to stop through Operations Trident and Blunt.

The pioneering work done then, that was the envy of policing institutions around the world focussed not just on enforcement but on prevention and diversion.  Community led with both strong accountability combined with fierce scrutiny of operational policing plans, these strategies delivered huge success.

Money was found to fund youth prevention, diversion and rehabilitation schemes.  We saw the development of specifically designed 'gang' exit schemes and dramatically improved witness protection schemes.

If we want an explanation of an increase in youth violence we should look no further than the average 60% Black youth unemployment, an unemployment rate higher that Greece, Spain and comparable with the youth unemployment rate of Gaza West Bank, Palestine.

Overall violence is on a downward trend in Lambeth, one of the most violent boroughs in the capital, despite the recent small increase. Violence Against The Person (WAP) in the borough had decreased 30% since its peak in 2004/5.  Gun crime has decreased by 31%.  This is not at all to downplay the seriousness of youth knife crime in any way, all injuries and deaths are to be condemned but the fact is notwithstanding the recent increases, the decade trend of youth violence has seen year on year reductions in offences, and year on year increases in stop and search.

The Commissioner seems to have taken sides with Boris Johnson whose grave inadequacies in policing a multicultural city like London cannot be overstated.  His legacy will be left for the next Mayor to clean up and let's hope the next incumbent comes to the job with more objective sense of what the real issues are.

The battle between a progressive Tory Home Secretary and a regressive Mayor has been a topical issue.  Water cannons, black police recruitment, stop and search, undercover policing, spying on the Stephen Lawrence's and trade unionists in the construction industry, have all seen the Mayor face both fierce criticism and series of defeats on policy issues.  The Home Secretary has her foot on his throat and she is unimpressed with his apparent wit and charm.

She has noted that the issues of policing and public confidence are more than just a PR exercise.  She revels in the detail and thinks that Boris, when it comes to the vision thing, politics and policy, is utterly intellectually vacuous.

Like her predecessor Margret Thatcher, she can't abide weak men.  Both Boris and Bernard Hogan Howe combine into an intellectually flatulent duo whose trite sound bites and predictable patter she cannot and will not tolerate. May is old school; one nation Tory who to be frank has done more to tackle racism in the police force, than any previous Home Secretary other than Jack Straw.

Police by Consent in London

In addition to these urgent and important issues, Black communities relationship with the police are deteriorating fast, as a direct result of the failure of the Mayor of London to understand and prioritise the maintenance of good community relations and develop community-led partnerships, designed to foster trust and community confidence.

It is important for the development and maintenance of public trust and confidence, that the broader concerns of all communities about the level of professionalism and ethical conduct of officers are addressed.  London's BME communities share the general public's concern and have real concerns of their own too.

Outlined below are three current issues that can be seen in the wider context of the continued deterioration of police community relations, and public trust and confidence in the Metropolitan Police in London.

1. Local Police Consultative Groups

London Mayor Boris Johnson has abolished local borough based Police Consultative Groups (PCG's) recommended in the Scarman Report and set up in the wake of the 1981 civil disturbances.

The Scarman report was commissioned by the UK Government following the 1981 Brixton riots.  Lord Scarman was appointed by then Home Secretary William Whitelaw in 1981 to hold the enquiry into the riots.  The Scarman report was published on November 25, 1981.

Scarman identified that communication breakdown was a key factor in increasing police tensions, as was identified as a contributing factor in the civil disturbances that followed Mark Duggan's killing back in 2011.  He recommended local groups that were statutory defined, accountable and independent of both the police and local Councils.

The groups met in public once a month and required the attendance of the Chief executive and the local Borough Commander or Superintendent.  The meetings were minuted and provided an opportunity for local communities to raise issues and follow up concerns.

Each month the Police would present their crime figures and issues of concern and/or contention were discussed.  These provided as was intended by Lord Scarman, an important safety release mechanism for community police tensions.  On countless occasions through the last 30 years these groups have played a critical role in responding to acute community concerns about policing and have prevented serious disorder as a result of their interventions.

