THE 'CAPTURING VOICES' PROJECT
The Thinking Behind It
I have been on both sides of the Stop and Search (S&S) divide, starting as a 13-year-old schoolboy, as highlighted in the first scene of the Small Axe film about my life called 'Red White And Blue' in 2020.
The film showed the negative impact of the officer's unprofessionalism, which still lives with me to this day, even though that critical encounter occurred over 50 years ago.
Admittedly, it was during the 'Sus Law' era when Scotland Yard or the Home Office did not monitor this power centrally. However, the replacement power of Section 1 PACE (Police and Criminal Evidence) Act in 1984 incorporated more checks and balances with central monitoring; although it only measured outputs, it showed similar disproportionalities against minority groups, especially young black men, where on average they were ten times more likely to be stopped than their white counterparts.
Once reliable monitoring systems were in place, careful analysis showed the MPS (Metropolitan Police Service) had a disproportionate reliance on S&S compared to the other 42 force areas, accounting for over 50% of them nationally year-on-year. This is about 350,000 S&S's carried out by the MPS annually and the other half by the remaining constabularies, which has been allowed to continue unabated, and neither the Home Office, HMIC or Police Crime Commissioner has done enough to control the excessive use of such a powerful tactic.
Throughout my career in the MPS [1983-2013], I observed first-hand the over-emphasis on enforcement tactics at both a strategic and operational level, with the consistent over-emphasis on S&S as the primary tool for enforcement. During this time, it has made it abundantly clear the Met believed they could arrest or S&S their way out of problems plaguing London, such as violence, drug supply and their misuse, in addition to other ways vulnerable groups are taken advantage of. I tirelessly worked against this flawed approach to policing diverse communities, especially through my work in forming and Chairing the London and National Black Police Associations, whilst at the same time assisting young people to know their rights and responsibilities when it comes to S&S and other police powers; this work continues through Voyage Youth [www.voyageyouth.com].
These enforcement tactics still take place against the backdrop of the increasing volume of personnel hours wasted on S&S added by S.60 CJPO (Criminal Justice & Public Order) Act 1994, where less than 5% of these encounters result in some form of police follow up; i.e. a verbal warning, a street caution or an arrest. To add insult to injury, the disproportionality in S. 60s is 20 times more likely to be stopped if they are black than their white counterparts, where officers do not require reasonable grounds beforehand. These are why I have publicly classed S. 60s as the 'Sus Law' on steroids!
Can you imagine the amount of trauma this inflicts? Especially when you consider the strip-searching of young black children over the last few years, like Child Q, which led to the damning 2023 report by the Children's Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza. It is outrageous that 52% took place without an appropriate adult in attendance, 51% of the searches led to no further action, and 38% of the young people were black.
Up to 10 years after the 1999 Macpherson Inquiry report, there was a greater emphasis on intelligence-led policing, in addition to more assets directed towards prevention and early intervention programmes, with a greater emphasis on community policing through the rollout of Safer Neighbourhood Teams (SNT's) on every ward across London thus:
Building closer public and police relations.
More accountability and transparency.
A greater commitment to ethical leadership, resulting in better use of intelligence-based policing and less stereotyping to improve wider culture change.
A significant improvement in PSA (Public Satisfaction Surveys) and more people providing more information to assist in building police proactive capability indicates improved public trust in police.
Unfortunately, since 2010, this government has had a totally different emphasis, going back to the enforcement focus and a more reactive style of policing, at the expense of points 1-4 above. This was made worse by the catastrophic impact of austerity over the past 12 years, which the current Commissioner – Mark Rowley – is trying to reverse in his recently published Reform Plan, especially around a significant uplift in SNTs. The past thirteen years of this form of policing has led to the most high-profile deaths in police contact cases, such as Mark Duggan [2011], Rashan Charles [2017] and Chris Kaba [2022]; notwithstanding those cases associated with black men suffering from mental health challenges. Now, this government wants to grant the police even more draconian powers, including dropping reasonable grounds when carrying out S&S, through the Public Order Bill currently being debated by Parliament.
Intention
It is pretty clear that most attempts to change the police's enforcement approach have not changed over the decades, in a similar way how police culture is showing the same resistance to change, which has had disastrous consequences as shown in the Carrick and Couzens cases leading to the recent hard-hitting Baroness Casey Review. Also, the statutory independent oversight that should come from MOPAC and/or the Home office is not fit for purpose. However, recent action by HMIC putting the MPS into Special Measures is a step in the right direction. Therefore, now is a good time to keep the pressure on MPS with different approaches to penetrate their out-of-touch enforcement bubble.
Based on my 30-year exposure to police culture, I believe one way of improving operational impact is by humanising the inflicted trauma in a way it hasn't been done before, through qualitative analysis of rich narratives from a critical mass of 18 to 25-year-olds who share their experiences at the hands of heavy-handed policing. This concept was developed in 2022 through a partnership with Dr Doirean Wilson of Middlesex University, who has extensive research, training and organizational change experience in EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) matters with police and other public organisations.
Next steps
Further analysis will continue in 2023, and the learning will go towards a comprehensive report in the first half of 2024 to assist the police in being a trauma-informed organisation, in addition to having a trauma-responsive approach to critical encounters like S&S. Thereby resulting in more street-based officers adopting de-escalation techniques in critical meetings like S&S, in addition to adopting more efficient and progressive procedures like:
Procedural justice,
Motivational interviews and
Pro-social modelling.