TRIGGERnometry - Are the Police Losing Public Confidence？ - Chris Donaldson

00:00:00.880 We've seen this term being used again and again, which is two-tier policing.

00:00:04.800 Do you think that is a fair criticism to make of the police at this point?

00:00:08.400 I can see where the sentiment comes from, definitely.

00:00:11.760 If you're looking at demonstrations, you'll never get consistency all the way through the country.

00:00:15.600 All the different forces are never going to be consistent.

00:00:18.160 British police officers are held accountable for American police action.

00:00:21.520 It's not the same the other way around, that's for sure.

00:00:24.160 I think firearms officers, a quarter of them have handed in their blue ticket.

00:00:27.520 Why is it firearms officers have said, we're not doing it?

00:00:30.240 If they get into a difficult situation and they have to make a split-second decision,

00:00:33.840 they don't feel they're going to be backed by senior officers. This is dangerous.

00:00:39.120 Chris Donaldson, you are our go-to guy for all things policing in this country.

00:00:43.600 Welcome back to the show.

00:00:44.560 Thank you.

00:00:45.280 Great to have you.

00:00:45.920 Always a pleasure.

00:00:46.720 It's always great having you on.

00:00:48.160 Obviously, a lot going on since we last...

00:00:50.320 I think we spoke to you last during the pandemic, actually, so it's been a while.

00:00:54.000 And there's been a lot of stuff going on recently to do with policing.

00:00:56.880 Yeah.

00:00:57.440 What's your sense of just where we are in terms of the relationship between the police

00:01:01.920 and the public, how people feel about it, how the police feel about the way the public

00:01:05.600 feel about them, you know, the state of the way that we think about each other?

00:01:09.920 I think there's big differences now, isn't there? Because historically we've had a problem,

00:01:15.680 or the police have had a problem with minority communities, yeah?

00:01:19.760 And now there's another community that they seem to have a problem with, and that's conservative

00:01:25.600 communities, yeah? Which is totally different than the past. Historically, it was traditionally

00:01:31.120 the West Indian black community had significant issues when riots have, you know, gone on from there.

00:01:36.320 Now we have a right wing or right wing extremists, conservators, whatever you like to call them.

00:01:41.520 I've got a big problem with the police who they don't feel they're represented. So,

00:01:44.560 yes, things have changed. Things have changed because of higher profile officers who've let

00:01:53.840 the service down, you know, murderers, rapists have hit the headlines and tarnished the police

00:02:00.960 and everyone who works for the police, which is a shame. So they're fighting different battles,

00:02:05.840 lots of different battles, more battles in fact, putting out more fires than they did in the past,

00:02:09.840 definitely. And one of the things, like you, I think you know us well at this point, you know

00:02:14.400 that we're never coming at it from a pointing the finger at all police officers at all. And you know,

00:02:19.680 the Manchester airport situation is a very good example where I looked at the videos that have

00:02:25.360 been released and I was like, there's no way this is the full context. There's no way a police officer

00:02:28.880 is going to behave like this, knowing there's cameras on it, unless there's been some kind of very

00:02:33.600 serious incident prior to that. But so many people jumped to conclusions. Do you think,

00:02:38.320 you know, you obviously, you're not in the service now. Do you think it's almost impossible now to do

00:02:43.680 that job when anything you do is going to get clipped out of context, shoved on social media,

00:02:49.520 and then you're in trouble? You have to realise that when, as soon as you join a place, you're very,

00:02:56.000 very, very conscious that you've got this uniform on and everyone's looking at you basically. Yeah,

00:03:00.000 you know that as soon as you walk out first day. The difference is now, obviously, everyone's,

00:03:05.520 everyone is a reporter, everyone's got a phone. Yeah. And you could get involved in an incident

00:03:11.360 and quite often policing is messy. If you actually, one of those officers who actually get their hands

00:03:16.320 dirty, you know, a lot who don't. Yeah. But a lot of them who do get down the people who make the

00:03:20.560 difference. These are people I'm talking about. Yeah. Who actually will intervene and trying to disrupt

00:03:26.320 groups with knives and people who are actually making the pain for the rest of us.

00:03:30.160 It can get very messy. Yeah. And in isolation, it doesn't look good. The optics are not very,

00:03:36.720 very good sometimes. And in the past, we would have that little roll around or whatever,

00:03:42.320 and it wouldn't be on social media before you got to the back to the nick to make your notes and

00:03:46.240 justify your use of force. You're already being judged on social media for whatever way they want

00:03:51.360 it to be. And that's very hard to undo. It's very hard to undo, but you have to be aware of it.

00:03:58.640 And it's a different world that you live in. And it is difficult, but it's different. It's just

00:04:03.680 different more than anything. You've got to know your powers very well. You've got to be very confident

00:04:07.360 with your powers and don't be shy to use them and know that this could look bad, but I'm going to

00:04:12.560 adjust for it. And more than anything is that my senior officers above me are going to, or the PR

00:04:18.640 machine that should be supporting policing, are going to try and rebut whatever is coming out.

00:04:25.760 Often doesn't happen there. Well, that's the thing is like,

00:04:28.320 a lot of the time you see police officers who, I've never been in a situation where I've got a

00:04:33.600 firearm, someone's punched me in the face, punched my colleagues in the face, I'm having to restrain those

00:04:38.640 people. And then the people who are supposed to back me, they're the ones throwing me under the

00:04:42.720 bus. Well, this is a big problem to a lot of police officers on the ground level. I come from

00:04:49.200 firearms, probably all the backgrounds. There are two areas that get most police officers in trouble,

00:04:53.760 or the most difficult areas of policing really, as far as the public is concerned anyway.

00:05:00.560 And you want backing from senior officers. You want backing from senior officers. And it matters.

00:05:04.640 And not just senior officers, the PR machine that backs police and should be counteracting things.

00:05:10.720 Obviously, they're bound by legal restraints, whereas people on social media aren't, you know?

00:05:17.120 So there is that concern. But I mean, the Manchester issue is a difficult one, is a difficult one,

00:05:24.960 because that officer won't be judged. Put it this way, if he was judged in the court of public

00:05:31.520 opinion, he'd probably be fine. But he's not going to be judged in the court of public opinion. He's

00:05:37.040 been judged by the law. So every individual parts of his action, he's going to have to justify. I'm

00:05:42.560 not saying he won't, in looking at the whole thing. But he's going to have to justify each action.

00:05:48.480 That's the standard that a police officer is having. It's different. I've not spoken to anyone

00:05:56.480 who hasn't said, oh, yeah, I think that was okay. You know, as a police, as a member of the public,

00:06:00.960 think, you know, what happened to him before. But that's not how he's going to be judged. He's

00:06:04.560 going to be judged by the law. And each individual use the force he's going to have to justify.

00:06:08.960 And I'm sure, you know, he may well be able to do it. Yeah.

