Sadiq Khan and Chief Dick - we're watching you

Policing a demonstration in modern times needs several things. It needs sections of coppers trained to work together, it needs a stock of fireproof overalls, helmets and protective equipment for them to wear, it needs live monitoring and surveillance of the crowds and above all it needs police managers and commanders of talent and ability.

The BLM march two weeks ago was a disaster for the Met. Officers in light summer patrol dress with soft caps faced a baying, vicious and violent mob, and turned, ran and abandoned our democratic heart to vandalism and graffiti. Command was chaotic, a counter plan unapparent. The Gold commander of that farce, whether straight or gay, male or female, black or white, must be removed from duty. We cannot pretend it was anything other than gross mismanagement.

Last week's protests were better commanded, with only two major lapses - the unmanned barriers and an open footway at King Charles St in the morning, and a failure to anticipate the clashes on the South Bank after 5pm.

Then there was the assault on the PM's car following PMQs this week. A group of more than six protesters was gathered in contravention of the law. Specifically, s.7 of the The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2020,

7.—(1) During the emergency period, unless paragraph (2) applies, no person may participate in a gathering which takes place in a public or private place—

(a)outdoors, and consists of more than six persons

They were watched by a few bored plods who were watching the nice shiny cars coming out of the palace of Westminster rather the protesters around them. One of the mob ran at the PM's vehicle, there was an emergency stop and a collision. It could have been an Islamist with a sticky bomb. Fail.

Again tomorrow, thugs will gather in London to seek to break the law, vandalise and destroy the public realm and to create fear and disturbance. We expect nothing less from the Met than that they uphold the laws made by our Parliament, a Parliament we elected. We expect the Met to prevent and to disperse any illegal gatherings of more than 6. We expect the Met to enforce the provisions of the Public Order Act. We expect the Met to safeguard our democratic heart in SW1, and to prevent mob damage to our national monuments.

Sadiq Khan and Cressida Dick, the eyes of the entire nation are on you tomorrow. We're watching you. We're watching you very closely.

Unpoliced illegal gathering - Chief Dick, please note

Droning on

Back in March 2017 we joked (below) about suggestions that the police would waste public money and take bobbies off the beat by forming and training new 'drone squads'. Well, truth of course is stranger than fiction these days, and dog walkers and solitary hikers out in the lonely wastes of the national parks have been buzzed by police drones. They exist. Who knew?

They were, of course, subject to the law. Gareth Corfield (@GazTheJourno) has questioned whether the use of drones, in particular by the Derbyshire Police, was not in violation of the Air Navigation Order 2016 - and there are compelling questions for the police to answer about the qualifications of those controlling these drones, their compliance with the law and the professional standards we should expect in their use. And I would expect such guidance to be agreed between ministers in the Home Office and Department of Transport, not concocted by the fatuous and self-styled 'College of Policing', which the public do not recognise as having any democratic or legislative legitimacy.

These secret drones will not be the last of the State's little surprises that this virus will bring out of the closet.

Anyhow, it's Saturday, the Sun is shining and here again is that whimsical piece from 2017

*****************

"So, Inspector, this proposed Drone Squad can be staffed by transfers from the Internet Porn Squad? How's that gone?"

"Well sir since 2004 the lads have watched over 2 million hours of online porn. Deserve a medal, they do sir. Constable Hotchkiss can't hear the word 'Brazilian' now without twitching."

"And how many arrests and convictions have resulted?"

"Just the one sir. The chairman of the golf club who put hidden cameras in the ladies. But that doesn't affect the deterrent effect of those evil film makers knowing that the Force is watching. And we've learnt our lesson - the lads need periodic rotation out of the squad. Hence the new Drone Squad, sir"

"Ah yes. Sergeant Thom bought one for his kids and saw the crime-busting possibilities straight away...."

"That's right sir. Of course, police drones would cost a lot more, it being taxpayers' money, and the lads would need professional training from the RAF"

"I'm still not happy about us flying these potentially lethal things over people's houses and gardens .. have you considered the risks?"

