12 May 2016
Can We Trust The Police?
A new series of sensational headlines does not make for confidence, but is this really a case of ‘plus ҫa change…’ ?
by Lynda Goetz
What has happened to the old-fashioned beliefs that our policemen and women were bulwarks of the community; a force for good; trusted public servants on the side of the citizen? All over the press we read of less-than-impressive behaviour by those who we were taught were on our side; those on whom we thought we could rely to help us in difficult situations. Was this always a myth or, if things have changed, have they changed for better or worse?
First and foremost, of course, there is Hillsborough. A great deal has already been written about this and I do not consider that I could add anything to it. The inquest and the BBC documentary produced by Daniel Gordon, based largely on the work of Professor Phil Scraton, revealed the extent of the establishment lies and cover up. The South Yorkshire police force, according to The Guardian, ‘lies battered and leaderless’. David Crompton, the Chief Constable, due to retire anyway in November, has gone early, and other planned retirements mean that the entire top team will be replaced within months. It remains to be seen if reform is possible or if this particular force, and the culture that has developed within it, will need to be completely abolished or merged with a neighbouring one. It has taken 27 years for a true picture of what happened at Hillsborough to be officially acknowledged.
As if the Hillsborough inquests were not enough, news has come out in the last couple of days that current and former members of that same South Yorkshire Police Force have appeared in Sheffield magistrates’ court charged with misconduct in public office. The charges relate to misuse of cameras in police helicopters in four separate incidents between 2007 and 2012. The cameras were apparently used to look at and film people who were either naked or engaged in sex acts. The defendants have been granted bail and will appear in the Crown court on June 7th.
Four weeks ago on 11th April rape charges against four students at the Cirencester Agricultural College were dropped after The Crown Prosecution Service decided they did not have sufficient evidence to proceed after all. Meanwhile, the young men, whose names were blazoned all over the press, had been dragged through ‘two years of hell’. The young lady, who of course cannot be named, had, it seemed, worked her charms on at least one of the police officers involved, Det Con Ben Lewis, who had become her ‘confidante’. ‘Game changing’ evidence was not brought forward.
This week and last, we also have further revelations from the scandal-hit Northumbria Police, where tediously-involved sexual liaisons and extra-marital affairs appear to have spilt over and affected work relationships. Denise Aubrey, the force’s former head of legal services, is suing for unfair dismissal after she was sacked, apparently fordiscussing the matter with colleagues.
Two days ago, it was revealed that Scotland Yard had spent £795,000 on a fleet of luxury cars for its officers, which would also be available for their private use. Not of itself a problem, but indicative perhaps of the increasing remoteness from the people they are supposed to be serving?
A year ago, Neil Darbyshire in The Spectator wrote an article about the extent of police corruption in Britain, in which he revealed that in 2014 there were 3,000 allegations of police corruption of which half were not investigated. In the same quoted report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, half of 17,200 officers and staff surveyed said they would fear ‘adverse consequences’ if they were to engage in whistle-blowing. A second report quoted in the article revealed a sharp increase in police officers dealing drugs and in the number of officers using their powers for ‘sexual gratification’. However, of 73 Met officers, community support officers and other staff suspended on corruption charges between March 2013 and March 2015, only eleven were actually convicted in court. The rest, it would seem, were allowed to resign or retire (presumably on full pensions?) or in some cases were dismissed. A lack of resources is usually blamed.
If we go back some forty years to the early 1970s, three different investigations led to what became known as ‘The Fall of Scotland Yard’, which in 1977 became the title of a book published by three journalists, Barry Cox, John Shirley and Martin Short. These investigations revealed the extent of the corruption and illegal methods then prevalent in Scotland Yard, (in the Metropolitan Police Drug Squad, the Flying Squad and the Obscene Publications Squad). At that time, Scotland Yard’s upper echelons tolerated and possibly even encouraged a dangerous collusion between criminals and detectives resulting in major criminals enjoying effective immunity from prosecution. Was this what people then believed to be the situation or did they have a rosier impression of their police forces, based on television programmes like Dixon of Dock Green and Z Cars?
Later on in the 70s came Operation Countryman (so called because of the use of officers from rural forces to investigate the City of London and the Metropolitan police), originally set up to investigate police corruption around three major crimes.When it became evident that corruption was not limited to ‘a few rotten apples’ but was much more widespread, the scope of the investigation was broadened. Apparently, corruption up to Assistant Commissioner level was uncovered and there was evidence to prosecute over 300 officers. However, after some six years and at a cost of several million pounds, the findings were presented to the Home Office and the operation wound down with only a handful of criminal prosecutions of officers being brought. The findings of Operation Countryman have been classified as ‘secret for 70 years’. www.policecrimes.co.uk
Does all this simply illustrate that things are no worse now than they were forty or fifty years ago, or are they perhaps in fact better? A paper published in 2008 in The Grey Journal http://www.ifla.org/files/assets/faife/publications/sturges/police-communication.pdf concludes that policing post 2000 is very different from what went on before. Policing, the authors point out, ‘has always been essentially an information-handling profession’; nowadays that information aspect has come to the fore and higher levels of transparency and disclosure are the norm – expected by both public bodies and members of the public. Various Acts, not specifically directed at police forces, including the Freedom of Information Act 2000, have contributed to the increased accountability of public bodies including the police forces. Criticism of the police both in the media and from the public has resulted in more openness and interaction between the police and the public.
The study referred to above was, as its authors Paul Sturges and Louise Cooke admit, largely ‘observational’ and based on two forces, Leicestershire and Derbyshire. Neil Darbyshire does not share their optimism as regards the Met, which he views as ‘probably more authoritarian and opaque than at any time in modern history’, in spite of talk of ‘transparency’ and ‘humility’ on its website. He is of the opinion that Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Met chief since 2011, appears to be ‘taking the police away from being a service and becoming more of a coercive force’. It is certainly true that his time in the office has not been without controversy (the hounding of journalists in the wake of the Leveson inquiry; Operation Midland, the investigation undertaken after the paedophile claims of ‘Nick’) but is the fact that we live in a time of high terrorist threat enough of an excuse for police forces in any part of the country to retreat into a culture of secrecy and bullying? What most of us would like to feel is that the police forces are protecting ordinary citizens, not spying on us; finding and prosecuting criminals, not persecuting those who do not see eye to eye with them. Is this the case in the twenty-first century police forces, or has the culture revealed by the Hillsborough inquests permeated so far down the ranks that it is now endemic throughout the force in spite of all the talk about transparency? Will removing those at the top be enough?
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