00:06:11.520 Chris, do you think part of the problem is as well, is that people go on Twitter or eggs or whatever,

00:06:16.400 and they see an American officer behaving in a certain way. Then they'll see an American officer

00:06:22.720 from another city in America, maybe even thousands of miles away, behaving in a certain way.

00:06:27.120 Then they'll see a British officer behaving in a certain way, and they'll go,

00:06:31.440 all police behave like this. So, yeah. Yeah, I understand what you're saying.

00:06:35.600 Because what is quite unique, though, is the British society and British police officers are

00:06:42.000 held accountable for American police action. It's not the same the other way around, that's for sure.

00:06:48.000 You travel to America, you know what I'm talking about. There's no way there's going to be

00:06:51.440 a demonstration on the other side of the pond about police action in this country, no matter

00:06:55.760 what it was. In all of my time in policing, no chance, yeah. However, whatever action happens in

00:07:01.920 America directly affects policing, indirectly or indirectly affects policing here, rightly or wrongly,

00:07:10.960 in my opinion. Black Lives Matter, do you know, that was, you know, George Floyd, it was a police

00:07:16.720 action on the other side of the world. It bore no resemblance to policing here, as far as I'm concerned,

00:07:22.720 yeah. And yet we had to suffer the replication, you know. So, yes, people do. But they often look at

00:07:34.000 policing through an American eye anyway, through drama and films and stuff. Even when I've worked with

00:07:40.880 writers who, with drama here, and they're speaking in an American language, I said to them, that's

00:07:47.280 America. It's not England. It's not how we talk about policing here. And they've got it, even they've

00:07:52.320 got it in their head. They're talking Americanisms because everyone's got this vision of policing

00:07:56.720 being American. We're not armed, which still astonishes most police officers in the world,

00:08:03.120 actually, are still astonished that the majority of police officers here aren't armed. And how brave they

00:08:09.200 are to go out unarmed in quite a violent environment, to be fair, an increasingly violent

00:08:15.600 environment. So, yeah, you can't talk about policing in the same way, because it's totally different.

00:08:22.000 The way the rules of engagement are totally different. Their backup's totally different.

00:08:25.440 Their law's totally different. But people often do, you're right. And, Chris, we've seen this term

00:08:31.200 being used again and again, which is two-tier policing. Do you think that the people's criticisms,

00:08:38.800 which is normally white working class people, making this criticism, that they get treated harsher

00:08:44.320 than if an ethnic minority gets arrested? Do you think that is a fair criticism to make of the 0.99

00:08:50.480 police at this point?

00:08:51.600 Well, no, not really. Obviously not, because the pendulum's swung, isn't it? It used to

00:08:55.280 be the black community complaining about being over-policed, and now it's the white community,

00:08:59.280 or sections of the white community, saying that they're unfairly treated. You can't win,

00:09:03.280 really, can you? I can see where the sentiment comes from, definitely. If you're looking at

00:09:11.440 demonstrations, it looks like, for particularly right-wing, or extremist, or far-right, whatever

00:09:18.480 label you want to give them, their demonstration seems to be, it appears to be more robustly

00:09:24.080 policed than, say, for instance, the Black Lives Matter, where everything has come from,

00:09:28.400 everything stemmed from the way that was, and the police have already admitted they made some mistakes.

00:09:34.960 Police in Black Lives Matter maybe should have been harder. I think they should have. 1.00

00:09:38.240 Have they admitted that? I haven't come across this.

00:09:39.840 Well, yeah, the senior officers have said there were mistakes made, particularly in taking a knee.

00:09:45.600 That was a mistake, 100% mistake, and I think that officer knew it was, because he put his colleagues

00:09:51.120 in a big problem, and it entered into that area of politicization, you know, and should you be

00:10:00.080 involved in anything? And you shouldn't. I think I emphasized that way back in my first interview,

00:10:05.680 that the police need to distance themselves from politics. And of course, people would argue that

00:10:11.120 Black Lives Matter wasn't politics, it was human rights, but I distinctly think it was a

00:10:15.200 political movement. So, yeah, there have been mistakes made, and public order particularly is

00:10:22.320 very difficult. For instance, you could look more aggressive when you're policing a smaller group

00:10:27.440 of people who maybe turn up with a drink in them or whatever in them, and have got people amongst them

00:10:34.560 that are known for violence, yeah? You may approach that demonstration in a more aggressive manner,

00:10:41.280 or seem to be, you know, you're tooled up, you've got more protection, and you look more aggressive.

00:10:46.640 When you've got 100,000 people who are predominantly sober, yeah? But they've got,

00:10:52.320 you're dealing with a different dynamic, which is signs that are offensive, or gestures that are offensive.

00:10:58.160 Sometimes, it's better to slow-time arrest them, yeah? It's better to pick and choose your time

00:11:05.040 to arrest them, identify them through facial recognition, and maybe slow-time arrest those people.

00:11:11.200 People want to see that pattern going because you did it to us, you know? That kind of thing. It

00:11:15.920 doesn't work like that. And it's more than two tiers of policing. There's multi-tiers of policing.

00:11:21.120 You can, you know, depending on the intelligence you get, the resources, all kinds of factors

00:11:28.800 go into a briefing, which are all public documents if they can be, you know, interrogated.

00:11:34.560 And the briefings that you get before you go into one of these demonstrations

00:11:37.600 are filmed, yeah? So everyone knows, it's no secret. No one's going to say, right,

00:11:41.520 we've got a right wing today, boys and girls. Get stuck into them, you know? No one's going to,

00:11:46.160 no one ever said that. No one ever said, right, we've got some slight left-leaning

00:11:50.560 demonstrators here, we need to back off them because we believe in what they believe, you know?

00:11:54.560 No one says that at any briefing. But I can see the perception. I can see the perception because

00:11:59.440 the media eclipses it. And your algorithm feeds you what you believe already, remember?

00:12:05.520 You know? So it certainly looked, the optics weren't good in some of the right wing moves. But

00:12:12.400 I can understand that on the ground, the operational decisions they were making, you know? Because

00:12:18.320 it's easier to go into a crowd of 100 and extract people than it is to a crowd of 100,000, you know?

00:12:25.360 Well, for me, the comparison would be not so much, look, the BLM thing and your point about,

00:12:30.720 say, let's say pro-Palestine protests, where you've got, like you said, 100,000 people. I understand

00:12:36.400 that while actually in some situations it might be desirable to communicate that certain types of

00:12:41.840 behaviour is unacceptable, you don't have enough police officers to go in there and do it. I get that.

00:12:47.520 But what we had prior to the recent riots was the situation in Leeds, where people in a minority

00:12:53.040 community were burning things down, burning down buses, et cetera, et cetera. They didn't get the

00:12:58.160 same treatment. That's what people were pointing at. Yeah, yeah. I can understand that. And it's

00:13:02.000 like, well, it's like football matches, isn't it? The inconsistency in a VIR at a lighter level.