"We estimate that 80% of the time we'll be flying over public roads and open land. In particular it will allow the lads to gather video evidence of widespread 'dogging' activity in Knickers Woods, sir. We could spend a year keeping constant tabs on it all then swoop. Then there's the poofs sorry BLTs on Handy Heath. We can follow 'em sir from the sky without risking officers on the ground."

"You don't think there's a risk that some of this footage may leak onto the web? Doesn't this sort of surveillance constitute a variety of porn in itself?"

"That's the beauty of it sir. The Internet Porn Squad can keep an eye out for any leaked footage"

"Ah yes. When was the last time any of these men actually pounded a beat or responded to a disturbance? Some of them look as though they have difficulty walking"

"Yes sir. Injuries incurred in the line of service, watching the porn sir. Sixteen early ill-health retirements so far. We're hoping that working the drones gets them out of their chairs, sir. Into other chairs."

"Very well. Carry on, Inspector"

Police organisation - time for a radical rethink?

One of the reasons that academics have had such difficulty in determining the most efficient size and scale of a police force is the degree to which police forces are vertically integrated. We are used to each of our 43 police forces, under the hierarchical control of a Chief Constable (The Met is a special case) and with detective and CID branches that may have specialist sub-squads dealing with drugs or counter terrorism, a traffic division, armed response units, specialist operational functions that may include scenes-of-crime, armourers, procurement and stores and vehicle maintenance and back office functions including HR, finance, payroll, pension administration, media communications and PR.

And one of the problems we have in discussing the structure and composition of policing is that there is always an implicit assumption that this degree of vertical integration is how it must be. Thus those who argue for larger national or regional police forces inevitably do so on the basis of claimed efficiencies in back office and specialist operational support services. But why should the key part of the police service most valued and wanted by the public that owns it, local policing, be dragged into the hubristic empire-building of ambitious senior officers?

One of tensions at the heart of the long struggle between Whitehall and Town Hall for control of policing are two very different views of what the UK's police forces should do. One the one hand we want local policing, community building, informal dispute and disturbance resolution, reinforcement of the Little Platoons and the ears of sworn constables attuned and receptive to the concerns and priorities of citizens. On the other hand Whitehall fears an ever-present danger of chaos, anarchy, terrorism, major incidents, fire, flood, disease and strikes, and even more than such events themselves it fears its own inability to deal with them. Whitehall therefore wants a large, flexible, mobile force with existing command and communications structures as closely under the control of the Home secretary as possible to be deployed to maintain the well-being and security of the State.

If we accept that both ambitions are to some extent legitimate, we must ask how, or even if, they can both be achieved without a duplication of resources. Can we integrate and amalgamate the back-office and specialist operational functions? Can we regionalise and specialise counter-terrorism policing and detective work for indictable offences such as rape that needs particular skills and resources? Can we roll out integrated communication systems and secure mobile information access that can serve a local beat copper both when on his rounds and when he's called upon to police football crowds in the nearest city?

But above all, can we return local policing to being local policing, immune from the woke fads, promotion obsessions and box-checking of ambitious middle-ranking managers? Under the democratic direction (but not operational control) of watch committees, elected bodies and even lay magistrates?

Policing is broke. It needs fixing. It is simply not acceptable that the police no longer respond to reports of non-indictable offences. It is even less acceptable that the organisational and management failures that allowed the systemic child sexual abuse of thousands of young girls in our town and cities are permitted to continue. 

Police costs and efficiency - is small beautiful?

What is the optimum size of a police force, either to be most efficient in tackling crime or most economically efficient? This is not a question of opinion, but of fact. Such things are determinable, and we have, between the UK and the US, which share most closely a model of policing, a sample set that includes forces such as the Met of 30,000 officers down to independent forces in small US towns of six to eight officers. 

