You must have heard this week’s horrifying new stats by now. Knife attacks in London have risen by 86 per cent in a decade. As a former Detective Chief Inspector at The Met, I am well placed to help explain how we’ve witnessed such a catastrophic increase.
A significant factor is that all too often, police officers are unfairly criticised when they attempt to use their lawful powers to fight crime. At the heart of this are the actions of the Independent Office for Police Conduct – the body which oversees the police complaints system.
Last year saw 16,789 knife crime offences in London, the highest number ever recorded. And over 60 per cent of those crimes were robberies – with a mobile phone often the item targeted.
This week the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange published a report, which demonstrated how highly geographically concentrated these offences are: just 15 per cent of neighbourhoods account for over half of all knife crime.
Because street crime is so localised, a key part of the solution is an intensive “zero-tolerance policing” approach in those locations. Stop and search is central to that approach.
Just 15 per cent of neighbourhoods account for over half of all knife crime
Earlier this year one of the world’s pre-eminent criminologists, Lawrence Sherman, published a study which examined 15 years of data in London consisting of 58,503 knife crime offences and 4.3 million stop and searches.
The statistical analysis makes clear how effective the tactic is: increased stop and search significantly reduces knife-related injuries and a tripling in the numbers of stop and search would lead to about 30 fewer knife murders in London a year.
Surely that’s a bargain worth making?
Despite the effectiveness of stop and search the number conducted by the police in London over recent years has plummeted
Yet despite the effectiveness of stop and search the number conducted by the police in London over recent years has plummeted. In 2020/21 there were 311,352 searches conducted. Last year, that number had fallen to 120,924 searches – a drop of 61 percent.
When I speak to my former policing colleagues in the Met they tell me that officers on the frontline are increasingly reluctant to conduct stop and searches.
They say that the police complaints system – and particularly how the Independent Office for Police Conduct oversees that system – is having a chilling effect on police officers’ willingness to take on criminals.
In recent years there have been multiple cases where officers tackling suspected criminals have then been subject to vexatious complaints and lengthy investigations.
Earlier this year PC Lorne Castle was sacked by Dorset Police for his actions when arresting a suspect who was in possession of a knife. The force said that the officer had used “unnecessary and inappropriate words” and the use of force was misplaced. Meanwhile, the suspect himself got away with nothing more than a soft-touch “out of court disposal” for possession of the knife.
PC Perry Lathwood – a police officer working on an operation with Transport for London to tackle fare dodgers in Croydon – was prosecuted after an altercation with a woman who walked away when asked to show her ticket to officers. The officer was initially convicted of assault, only for that conviction to be subsequently overturned on appeal.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct determined that the officer must be subjected to a misconduct hearing because of “the language and tone used, and that he acted in a sexist way towards [the woman]”. After the incident the Met said they would be reviewing their involvement in fare evasion operations – no doubt leading to yet more fare dodgers passing with impunity about the public transport network.
In perhaps the most egregious case of recent times, Sergeant Martin Blake – the officer who shot and killed the gangster Chris Kaba only days after Mr Kaba had shot up a dancefloor in Hackney – having been acquitted by a jury of murder has been told by the Independent Office for Police Conduct that he must now face a misconduct hearing.
The powers of the Independent Office for Police Conduct must be curtailed
These cases are just a handful of the hundreds currently going through the system. They take months and years to resolve. As one former senior civil servant who used to oversee the police complaints system said to me recently: “The process is the punishment.”
The Government has committed to making changes to the police misconduct process. Undoubtedly, we need a system which deals effectively with the PC Wayne Couzens and PC David Carricks of this world; but that system must not simultaneously impede the honest and hard-working “thief-takers” trying to take criminals off the streets.
At a minimum two changes are required.
Firstly, the powers of the Independent Office for Police Conduct must be curtailed. They should be limited to cases which genuinely require independent oversight: those involving suspected misconduct by chief police officers or cases which involve death or serious corruption.
Secondly, the threshold to start a misconduct investigation is far too low – a mere “indication” that an officer may have failed to meet the necessary standards is all that is required. The Police Reform Act 2002 should be amended to raise the threshold to there being “clear evidence” of misconduct at the outset of an investigation.
The previous convictions of those making complaints – particularly those with previous convictions for dishonesty or violence – should be a factor in determining whether their account of events can be relied upon. This would prevent many unnecessary investigations – particularly those by vexatious complainants which are treated all too credulously by the Independent Office for Police Conduct.
Police officers expect to be held to account for their actions and decisions. But the current system is crushing the spirit of good, hard-working police officers. When officers stop using their lawful powers it is only the criminals who benefit.
If the Government is to meet their commitment of halving knife crime in a decade they need police officers conducting stop and searches and making arrests.
The alternative is surrendering the streets to the thugs and the criminals.
David Spencer is the Head of Crime and Justice at Policy Exchange and a former Detective Chief Inspector with the Metropolitan Police
