‘Police Now’: Can policing be different?

Perhaps the biggest tensions between many within Black and minority ethnic communities and the State has been between us and the police. It’s not just the too often negative physical interactions with the police, particularly ‘Stop and Search’, it’s also about the symbolism which can be categorized as, ‘them against us’.

And whilst we must acknowledge there have been times when improvement has been made, the 2011 riots sparked off by a police shooting highlighted once again the simmering tensions that can easily ignite unless the building blocks for consensual policing within BME and all communities are truly realised.

I strongly believe that the new policing initiative ‘Police Now’ can be a small but significant part of the solution. It is a programme that has begun with the Metropolitan Police, but it is now spreading to other parts of the country. Most importantly for obvious reasons, Police Now will soon become an independent body that sets out to recruit, train and develop the best of a new generation of police officers. What do I and they mean by that?

Too often in the past recruitment of officers has followed a particular pattern. At a young age you join an old institution and that becomes your life.

Your years service often dictate your progression plan and if you don’t fit into the white male dominated culture then woe betide. Above all the old model too often keeps the community at arm’s length from the police and the police at an arms length from the public unless there is a problem perceived or otherwise. In a world of racially structural inequalities BME communities and policing will always be at the forefront of real tensions.

Police Now seeks to change at least some of that. The idea is to recruit the highest flying multicultural graduates and fast track them to become community police officers. They may want to make a lifelong career out of policing, but maybe they won’t, and that’s okay. In our modern world people dip in and out of different jobs and careers, why shouldn’t this happen in policing?

Another element of the programme is how strikingly different the training is – it has a big emphasis on citizenship, cultures, restorative justice, politics, economics and human rights. All this as well as the usual fundamentals of, where necessary, to physically tackle a criminal.

Above all these new recruits have the confidence to enforce their new philosophy.

For example, a Police Now recruit was on a training session this summer when they were called to a theft. A young woman was being held for stealing a low value item for her children. A more experienced officer instructed the new Police Now graduate to make an arrest and go through the normal procedures. The Police Now officer questioned the benefit of arresting a mother for stealing in these circumstances, and suggested that rather than processing this woman through the courts there were alternatives in addition to the clear help and support the woman needed for her and her family.

Rather than spending thousands of the public’s money on holding this woman in custody and processing her through the courts an alternative route was found to ensure justice for the victim and support for the woman.

It’s a simple example, but one in which demonstrates a greater feel for community policing. Central to this has to be the programme’s diversity too.

That’s why I sit on its advisory board and it’s why I’d like to see many more BME graduates apply. If you do apply and join, it’s still not going to be a walk in the park, but you might be part of a generation of police officers that will give us greater confidence that we are the police and the police are us.

Applications to Police Now are open now until the 9th November 2015. Apply at http://www.policenow.org.uk.

Simon Woolley