The 1960 Royal Commission on the Police in a very English way didn't actually rely on scientific or statistical method, but on ill-reasoned opinion that supported the prejudices of the Commissioners. Presenting the report to the House, the Home Secretary Henry Brooke said

The Commission suggests that forces numbering less than 200 are handicapped; that the retention of forces less than 350 strong is not normally justifiable, and that the best size of a force is upwards of 500 ... I agree with the Commission that in this small, densely populated island, we have too many separate forces...I am not suggesting that small police forces are inefficient; a small force can attain a very high standard of esprit de corps, but I agree with the Royal Commission that small forces tend to be handicapped. They lack the flexibility of larger forces; they cannot always make the best use of available manpower, and the efficient policing of wider areas is sometimes impaired by the preservation of what are often arbitrary and irksome police boundaries, from the point of view of crime and road traffic. Some areas are better policed by a large force than by a number of small forces, however efficient each of the small forces is.

And there we have impeccable civil service Oxford logic, an argument bereft of fact or evidence and supported by reason alone. "We asked Charles, David, Neville and Tarquin and they all had a guess and we took the average and rounded it out".

Contrary to the Home Secretary's opinions, the job of the police is not to provide the Home Office with administrative convenience but to deal with crime - at least in the eyes of the public, whom the police serve and who pay their wages. Those efficient small local forces that caused the civil servants such irritation at the Home Office were exactly what the public wanted.

From the 1970s the economists and statisticians examined police structures. The academics found many factors that needed to be reconciled; night time populations, ethnic and socio-economic population composition, density, age profile of population - number of under-25s, density of businesses, road lengths and types, whether the area was growing or in decline, property values. As for the outputs, did one measure reported crime, arrests, convictions or just police interventions with no outcomes? One UK study (Drake and Simper 2002) even used the number of breathalyzer tests administered as a significant determinant of police efficiency.

However, what all of the many studies since the 1970s have in common, on both sides of the Atlantic, is that they quantify efficiencies in what police actually do - the entire panoply of police functions as they are constituted. As I will look at in the third of these posts, we need to look at policing differently.

A readable summary of the evidence is summarised in both a US study and a UK synopsis.  The bottom line?

• The efficiency of a police force is optimised serving a population of 25,000 - 50,000 (US) or 25,000 to 250,000 (UK)
• There are significant and substantial dis-economies of scale - large police forces cost more and have more crime
• There is a lower level below which it is not efficient to maintain an independent police force - a population of about 2,000 citizens

There is also in the UK a missing component - local per capita costs. I am still looking for the tables of a force-by-force breakdown of cost per capita and this must also be an important determinant of future policy. Overall for England and Wales, the costs are given in this 2019 Home Office statistical bulletin.  If I have half a day I can make a decent fist of producing a breakdown analysis, but the point is I should not have to.

Overall, cost of policing for England and Wales is £14.063bn per year. Mid-year population estimate 2018 was 59.17m. Annual cost per capita is therefore £237.67.

Just one note from the US literature review -

Whereas the average per capita expenditure for the 14 police departments in the sample was $177.36, Finney (1997) estimated that consolidating them into one department (with their arrest output remaining the same) would result in a per capita cost of $472.78.

We need to talk about Plod

Since the Police Act of 1964, policing in the UK has become increasingly centralised, increasingly expensive and increasingly inefficient and unresponsive. Decades of semi-detachment from normal society have convinced most serving policemen that they are crown servants in the same way as the armed forces, responsible only to the sovereign, and with a duty to exercise law and justice on a deviant populace. Forces have been amalgamated, chief police officers have formed their own quasi-legal bodies with exceptional and unaccountable powers and we are drifting towards an armed gendarmerie under the command of a Minister of Justice on the continental model rather than local bodies of unarmed Peelian law-keepers on the British model.

Look back to the days before the ruinous Police Act. The UK had 158 seperate police forces, under the control of local Watch Committees, 97 with fewer than 350 officers. The struggle between the Home Secretary and local communities for control of the police has been a long one - and the Home Secretary won big in 1964. Forces and Watch Committees were abolished and the Home Secretary took command, including responsibility for appointing the most senior officers.

And now, in the second decade of the 21st century, we have a police service not fit for purpose. Non-indictable crime is virtually ignored, gang culture has taken over our major cities and is leaving hundreds of young people exsanguinating into the gutters, computer crime and fraud is beyond their capacity and absurdities such as Cressida Dick's 'Hurty Words' internet squad just bring opprobrium on the entire police force.