When Mayor Boris Johnson assumed the responsibility for the Metropolitan Police he committed to reconfiguring the police community consultation framework for London.

Whilst he has a City Hall Policing and Crime Committee, this is too removed from black areas, enjoys no real credibility and cannot fill the critical gap that diminishes police accountability in London.  Members of PCG's have intervened thousands of times in critical policing incidents that have prevented serious disorder and loss of life.  Often working at 4am in the morning, their voluntary commitment has been critical to the maintenance of law and order in London.

The Mayor's replacement, local Safer Neighbourhood Boards are unelected and unrepresentative, they're minutes are secret and there in no opportunity for community concerns to be raised.  In PCG's anyone could raise issues at the monthly meeting.

The PCGs encapsulate the theme Policing By Consent, where the police are accountable to the community.

The Mayor's alternative has degraded police community relations in the capital and left a critical gap in the police community consultation framework for London. This poses a real and present danger to London and at any given time a policing incident could, in the absence of PCG's result in an outbreak of major disorder.

2. Operation Shield

This is a Mayoral-led policing operation focused on tackling 'gang crime' and youth violence in London.  The strategy uses gang exit strategies that offer pathways for young people to escape from a life of crime and uses a multi agency approach to target all associated gang members through 'collective punishment' .

What this means is when an individual or group of individuals commit serious violence, the policing response will see a their whole 'gang' punished regardless of whether they were personally in attendance at the scene of the crime with the original perpetrators.

Just to be known to be associated with a gang can lead to an individual being targeted.  This could be the eviction of the entire family from their home, where the young person lives or seeing individuals arrested under Joint Enterprise laws.

In short, whatever the multi agencies can agree can be reasonably enforced will be done regardless of whether individuals were personally involved or responsible for violent criminality.

This is being piloted in three Westminster boroughs: Westminster, Lambeth and Haringey.  The consultations in Lambeth and Haringey saw communities welcoming the continuance of 'gang exit' programmes, but rejected forcibly the idea of ' collective punishment'.  This is seen as an extension of the dreaded Joint Enterprise law that is now viewed with the same hatred as the SUS law were in the 1970's.

Lambeth and Haringey Councils have both expressed grave concerns after community consultations saw angry scenes and fraught debate when discussing Shield. These were not 'consultations' about the project, communities were told that Operation Shield is being rolled out and that was that.

This is the Mayor's big idea in response to a small increase in youth violence and frankly it's already dead in the water.  It's so contentious that, in the dying days of a Mayoralty it would be foolish in the extreme for either the Met and/or the Mayor to try and roll this out, without full community consent and confidence.  The Met and the Mayor want to criminalise an entire community for the actions of a small minority. It's ludicrous.

3. Stop and Search

In Lambeth, despite the call for reductions in the number of disproportionate stops by the Home Sec, the figures in Lambeth are currently rising and there is political agitation by the Commissioner of the Met to link the reduction in stop and search with an increase in knife crime and youth violence. There is huge resistance in tackling this issue from within the Met.

This is disingenuous as I said and it is worth repeating, that both stops and search and the incidences of youth violence have both been simultaneously much higher, in the recent past.

This demonstrates that if stop and search is the answer then we're asking the wrong question.  Stop and search continues to be the number one issue of concern for black youth and Muslim youth in particular, and the means by which black communities are routinely criminalised.

I believe that 60% black youth unemployment is driving rates of youth violence and disproportionate stop and searches.

Conclusion

The Home Secretary deaths in custody review is to be cautiously welcomed. Critical to its success will be the extent it can overcome the past failure of previous reviews.

The Police/Community consultation infrastructure of London lies in tatters. BME communities trust and confidence in policing is the lowest it's been since force recorded.

This represents a critical threat to the capital. Black communities confidence in the police is suffering as a result of this and the perennial issue of stop and search, Operation Shield, police racism in general (i.e. targeting of travellers etc.) have undermined that relationship and policing by consent has to be reinstated as the core policing principle.

If London is to avoid a tragic repeat of the explosion of rage that saw the capital burn in 2008 these issues will need urgent attention.

Lee Jasper