00:13:07.360 You'll never get consistency all the way through the country. All the different forces are never

00:13:10.880 going to be consistent. They've got different resources, they've got different experience.

00:13:14.960 You don't know who's on the ground available at the time. You don't know who the governor is

00:13:18.640 making the decisions to go in. And you can easily find inconsistencies in any organisation,

00:13:24.560 easily. And policing is out there and it's more public than most. And everyone would want to see

00:13:30.080 people who could break the law be dealt with on the same level, you know, go in and arrest them.

00:13:36.160 They're burning things. So I don't care what colour. I've never cared what colour. I've never worked with 0.72

00:13:40.640 any public order officer who were particularly concerned about the colour of the lawbreakers,

00:13:47.280 not at all. They're trained to deal with, you know, when you volunteer to be a public order

00:13:53.840 officer, which is a higher level of fitness, high level of scrutiny, and you pass tests to do it,

00:13:58.640 and you're extracted from your normal duty and you lose a lot of your own public personal time, 0.97

00:14:04.880 you don't get to a demo and think, you know, there are blacks, so we need to keep off them. It's 1.00

00:14:09.760 down to the governors above to direct that group. That's what I'm getting at though, Chris, because

00:14:14.080 I don't think most, look, speaking to people, I think lots of people are frustrated with policing.

00:14:20.320 In this country, they're frustrated with crime not being investigated. We talked about this last

00:14:24.640 time, burglaries, all sorts of things. And increasingly also, and this isn't a policing issue,

00:14:29.600 but a lot of, when the government goes, you know, we've got to make sure we're prosecuting rape,

00:14:34.320 right? A lot of people who don't have a good case against them get taken all the way to the court,

00:14:39.520 just so they can tick a box. All of that's going on, people are frustrated. I don't think most people

00:14:44.320 in this country, in my sense at least, are annoyed with ordinary police officers. No, no, no. I don't

00:14:48.480 think so at all. But to a lot of people, this is really the question, right? You say no one turns

00:14:54.880 up to a public demo or whatever thinking, oh, these guys will go in harder or whatever. I suspect

00:15:00.480 that's true. I totally accept your point. But in terms of the way many people see the entire

00:15:06.400 structure of society where we have diversity initiatives coming out of every orifice and

00:15:11.040 all of this other stuff going on. The question is, is there one of these people with a rainbow

00:15:16.480 lanyard sitting in the commander's office somewhere going, you know, Keir Starmer or, you know,

00:15:21.920 Rishi Sunak, whoever has told me we need to crack down on this. You know, let me give the orders

00:15:27.600 so that we really make sure we do our job this time. No, I don't know about the lanyards, but I can

00:15:33.840 tell you. But you know what I mean, don't you? I know what you mean, but there is political

00:15:37.920 interference, 100% political interference. There are phone calls between senior officers

00:15:43.200 and politicians, or people in power, asking them what their actions are, put it that way.

00:15:49.520 Right. What are you doing about this?

00:15:51.280 Leaning on them.

00:15:52.400 Absolutely. It's been said by the inspectorate. One of the inspectorate's findings was undue

00:15:57.040 political interference. A lot of senior officers or senior commanders are saying they feel under pressure

00:16:02.080 from political, significant political beings. So, yes. But then that hasn't really changed.

00:16:08.080 I mean, if you go back to the Iranian siege, where the commissioner was summons to the Home

00:16:13.760 Office to give you what you can do. There's no difference, really, but it's just a little bit more

00:16:18.640 overt now, I think. There's no way you're a commissioner without having to answer to

00:16:25.280 the mayor or the Home Office. And I don't think anyone would expect any less. What my worry is,

00:16:33.280 and I can't really evidence it, is that they've been undue, sometimes they've been unduly,

00:16:38.880 they feel too much pressure from political. And if that political personality is not entirely honest,

00:16:47.440 or has got some other motives, put it that way, dishonest motives, then it's not, it doesn't make

00:16:55.040 policing look that good, does it? Because policing's there, the police, those people,

00:17:00.800 people behind that, those decisions aren't going to stand up and say, oh, sorry, it was me.

00:17:05.120 The police officer, the commissioner is going to have to stand and front it up

00:17:08.400 and take responsibility for whatever they've done.

00:17:10.480 Yeah. Because a lot of people are frustrated because they will point to, you know, certain

00:17:16.960 groups who have been allowed to, in their eyes, get away with behaviour. And then they'll go and

00:17:23.440 they'll point to a case like the grooming gangs, which I think a lot of this anger and frustration

00:17:28.880 stems from, if I'm being honest, where they feel those communities understandably feel betrayed by

00:17:34.720 the authorities and the police. Right. Uh, yeah, I can, I can, I know those gripes have

00:17:40.480 been going for a long time and, and, and, um, it's, it's well documented that it could have been

00:17:44.800 dealt with definitely better by the police, uh, a hundred percent. And those people should have

00:17:48.400 been brought to justice, but they're, they're more than that, isn't it? I mean, going back to the

00:17:51.680 eighties, there's a lot of, uh, there's been a tension up in the north of England, particularly

00:17:56.400 and some communities between, um, uh, the white community and the Asian community. Definitely.

00:18:01.360 I know that I've witnessed it. Um, however, uh, the grooming gangs, um, you know, there were

00:18:07.840 mistakes made a hundred percent. There are grooming gangs of not just Asians who, who are, who don't 0.76

00:18:13.760 meet justice. I can tell you that for a fact. Um, but that, that particular angst was going to run

00:18:19.280 and run. And then until there's a satisfactory engine, some people made political gain out of it.

00:18:23.040 Definitely. Um, I can see that, uh, uh, the, this, the, I mean, the very sad

00:18:31.040 murders of the three girls, um, uh, up in, um, Southport, uh, was, uh, horrible, horrible, shocking,

00:18:39.120 but it got overrun then by the, the, the, the asylum issue, the immigration, the migration issue.

00:18:46.080 Not everyone forgot about the girls, which is really, really sad, really sad, but it was a tension

00:18:51.280 that was building, obviously. It could see it from, from decades, not, not, not to, it was a tension

00:18:56.240 that it was building. And, and I don't think the truth of the actual incident mattered. It was

00:19:02.800 just going to be something, wasn't it? If it wasn't that, it was going to be something else.

00:19:06.400 And yeah, you have to be as a policing and not, not getting into the politics of it,

00:19:09.680 but it's policing. You have to, have to show an even hand and it's really hard

00:19:14.640 to show an even hand, especially with social media, because I can show you say it's black. 0.63

00:19:18.400 I can show you, you said it was white sometime, you know? Uh, so if social media aren't against 0.93

00:19:23.680 you, then you have to take control of your, your, your image. I think, I think the police

00:19:28.720 need to get on the front foot and actually get out. Sometimes they do some individuals,

00:19:32.960 it's left to individuals to clarify different actions and what that didn't happen. Actually,

00:19:37.520 by the way, this is the facts. Yeah. Uh, not everyone looks for the facts because you just want to

00:19:41.760 believe what you want to believe sometimes, don't you? But I think the police need to get a grip of

00:19:45.760 their PR machine and get out there and support, uh, clarify incidents in, um, as far as they can

00:19:54.640 quickly as they can within the law, because obviously with that particular, um, um, that

00:20:02.240 particular incident, the, the, the, the assailant was described differently than it actually was,

00:20:08.960 wasn't it? And they wanted to say, it's not what you think it is, but they couldn't believe

00:20:13.760 because of his age. Yeah. So they were restrained. So that time was delayed because the, because of

00:20:19.360 the age and the, and the restraints within the law. However, they, they need to get a grip.