It has all gone seriously wrong. And just like the dysfunctional EU, the answer from the police is always more of the same - greater professionalism, graduate only recruitment, salaries on a par with solicitors, greater centralisation, more power for police chiefs, more funding, more bling, more expensive gadgets, faster cars. None of which will result in one single fewer burglary, car theft, public order offence or gang stabbing.

The Telegraph reports on the most recent HM Inspector's report, and it makes ugly reading. The public have largely given up on Plod. We need to do something.

The first questions we need to ask are about what the 1964 Police Act and everything that followed got wrong. I once spent several weeks with a Met Police statistics and mapping team when we were looking at options to design-out opportunities for crime and it was a salutory experience. If you talk to a copper, they will have you believe that their entire time is spent dealing with dead bodies or facing down shotguns. This is simply risible fiction. Over 95% of police responses - yes, over 95% - are spent responding to non-indictable offences or CADs - call-outs to disturbances. It is, frankly, more the work of well-trained and inexpensive security guards under local control than the job of highly skilled, very expensive graduate police 'professionals'.

However, it's the 5% of police work that does need skilled policing that counts. The rapes, the murders, terrorism, serious and organised crime, mafia and mobs, armed response units and such like. Here there is a case for pooled resources, central control and such things.

And this is the first question I would ask. Do we need not one but two police services - one local, Peelian and responsive and another on the continental Ministry of Justice model?

Transgression

Possibly the most important piece of news of the day is easy to overlook. Our hero is no high profile politician or media personality, no minor royal with the emotional intelligence of a lump of mince, no virtue signalling pop star but a previously unknown 53 year old former policeman called Harry Miller. The story is featured in today's Telegraph. 

You will know me as a pretty laid back and socially liberal sort of blogger; if male readers choose to browse the internet dressed as Eartha Kitt or wearing outsize Victoria's Secret undergarments, I really don't care. I really, really, don't care. Being libertarian in outlook means so long as you're not harming anyone else, you can do as you like. However, I fundamentally believe that there are only two human sexes, biologically, and anything else can be classed as either make-believe or a psychological disorder. Now you may not have realised that writing that may lead to this blog entry being recorded by the police under their Hate Crime Operational Guidance (2014). Something similar led to plod banging at the door of Harry Miller -

Mr Miller, a married father of four, was investigated by Humberside Police earlier this year after a Twitter user complained that he shared a 'transphobic limerick'. Even though no crime was committed, his sharing of the limerick online was recorded as a 'hate incident' and he was described as a "suspect" in police reports, the court heard.

Mr Miller, who was previously an officer for the Humberside force, accused the police of "creating a chilling atmosphere for those who would express a gender critical position".

"The idea that a law-abiding citizen can have their name recorded against a hate incident on a crime report when there was neither hate nor crime undermines principles of justice, free expression, democracy and common sense," he said.

Mr Miller has succeeded in putting the police guidance before the courts for judicial review. The case continues. We must not only wish him every success but be ready to support the costs of an appeal should the case continue in the higher courts.

Police - Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

John Sutherland writing yesterday in the Telegraph is an ex-copper. A few years ago it would certainly have been ex- writing as serving plods were simply not permitted to voice personal opinions in the columns of newspapers - today one has to find the fact hidden in the article. Anyway, cutting the waffle, what John really wants more than anything is for our democratic society to stop telling coppers what to do - so like Judge Dredd they can get on with dispensing justice free of all constraints. I'm not kidding.

..we need to re-establish operational policing independence from political control, starting with the abolition of Police and Crime Commissioners.

I'd guess John was off sick the day they did 'The history of the police force' at copper school. Policing has never, ever, in any remote way been free from democratic control - and rightly so. Before the 1964 Police Act local forces were governed by Watch Committees, made up of both local elected burgesses and local magistrates. The fight between SW1 and local communities for control of the police has been a long one; the 1964 Act was a victory for the Home Office, and centralised control of much of the authority previously exercised by the Watch Committees. The Watch Committees were abolished. Crime Commissioners are nothing but an ineffective sop to Localism by a Home Office under pressure for their power-hoarding.

