As a custody sergeant in Brixton, south London, in the 1980s, I worked in police cells that were held in deep suspicion by local communities, which is probably understating it. The cells were seen by many young people as being a dangerous, lawless zone, where you would be stitched up regardless of what you had done. But things changed, both in the way the police cells were run and the perception of them in local communities.
The change can be traced back to the recommendations in the Scarman report after the riots of the early 1980s. Lord Scarman sought to address problems of policing, race and accountability, and his proposals were a powerful catalyst for reform. In the wake of current criticisms about policing and the resurgence of Black Lives Matter, we would do well to look back at his recommendations, which helped police listen to external voices and change their behaviours.
The Metropolitan police, in its recent race action plan, has, in effect, revisited one of Scarman’s recommendations by proposing “community panels”. This is a positive step, building on the police and community consultative groups that Scarman suggested almost 40 years ago. But Scarman additionally introduced an initiative that brought truly independent scrutiny into a key part of operational policing.
His idea, radical at the time, was independent visitors to police cells. They still operate today and consist of members of the public with no links to the police, who can visit cells at random and report on what they see. They provide reassurance that things are being done right, but they can be, and are, highly critical of poor behaviours, harmful practices and inhumane treatment.
In our increasingly digitalised era, why not reimagine and greatly extend the concept to encompass wider operational policing? Given the routine use by the police of body-worn video cameras, we could appoint independent members of the community and give them the right to review police video material at random. They could examine everyday interactions, including specific activities such as stop and search, handcuffing and the use of Tasers. In fact, they could exercise even wider scrutiny, with powers to examine police intelligence and targeting processes.
Such independent reviewers would, by the nature of their role, be able to identify within police teams or forces any “processes, attitudes, and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping, which disadvantages minority ethnic people”. Such police activities might meet the definition of institutional racism described by Sir William Macpherson in the Stephen Lawrence inquiry report.
The public is increasingly aware of the existence of body-worn camera footage, and wants access to it, and police officers would often prefer it was shared, providing a balanced perspective of events. It is feasible to create a framework of rules to allow independent reviewers to view video material, navigating and overcoming the inevitable concerns about confidentiality, fairness and the risk of prejudicing legal proceedings. Such a framework could allow mechanisms to be introduced to engage the officers involved, encouraging learning on all sides.
There is a recognition in policing that the video footage should become more accessible. Guidance from the College of Policing encourages forces to set up stop-and-search advisory groups that could view videos of stop-and-search activity. This is positive, but insufficient. Police forces must not control the scrutiny, but hand it over to people who are regarded by communities as independent. It must be mandated across all forces, be entirely random, not limited to stop and search, and also engage the police officers involved.
Current police leaders are not complacent. There is definitely a “will” to address the issues of race, policing and accountability, just not much of a “way”. The police service’s response to race inequality was likened by one colleague to Michael Gove’s infamous criticism of the educational establishment, “the blob”: it seems to absorb action plans, policies and initiatives without change.
Transparency and an independent spotlight are the only real routes to constructive change. If introduced, independent reviewers will observe positive policing under, at times, extremely difficult circumstances, but they will also see behaviours, habits and institutional practices that need challenging. Their findings could be published and passed to police and crime commissioners, who can address them with their respective forces.
We must not wait for riots or botched policing to drive change; we should make a bold move now and open up operational policing to wider scrutiny.
Rob Beckley is a police assistant commissioner based in the Home Office. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Home Office or Metropolitan police