00:20:23.680 I think they need to get a grip of their PR machine and, and not just for the sake of the public

00:20:27.680 who want clarification on these things, uh, for the sake of the officers who have to deliver their,

00:20:32.240 their dreams. Yeah. They need to support them quickly because if I'm not, uh, if I'm a,

00:20:38.480 if I'm an officer who just thinks I like being a police officer, but I don't want to be labeled,

00:20:43.040 um, this or that, if I just make, put an effort in and, and I arrest them and I'm not going to do it.

00:20:48.240 I'm just going to back off. And the figures have replicated that, don't they? They're not,

00:20:52.080 there's not as many arrests. There's not many stop and search. Uh, and these people are getting

00:20:56.080 away with, uh, literally murder sometimes when they should have been intervened.

00:20:59.920 And that's because of my confidence, I think, low confidence.

00:21:02.880 And it's also speaks like you were saying as well to this relationship with, with the public.

00:21:08.800 Do you think part of the problem is, is that the public don't understand what it's like to be a

00:21:13.040 police officer? I think the public's perception of what it's like to be a police officer comes from

00:21:17.760 drama, if I'm honest. Yeah. And, and, and at the moment it doesn't depict the police very well.

00:21:23.280 I'm not blaming drama because I like drama and I, and I quite often advise on drama, but, um,

00:21:29.040 yes, a hundred percent. There is no Hill street blues anymore. You know, there's no bill. There's

00:21:34.080 no realistic, uh, depiction of police, police, policing really, you know, when I say realistic,

00:21:40.400 there's both dramas, but they got to the core of what it's like on a day to day basis of being a

00:21:44.720 police officer. Um, which is hard. It is hard to doing early slates and nights, long shifts,

00:21:51.200 um, and then taking one, uh, the caseloads, detectives having really an awful lot of caseloads,

00:21:57.040 one after that. If they took one in the village, obviously you get a gold plated service, but

00:22:00.880 they've got lots on their plate. They're trawling through hours and hours of CCTV. They, they're

00:22:06.000 quite often inexperienced because the experience is a big problem in the police at the moment.

00:22:09.920 Um, so yeah, it's a hard, it's a tough job that you have to be dedicated to. And some people just,

00:22:14.400 um, think, you know what, it's too much. Now I'll go home. I'm on all over social media as a racist

00:22:20.800 and I'm not, I'm just trying to do my job. So maybe I'll do something else, you know? So yeah,

00:22:25.920 it's a big challenge at the moment because we need good people to be police officers.

00:22:29.040 And I think part of the problem as well, and correct me if I'm wrong, is this, a lot of this

00:22:34.560 stems from Theresa May's stint as Home Office Secretary, where I think it was 20,000 police

00:22:40.640 officers she got rid of and 18 and a half thousand support staff. What impact did that make on the

00:22:46.560 police and their ability to deliver? Well, yeah, that's, it was a major blow to policing,

00:22:50.960 but that was austerity. That was her excuse for it. I think it wasn't, Theresa May's, um, attitude

00:22:56.720 due towards police didn't help either. It wasn't just the cuts. George Osborne and, uh, and, and,

00:23:02.240 and the Home Secretary at the time decided that they could cut policing. It was without any effect

00:23:08.240 and public services got cut, not just policing, public services got cut. And Theresa May's attitude, 0.99

00:23:13.600 when she was warned at a Federation conference that, you know, we have challenges, particularly

00:23:20.480 in and around terrorism. And she said they were cryomorph. And then obviously within a few,

00:23:25.520 uh, within a year, I think it was, there was the 7-7, uh, uh, incidents and the terrorism incidents.

00:23:31.920 They're understaffed and they need to be staffed. They need to be refunded, not defunded, but the

00:23:36.240 police need to be refunded quickly because we're all going to be unsafe. Yeah. We, we need more,

00:23:42.000 they need the police, police stations. We realize now, actually people do like a police station in

00:23:46.800 their community. Yeah. So we need to rebuild them. We need to get them back up and run. We need to

00:23:51.440 replenish, don't, not the targets. Yes. We've got a whole of policing, but we need to get good police

00:23:57.120 officers. One bad police officer, as we found out, can tarnish the whole of the, the reputation of,

00:24:03.600 uh, of a lot of people. And it takes years and it's going to take years to recover from the last one.

00:24:08.800 Yeah. So good police officers. I don't care what color or sex or a religion they are,

00:24:14.880 just good police officers. There's what they need to go. People who are committed to a challenge

00:24:18.880 because it is a challenge. That's what got me in. I could have done many other things.

00:24:23.440 What was I doing as a 19 year old black kid from East London, joining the police that allegedly was,

00:24:27.840 uh, you know, racist. No, because I thought policing is worth doing and I like a challenge and I don't

00:24:33.600 like boring jobs. So I did it. Uh, and there are lots of people out there who did it. I know,

00:24:38.480 I know I speak to lots of people, intelligent people, driven people who want to be police officers.

00:24:43.280 And we do need them. We need them to take that challenge up. Um, we don't need them to be labeled,

00:24:48.960 uh, and castigated every time they do an action. And I know most members of the public look at people,

00:24:54.640 well, yeah, they deserve that. Yeah. But unfortunately they're not there when they're in court.

00:24:58.640 And at the moment there's a big purge internally of police officers, uh, who, uh, who are falling

00:25:07.200 slightly below the standard on an occasion and getting thrown out and getting harshly treated.

00:25:12.000 And that's trickling through the surface, you know? Well, sorry to interrupt you, Chris,

00:25:15.200 what do you mean by that? Well, at the moment, uh, obviously there've been, there've been concerns,

00:25:20.480 uh, raising standards. That's the, that's the, that was the thing and, and, um, winning back trust

00:25:26.320 and confidence and, and the political powers to be believe that winning back trust and confidence

00:25:32.720 in the, in the, in the, in the public is showing them that they're throwing out police officers

00:25:37.280 for, uh, sometimes minor incidents. Uh, that's not the way to win back trust and confidence. I know,

00:25:43.760 I believe that. Yeah. The way to win back trust is why my car went missing. Oh, you got it back

00:25:49.680 and you got the person arrested. Oh, okay. Um, I got raped. Did you convict that? Yes, I did.