John of course is not alone in his anti-democratic and extremist opinions. They are held by most senior police officers, who want nothing more than a national police force controlled by no-one but themselves. To this end they have created numerous bodies - funded by our own taxes - to promote this outcome, and lobby for anti-democratic powers at every opportunity. They are part of the anti-democratic nexus that in the words of Betz and Smith has captured the democratic State -

What we appear to be witnessing is the corrupt mutation of the notion of the representation of the people in parliament, into the substitution of the will of the people by the interests of the political class. We are entering the realms, no less, of state capture. What happens when sectional interests capture the political institutions of the state? This is a question we will get to, but first it is worth reiterating that in many senses this has been a long time coming, and to emphasise, in the British case has little or nothing intrinsically to do with Brexit.

In our fight against extremism - of the Left, Right and Islamist - we must never forget that those who seek to destroy democratic control over the institutions of the State are also extremists. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Someone also needs to tell John that it's not the job of the police to dispense justice - we have courts for that. I can't help feeling that we've been recruiting the wrong sort of people to the police.

It's time we had a fundamental review of the role and structure of the police, similar to the Royal Commission that reported in 1962, but this time not rigged by the Home Office. Remember - 98% of police work is call-outs to disturbances and policing non-indictable offences. I can see no reason why such work cannot be undertaken by local, accountable forces of coppers skilled in the basics. Organised crime, terrorism, specialist investigations and serious indictable offences can be undertaken by regional or national squads or bodies under democratic oversight. Why not?

Gatwick Drones - a gross failure of government

London's second airport has now been closed for 24 hours and responsible ministers are running around like headless chickens. They don't know how many drones there are, where the operators are, when they will appear next and certainly not how to get them out of the sky once they are up. 

This didn't come out of left field. This whole thing was entirely predictable; a universally available technology with no restrictions, a known vulnerability, the risk events with potentially catastrophic consequences. There is NO excuse for the police and security services not to have formulated a response which should have gone into effect last night. This is a gross failure of government, a sackable omission for senior responsible officers and an embarrassment for the nation. Heads MUST roll.

If they're still out there waiting for a little Remainer with a joystick to launch the next one, or have set up their signal jammers, they may be disappointed. Drones can be pre-programmed with course and altitude; there's no reason why the perp didn't leave a dozen drones on hidden rooftops around Gatwick a week ago, each in sequence taking off, flying over the runways a bit and then ditching itself in a body of water.  All preset within the drone and no signals to jam. They've no idea how many there are to go or what the launch frequencies are - will another six take-off on Sunday? And they can be initiated either with a mobile phone call or an inbuilt timer.

One thing's for certain. Our police and security services had better get their acts together pronto - their failure to date is simply not acceptable. 

Update - Friday am
=================

Perhaps ill-advised for PTSD Adonis to post thus on Twitter - I understand he's already been reported to the police for a 'glorification of terrorism' offence. He talks bollocks, too;

LATEST GOVERNMENT PETITION FIGURES

No Deal Brexit - 263,365 growing
STOP BREXIT - 101,143 sclerotic 

In fact the Adonis option has actually been overtaken by a petition to "Make grey squirrel rescue exempt from Invasive Alien Species Order 2019"

2nd Update - 8.53
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Yes! The boss of Drone Defence, UK's premier drone countermeasures company, has just been interviewed on R4 'Today' and said in his expert view (1) more than 1 drone was involved - probably several and that (2) they were likely to have been pre-programmed.

Just as we posted over 12 hours ago. Raedwald  - Truth First.
And a special prize to Jack the Dog - the responsible Minister, Grayling, has just made a statement saying that 'Lessons have been learned'. As predicted. 