00:25:54.800 Oh, a good, um, burger. That's how investigating crime effectively, um, will win back trust and

00:26:02.400 confidence. Being a good police officer, being robustly treating, uh, uh, people who break the

00:26:08.080 law, um, stemming the flow of violence in, in, in knife crime. That's how you win back trust and

00:26:13.200 confidence. It's not by throwing out people for dodgy WhatsApp messages. Yeah. Uh, and particularly,

00:26:19.040 if those officers are good, that trickles through the service and you think, wow, wow, hold on a minute.

00:26:24.320 Yeah. So you, you're going to interrogate my WhatsApp messages. Uh, when I sent a message,

00:26:28.640 when I was drunk at 2am in the morning and you're going to throw me out because I've done that. So

00:26:33.920 I think, uh, the balance needs to be struck and I'm not, I know of, I know for a fact,

00:26:40.320 a lot of officers, um, uh, are not happy the way they've been treated internally.

00:26:44.560 Definitely not. Well, it's, I'm glad you brought that up because it speaks to actually a bigger

00:26:48.560 issue, which goes beyond the policing, which we just seem to be slowly becoming a country where

00:26:53.680 we, our thoughts are now being policed, so to speak. And that's WhatsApp messages. I mean,

00:26:59.200 these are private communications. As far as I'm concerned, yeah. You know,

00:27:02.160 so if someone behaves inappropriately in their job, that's a perfectly good reason to, to be dealing

00:27:06.800 with them. What do you make of the fact that the police are increasingly involved in people's

00:27:11.920 thoughts, people's opinions, people, you know, praying outside of abortion clinics,

00:27:16.400 all of this stuff that just seems to me to be, I, I, I see that as us going in our own direction.

00:27:21.440 I don't know if you do. Well, it's, yeah, it's, uh, it's not right. It's not right. It's,

00:27:25.600 it's not something that the police have been getting involved in. Obviously,

00:27:29.120 laws are made and they have to, and sometimes they're encouraged to enforce those laws,

00:27:32.560 as we know. Yeah. It's not always just the police, is it? It's the criminal justice system.

00:27:36.080 Of course, of course. But yeah, um, it seems like a total waste of time and

00:27:40.400 resourcing itself, in my, my opinion, it is, but they, they, they will argue that those,

00:27:45.520 those things are influential. But going back to Southport, you know, a couple of dodgy, um,

00:27:52.000 uh, tweets inflamed the situation. Um, some people weren't even in the country and they

00:27:58.640 inflamed the situation. Yeah. I think a couple of them were, one of them was in a holiday in Cyprus

00:28:02.880 and someone was sat in, in Pakistan, but it managed to flame, you know, to inflame it. So,

00:28:08.560 yes and no. Yes. Things like that, which incite riots are really important and they should be

00:28:14.320 prosecuted as far as I'm concerned, but praying outside different, you know, these things,

00:28:18.720 I think distract the police from their core duty. And you mentioned as well, Chris, that, um,

00:28:24.560 you know, I know that this is how you feel, uh, about recruiting officers and it's irrelevant what

00:28:30.080 their skin color, sex, et cetera, is, but there has been a big drive recently. And one of the things,

00:28:36.320 look, I, I hate asking this question because it makes me sound like some kind of misogynist, but

00:28:40.640 I've seen a lot of incidents where a female officer has been unable to, you know, has put,

00:28:46.080 frankly, herself or her colleagues or members of the public in danger because physically she's not up

00:28:51.200 to dealing with a six foot four violent criminal. It's not to say all women are bad at the job at all. 1.00

00:28:56.400 No, no, not at all. Nobody's saying that, but this is just a lot. I'm just telling you that's

00:29:01.040 what a lot of people are saying. And I said, interesting thing that you've brought up there

00:29:04.400 because I've seen some of them clips and you think, oh, uh, you know, maybe, you know, uh,

00:29:09.360 that could have been dealt with differently or that more robust and I would like them to be more

00:29:12.720 physically fit. However, I can tell you for a fact, 30 years policing, I had a, I had a, I was, um,

00:29:18.560 I had a partner for four and a half years on the territorial support, the riot squad was a female. Yeah. 1.00

00:29:22.960 And I'd go into pub fights and it still happens now. Bizarrely, not bizarrely. It's an inherent,

00:29:29.600 uh, goodness in us. And men particularly won't hit a woman, even the most hardened men. I've seen

00:29:36.880 women defuse situations in policing that no man could ever have done. And it still happens now. A 1.00

00:29:42.400 woman has different skills going into hyper. Yes. She might not be able to wrestle with a six foot 1.00

00:29:47.360 four guy, but I guarantee she can speak to him, listen to him better than most blokes. Yeah.

00:29:51.840 Yeah. Yeah. Those aren't seen on social media. That's a fair point. 0.52

00:29:54.480 But I can tell you from actual, uh, uh, experience, uh, you know, that women have a different, 0.97

00:30:01.680 uh, a fantastic way of dealing with high pressure incidents. Yeah. And, and people respond to them

00:30:09.120 totally different than a bloke. Blokes right up in the face and it's all physical and well,

00:30:12.640 you want some, I'm physical, you know, I'm next to you now, we're rolling on the floor,

00:30:15.520 you know, for a traffic ticket, you know, and then, but with, uh, with a female going into 1.00

00:30:20.240 pub fights, I've seen it. I've seen blokes go pull their foot back and stop. I've seen women talk to 1.00

00:30:26.720 really violent people and they listen to them. They won't listen to a bloke. They have different

00:30:31.440 skills. Yeah. But on the, in social media, they're judged by one level and that's physical level. Oh,

00:30:36.560 she didn't put him in his shoulder or put him in an arm lock. You know, I've seen men do that and

00:30:42.000 not be able to physically, you know, the physical level of some police officers, sometimes, you know,

00:30:46.400 maybe I'd like them to be fitter. However, it's such a, such a, you know, a narrow, uh, level that

00:30:53.040 you're judging women by. That's a really good point. And that's why I'm asking the questions that a lot

00:30:57.280 of people are thinking about, because you have the context to be able to explain stuff. When you talk about

00:31:02.640 PR, I actually think it's less about PR. It's more about communicating things like this and

00:31:07.200 explaining things to all the members of the public. Because I think most members of the

00:31:11.040 public are on the side of the police, actually. Of course. Yeah. I think that, I think that.

00:31:14.400 I've always thought that to be fair. I think they are. In your day-to-day community, you know that

00:31:18.640 that is 100% so. So I guess what I'm asking you is, do you feel that in terms of recruitment,

00:31:23.840 we're hiring all the right people for all the right reasons? I think it's just struggling

00:31:28.560 recruitment at the moment. Just having people- Just the numbers. Just the numbers at the moment.

00:31:31.840 It's just, you know, you just, we just need good people to join the police at the moment,

00:31:36.400 because they've been put off. And the numbers, I know for a fact that one force had one applicant

00:31:43.840 in two months recently. Yeah. That's horrendous. Yeah. So we need good people. It's not,

00:31:52.080 we can't get picky about what sex they are, what religion they are, what color they are at the moment.

00:31:56.000 You need good people to volunteer for this difficult task. And it is a difficult task.

00:32:00.080 So how's that going to happen, Chris? Well, you need to relaunch the image of the

00:32:05.280 police. And the political influencers need to jump on board, because it affects them.

00:32:10.480 Yeah. We had a mayor that spent a lot of time kicking the police, or fanning the flames of

00:32:15.760 anti-police rhetoric. And obviously recently realised that that's not a good idea for a mayor,

00:32:22.240 especially if you want people. I think I said in my first interview, you can't,

00:32:26.080 on one hand, say, the force is institutionally racist and it's full of people who shouldn't be

00:32:30.640 there. Oh, why don't you join? You know? You know, you can't have it in both ways. You're going to

00:32:36.560 have to get on board and black the police and tell people that there is a challenge there,

00:32:41.840 but there is a good job to be doing. And the vast majority of police officers are good.

00:32:45.040 Yeah. If you're going to say the force is institutionally racist, people aren't going

00:32:48.400 to want to join. Or if they are, it's going to be racist.

00:32:51.440 Strangely enough. And they're going to be one of them. So yeah. No. You better decide what side

00:32:56.880 you're on. And you better decide that you're on the police's side if you are in charge of a city,

00:33:03.840 particularly. So yeah, things have to change in the political point. They've got to stop scoring

00:33:10.000 cheap political points off of the police, you know, because they're, I know good people in

00:33:15.200 the Federation, but they're toothless, aren't they? They can't never withdraw their labour.

00:33:19.520 I mean, there's been hints of it with the firearms teams withdrawing their blue tickets when people

00:33:24.160 realise, oh, well done. It's a voluntary skill, isn't it? I didn't realise that. Or public order.

00:33:29.440 I think they've lost, I think firearms officers, a quarter of them have handed in their blue ticket.

00:33:34.000 A third of public order officers have handed their taser ticket in. These are voluntary skills.

00:33:39.360 This is dangerous, by the way. So they better get on board pretty quick and they better start backing

00:33:43.840 their officers. They better start recruiting about good people and they better start talking

00:33:47.840 about the police in a positive way. There are plenty of good stories out there they can push,

00:33:53.600 but it's easier to jump on the bad stories. Why is that? Why is it firearms officers have said

00:33:58.960 we're not doing it? You know, taser officers, for want of a better way of putting it, aren't doing it.

00:34:03.120 Why is that? I think primarily because they don't think they're going to get back to

00:34:07.680 by senior officers. If they get into a difficult situation and they have to make a split second

00:34:12.720 decision, they don't feel they're going to be backed by senior officers. And that needs to stop.

00:34:18.240 It needs to change big time, you know, because this is, we need people who hold the tasers.

00:34:24.080 Because as we've seen, you know, in that Hainal incident, when a guy murdered the child and it was

00:34:29.280 a female officer tasered him first and then another officer tasered him. That was a violent 1.00

00:34:34.960 murderer who was restrained by a taser. Yeah. In the past, before, old people like me, we didn't

00:34:41.200 have a taser. We just have to, who's the biggest rugby player? Let's see, you distract him, I'll jump

00:34:45.360 at him and we'll wrestle that knife away from him. That's what we had to do. We had no body armor

00:34:49.360 either. Yeah. So taser, we need officers to have tasers. We need officers to take a very difficult

00:34:55.280 job of firearms because, you know, we're going to be increasingly challenged by firearms, I think,

00:35:01.600 in the next few years, particularly with terrorism. So yeah, we need those brave officers to take those

00:35:06.880 and they need to be backed. And those senior officers need to not worry too much about their

00:35:11.200 career and get in front of the TV and start backing their troops.

00:35:14.160 Do you think it's always a bad apple which gives arrest a bad name? Because when you were talking

00:35:21.360 about the WhatsApp, it came to me about people getting, you know, you know, getting reprimanded,

00:35:27.200 losing their jobs, their careers being destroyed because of WhatsApp messages. Immediately, I started

00:35:32.400 thinking of Wayne Cousins, the murderer of Sarah Everard, the former police officer, when people knew

00:35:37.840 him in the station as the rapist, apparently. And then you go, and then you think, well, that's

00:35:43.920 just an overreaction to that particular police officer. And it's police officers like that that

00:35:52.160 do so much damage.

00:35:53.360 A hundred, really, really terrible damage. And it takes an awful lot to undo that damage.

00:35:58.400 And every now and again, you're going to get another one of those, unfortunately, because

00:36:02.080 there's so many employees and you can't police people off duty. You don't know what they're doing

00:36:08.720 off duty. When they go out the neck, put their handgun, you can't follow it. You can't be expected

00:36:13.440 as a supervisor. You should know what they were doing for the next 12 hours or whatever, eight

00:36:17.200 hours, you know. But we used to have a system in the past where we were in training school for 20

00:36:23.120 weeks. It was like a goldfish bowl, you know. And you would be, although yes, there were people who

00:36:28.880 got through, but for 20 weeks, you're going to have to be someone you're not. It's very hard.

00:36:32.160 Then you'd be spotted pretty quickly. Dodgy nicknames. I understand what they're saying

00:36:40.960 about him being called a rapist. I don't know what the reason for that was, but there's a lot

00:36:47.680 of dodgy names in the place, you know, you get nicknamed for all kinds of reasons. And some people

00:36:51.840 don't even know what the nickname came from. But it's not always based on facts, put it that way.

00:36:58.000 I was called a lot of names, but none of them were based on facts.

00:37:00.640 I can tell you. But yes, so going back to, yes, those people let down. And do you know what,

00:37:08.080 the serving officers are even more disappointed than the public when that happens because you

00:37:13.920 think, oh no, here we go. Everyone's going to think I'm a rapist. Everyone's going to think

00:37:17.760 I'm a racist. You know, it's just a kick in the teeth, you know, for all the good officers and

00:37:23.280 management out there. And it's just, you can see, you know, when Mark Rowley opens up and he gets a

00:37:29.040 phone call, guess what we've got now. You know, they're human beings. That's the problem. And 0.98

00:37:33.200 they're going to be people amongst them who don't fit that standard or don't make that standard.

00:37:37.920 And it's also as well, people not realising that when you do a job, like working in the police or

00:37:44.720 you're a doctor. I remember when I was teaching at really tough, rough schools in really deprived areas

00:37:52.640 of London, you'd have a really dark sense of humour. And I remember in the staff room, we used to say

00:37:58.640 things and you go like, if someone actually heard that. Yeah. Well, yeah. Gallows humour.