Cressida Dick wants to go fishing

Lucy McHugh's murderer remains unconvicted, and Hampshire police think they know who did it. They believe there is evidence on his Facebook account, but to get it, must apply to the US courts for access. Facebook only grants immediate police access worldwide to user accounts in the event of imminent serious harm to a child, or of immediate risk of death or serious injury, for example from a terrorist act. 

Cressida Dick has waded into the debate by voicing her opinion that social media companies should give unquestioned access to the police 'within minutes' of being asked. It is the sort of fatuous saloon-bar comment that is usually the preserve of the deeply stupid, and as such is hardly worthy of serious rebuttal. But this woman, remember, is the nation's senior police officer with operational responsibility for terrorism and the most serious investigations. 

Hard cases make bad law. I am sorry for the family of Lucy McHugh but would ask them to be patient; if there is sufficient evidence to do so, police will be given access to the suspect's account. There may or may not be evidence that will secure a conviction. No one else is at risk, and immediate access cannot reverse the family's loss and grief. There is no pressing reason for change.

Cressida Dick should learn that she polices in a democracy, not in a police State. I'm sure she would like the ability to access whatever accounts are of interest to officers, and allow them to go fishing to take down opponents of the State, critics of the police and those who fight for freedom of thought and expression. If she seriously thinks we should let her, she's lost her mind. 

Crime up: Plod can go back to work.

There is no direct link between the number of police officers in post and the number of crimes committed. If this were the case, police numbers would have been slashed from those in post in 1996 rather than having remained fairly constant; the UK crime rate has plummeted mostly because the age cohort of the population most likely to commit crime has grown up. 

Now the crime rate is starting to rise again, the knee jerk call is for more police. But wait. Think. What have all those police - whose numbers have hardly changed, remember - been doing since 1996, when there haven't been enough burglars, car thieves or muggers to keep them busy? Isn't it obvious? They've all been sitting at the station watching porn on their computers and patrolling Facebook and Twitter for people being rude. 

During the working day, Twitter used to be the preserve of unemployed people in their underpants. Now you can't move for tweets from plods, bored out of their skulls looking for racists. Well, their time has come. The British criminal has come to their rescue. They can now lever themselves out of their rotating chairs and bloody well get back out on the beat. 

Another grubby episode; why the police need an officer corps

If there's one word I've found that adequately describes many policemen above the rank of sergeant, it's 'chippy'. Perhaps from being laughed at, excluded from the gang, having odd parents or being academically slow at school, perhaps from resentment of authority, perhaps from an early realisation that they are deeply ordinary, I'm convinced that many (though not all) of those that seek promotion in the police do so from having a chip on their shoulder that they feel having the powers of a constable plus rank will avenge.

And sometimes there are no better examples of innate inability than those who rise to higher command rank. Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick always struck me as such, a blundering idiot promoted above his ability but ingrained with a deep sense of entitlement and grievance. Chippy. And not only chippy but possessed of that particularly stupid stubbornness that convinces policemen of someone's guilt or innocence in the face of a mountain of contradictory evidence. He could not even accept his own dismissal for endangering the public by screwing up an anti-terrorist operation out of sheer stupidity. Last week he persuaded another deeply flawed individual, an ex-detective with evidence of questionable probity to put the boot into Damien Green.  

One of the reasons in the age of the internet that we put men into large open plan offices is to stop them looking at porn. Every large workplace has its tales of managers caught in acts of onanism in little cubby-hole offices. Damien Green may have been amongst them. I don't know. But whatever breaches of Commons policy he may have committed, he did not act against the law. Quick and his weird little chum, in making their grubby claims, unsupported by evidence, have breached every professional standard that the police should maintain, and have undermined public trust in their old employer.

This really is just the latest a long series of incidents of malfeasance, error, blunder and sheer stupid malice that have condemned the whole class of those who rise to command rank in the police. David Duckenfield, Norman Bettison and others are still to stand trial for Hillsborough so I cannot comment other than to mention the fact. 

Is it not high time that we stopped deeply unsuitable individuals such as Mr Quick from reaching rank to which they are unsuited in the first place? Is it not time the police had a professional officer corps, as it had in the past, to lend it professional integrity where it is needed most, amongst the leaders and commanders?