00:38:05.920 That is common in the services, the armed services, particularly, and the emergency services,

00:38:13.840 the kind of humour that got us through really dark times, you know, some awful, you know,

00:38:18.480 you turn up, sometimes you're the only person who said, you, ambulanceman or fireman, and you had the

00:38:22.880 same sense of humour. You go all over the world. In fact, I've just come back from Brazil and with

00:38:26.640 loads of, you know, working with some Brazilian police officers, same sense of humour, trust me,

00:38:31.360 exactly same sense of humour. It's dark and it's really not good for public consumption. However,

00:38:38.720 amongst you, it's, it was acceptable, always acceptable. Not so much now. People, I know,

00:38:45.600 people are getting disciplined for uttering things that aren't politically correct. I know that for a

00:38:51.840 fact. And they're getting them tooled through for years in discipline because of things they've said

00:38:58.320 that in the past would have been acceptable in a jokey way. I know that for a fact. So, you know,

00:39:04.000 community changes, you can't just keep, you know, I can say about what we did, but it may not work now.

00:39:09.840 But I can tell you, it's a high stress job, like policing, like teaching. And sometimes you let off steam

00:39:15.600 with humour. And as we know, humour has been almost deleted in many sections of the media, you know,

00:39:23.280 so I think that's a great thing. I do. Well, it's coming back to your point about the senior

00:39:28.640 officers not backing the junior. That's something we hear a lot. We have police officers who watch

00:39:32.160 this show messaging us, particularly people, the lower they are on the ladder, the more they feel

00:39:38.400 let down by the people at the top. And it's, I think, I don't think it's just the policing, to be

00:39:44.800 honest with you, mate. I just look around. Everyone is terrified of a bad headline or a bad, or a tweet.

00:39:52.080 Like you sometimes have like whole like furores based on the fact that like three people tweeted

00:39:57.840 about something. And you just go, maybe we can just ignore the fact that three people tweeted something.

00:40:02.560 It doesn't necessarily mean that there's a big problem, but everyone is terrified of bad publicity.

00:40:07.600 Absolutely. You know, and I just don't think you can, I've never run a police force, but I don't

00:40:12.800 think you can run a police force that way. Well, you can't. You have to be pretty thick-skinned from 1.00

00:40:17.920 the start. If you're going to be an effective police officer from the day you start, you better be

00:40:20.880 thick-skinned. If you think everyone's going to love you, forget that. I laugh sometimes when I see 1.00

00:40:27.040 some of these kind of promotions recruiting, targeting particularly black and minority ethnic officers,

00:40:37.280 and telling them how they're going to represent their community and how the community they need

00:40:40.880 them there. Yeah. Yeah. Great. It's good to see black officers and white officers and Jewish officers

00:40:46.080 and all that. But I can tell you for a fact, there'll be no rose petals put in front of your

00:40:50.240 feet when you walk into the first black kid's family and you're going to arrest him for robbery. 0.63

00:40:54.560 I can tell you, there won't be going, oh, thank God. Do you know what? 0.95

00:40:57.920 Well, you're black. That's all right. 1.00

00:40:59.040 I'm glad it's okay. How long is he going to do? 15 years? Okay. No, no, no. There's none of that.

00:41:05.760 Yeah. If you're actually going to be policing, you're going to be the same color. It's going to 0.99

00:41:09.280 be blue and it's going to be your uniform. That's it. Yeah. And if they hate you, they're going to hate

00:41:13.600 you. And they hate you even more if you're black sometimes. I know that. And so you better have a thick 0.99

00:41:20.320 skin. You better not be too sensitive about whether people like you or not, but you will

00:41:25.200 know that you're going to make a difference. That's for sure. Chris, before we wrap up and get

00:41:29.200 some questions in from our audience, actually, one thing I wanted to talk to you about, you mentioned

00:41:32.960 having just come back from Brazil, you get to travel quite a bit now and look at how things are

00:41:37.360 done in other countries. You know, what do you see? How do we compare? What can we learn? What are we

00:41:44.080 doing well? You know, all of that sort of thing. Well, every time I travel, I'm glad to come home,

00:41:48.320 put it that way. I'm really pleased to be British and I'm really, really happy. I live in England.

00:41:52.880 You know, so the more I travel, I can tell you that. Brazil, I was with some really great colleagues

00:41:57.920 in Brazil, police colleagues in Brazil were fantastic. We were around the American football

00:42:03.760 match they had in Sao Paulo. And I saw, I witnessed a demonstration, probably about 150,000 people

00:42:11.040 on Independence Day there, all dressed in Brazilian shirts, which is quite a spectacle. But they're all 1.00

00:42:16.720 demonstrating about freedom of speech. And particularly at a time, I'm not sure if it still

00:42:22.560 happens, that Twitter or X had been withdrawn from their circulation. They were pissed about that.

00:42:29.840 And they were demonstrating. It was the last straw as far as their incursion into freedom of speech.

00:42:35.040 And it meant a lot to them. And I thought to myself, wow, you go back to England, we've got a lot of freedoms.

00:42:39.680 And we've got a lot of freedoms that we should protect. And everyone has to be part of that,

00:42:44.320 I think, conversation. Whether you're right, left or whatever. Everyone's got to be, if it's going to be

00:42:49.280 balanced, we all need to, we can't just point fingers and say, oh yeah, they're doing it again.

00:42:53.680 We all need to take part in that, I think. Because our freedom of speech is cherished and I think it

00:42:59.360 should be protected. Within reason, within the law. You can't just go slandering people left,

00:43:05.280 right and centre without expecting them to have a legal recourse. But there are things we need to

00:43:13.760 not censor as much as we're doing now, I think. And in Brazil, they're amazed the way we live.

00:43:19.440 They're just jealous a lot of times, you know, other than the weather, obviously.

00:43:22.560 But, and the football team. But yeah, they are, they are jealous of the way we are. We can't believe

00:43:29.520 that we're, the police service is unarmed. They can't believe that, that we can walk freely.

00:43:38.880 Really, women are quite safe. We don't have large favelas type things. We don't, we have homelessness, 1.00

00:43:45.920 obviously, but we don't, and we have poverty, but we're not in a scales that I've seen in places

00:43:51.680 like that. Beautiful country and beautiful people.

00:43:54.320 And Chris, reading between the lines, and now this is our second chat,

00:43:58.320 am I right in thinking you'd like to see a lot more armed officers on the streets of the UK?

00:44:02.800 I'd like to see the same quality of armed officers, but certainly more,

00:44:08.800 because I think we've got some challenges coming down our path.

00:44:10.800 Tell us more about that. Why do you think, because a lot of people, let me just say this quickly,

00:44:14.400 a lot of people feel they worry about police officers having firearms because, and I'll tell you why,

00:44:20.160 and they may well be wrong, but just, this is why I think, Francis, jump in as well,

00:44:24.080 if you think I'm not misrepresenting sort of the ordinary man in the street view correctly.

00:44:28.320 They feel like, they look at America, where there are, there's lots of gun violence,

00:44:33.760 and they sort of forget that American citizens have guns. They just look at the police officers

00:44:37.760 shooting people, et cetera, and they worry that there's a kind of escalatory dynamic. The

00:44:43.360 more armed the police, the more the criminals are going to tool up, and it just never ends.

00:44:48.160 That's kind of how people feel. Why do you think it's important?

00:44:52.720 I think it's important because it gives the officers on the street more confidence to deal with

00:44:59.200 issues that are maybe grey as far as danger is concerned, instead of backing off. I was an

00:45:05.440 armed officer for eight years, and I turned up regularly to normal police and incidents.

00:45:10.240 Not, oh, by the way, if you don't agree with them, I've got a gun. No, not that. But it gave officers

00:45:15.920 confidence, more confidence. I'm not saying they're going to be using them, but I think

00:45:19.600 with terrorism and the world the way it is now, it's only inevitable that we're going to get some

00:45:23.920 kind of blowback in the future. And I think having better trained armed officers, the same standard,

00:45:33.440 army. I mean, at the moment, they make very few mistakes. The armed police in Britain is envied

00:45:41.840 throughout the world, trust me. The restraint that we show and the way that we are scrutinized is the

00:45:50.880 envy of the world.

00:45:51.840 Totally. Well, look at the Manchester thing. Whatever the officers' actions, in most other countries,

00:45:56.640 those guys who have been dead a long time before they were being mistreated.

00:46:00.320 Definitely. So let's look at it in that way. We need more officers who are trained,

00:46:06.240 because that's where we're going, wherever we want to go. There's going to be more armed

00:46:09.680 incidents in the future, that's for sure. We're an island, so we've restrained. We've banned handguns

00:46:16.000 way back when because of Hungerford and other incidents. But it's inevitable with Europe and the 1.00

00:46:25.840 amount of people that come in there and terrorism, you know, conflicts throughout the world, we're

00:46:30.720 going to get some kind of blowback. So we need officers who are trained and have got the mindset

00:46:36.320 to carry a taser and a gun in the future. Not less, more, I would say.

00:46:41.520 Well, I mean, this is going to sound like a ridiculous question, but what is it about an 1.00

00:46:46.800 armed officer that just, apart from the obvious, that is so much more effective when dealing with

00:46:53.680 a particular situation? Because I'll be honest with you, Chris, when I'm walking through an

00:46:56.800 airport, for instance, if I see an armed officer, I actually get a little bit worried. I'm like,

00:47:01.360 well, what's going on here? You know, has there been a threat?

00:47:04.720 That's a British way of thinking, obviously, because we're not used to guns. And that's good,

00:47:08.720 isn't it? That's good. But in my experience, the training that goes into carrying a gun is so intense

00:47:15.920 and teaches you so much more about judgment. You're put through so many more fences. The more

00:47:22.400 people to that standard in the police, I think, is a good thing. Not just because they're carrying

00:47:27.360 a gun, because they've been tested, their judgment has been tested to quite an intense degree.

00:47:33.680 You know, I came from what is MO-19 now, it used to be SO-19. And the officers I worked with,

00:47:40.080 they were the most professional I've worked with. And firearms officers generally go through a higher

00:47:45.440 level of scrutiny and fitness. I would increase the fitness level, purely because it gives you more of

00:47:51.520 a chance. It gives you more confidence when dealing with violent criminals. You're often

00:47:54.960 quite fit, some of them, you know. And it gives your colleagues more chance. So I'd increase that.

00:48:00.960 It's not going to happen because, generally, the level of fitness throughout society has dropped

00:48:05.840 at that level. My boy was in the Royal Navy, and their fitness levels had to be lowered to get

00:48:11.040 more applicants in. So that's sad in diving on society. But I think increased fitness gives you more

00:48:17.760 chance and gives you more confidence in policing. That's what I think.

00:48:20.080 It's interesting that you say that, because, I mean, obviously, the repercussions for a badly

00:48:25.440 trained firearms officer is very extreme. But you say that they're more highly trained.

00:48:33.600 In what aspect? So you're talking about, is it things like conflict resolution?

00:48:37.360 Conflict resolution, fitness levels, judgment, your judgment, and the knowledge of your law,

00:48:45.280 of use of force in particular. You have to have a very detailed knowledge of use of force. And I

00:48:51.120 think I see some policing incidents that, obviously, social media is not really that reflected. But I

00:48:58.080 see some where I think, so if you knew your law, particularly your use of force law, a little bit

00:49:03.040 better, you may well be more confident. And the more you know, the more confident you are, generally.

00:49:08.160 So yeah, it's a higher standard, like public audit officers, it's a higher standard, detectives,

00:49:12.720 that kind of thing. If you raise the standards of knowledge and fitness and judgment and test

00:49:18.560 their judgment regularly, then you're probably going to be more effective police officers, I think.

00:49:22.960 Do you think we need a higher salary, therefore, for police officers, a higher starting salary?

00:49:26.720 If you want better quality, you're going to have to pay people.

00:49:29.760 You 100% need to look at that. They need to increase that to attract better people.

00:49:35.280 For instance, if you're a detective now, you're getting courted by lots of people, you know, fraud.

00:49:40.640 I mean, 50% of all crime, just lower than 50% of all crime is committed online now.

00:49:46.320 Yeah. So your skills as a detective, particularly in fraud or online fraud,

00:49:53.280 is going to be wanted by lots of people.

00:49:54.960 Banks and shops. Absolutely. And the police need to attract these people, by the way,

00:50:00.720 because if 50% of all crime is online, or less than 50%, then we need a new kind of police officer,

00:50:06.720 don't we? A cyber-savvy cop now, don't we? Who can look at these things and are good,

00:50:13.040 and is comfortable online. Because that's where a lot of people think, I don't need to rob a bank,

00:50:17.840 I can just do it online. There's a lot of vulnerable people who don't know what their

00:50:24.560 skills are online, and they're very vulnerable. And it's a lot easier to do that if you've got

00:50:29.760 the skill and the knowledge to rob someone than it is to knock them over, isn't it?

00:50:35.680 Chris, it's fantastic having you back. It's always great to get context and an inside perspective on

00:50:40.400 all these things, because it clarifies a lot. You know, it's very easy, I think. For all of us now,

00:50:44.480 we live in the modern world where video, particularly, is such a powerful thing. You

00:50:49.920 can see three video clips and suddenly you know everything about everything, you know? So it's

00:50:54.080 great having you with your background and experience to come in and just clarify a little bit. We're

00:50:58.320 going to ask you some questions from our supporters in a second. Before we do, we always end with the

00:51:02.480 same one, which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Tottenham's win

00:51:06.080 against Man United? Boring. Okay. That's fine, we can take that. Okay.

00:51:14.480 All right. Head on over and check out Chris's answers to your questions.

00:51:21.280 Is it true that these days, in order to get promoted above Sargent,

00:51:24.560 it's necessary to have a record of, quote, upholding DEI standards against colleagues?

TRIGGERnometry - October 09, 2024

Are the Police Losing Public Confidence？ - Chris Donaldson

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