Are the Police Losing Public Confidence？ - Chris Donaldson
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Summary
Chris Donaldson, our go-to guy for all things policing in the UK, joins us to talk about the state of policing in this country at this point in time and what it means to be a police officer in the modern world.
Transcript
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We've seen this term being used again and again, which is two-tier policing.
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Do you think that is a fair criticism to make of the police at this point?
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I can see where the sentiment comes from, definitely.
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If you're looking at demonstrations, you'll never get consistency all the way through the country.
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All the different forces are never going to be consistent.
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British police officers are held accountable for American police action.
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It's not the same the other way around, that's for sure.
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I think firearms officers, a quarter of them have handed in their blue ticket.
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Why is it firearms officers have said, we're not doing it?
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If they get into a difficult situation and they have to make a split-second decision,
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they don't feel they're going to be backed by senior officers. This is dangerous.
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Chris Donaldson, you are our go-to guy for all things policing in this country.
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I think we spoke to you last during the pandemic, actually, so it's been a while.
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And there's been a lot of stuff going on recently to do with policing.
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What's your sense of just where we are in terms of the relationship between the police
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and the public, how people feel about it, how the police feel about the way the public
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feel about them, you know, the state of the way that we think about each other?
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I think there's big differences now, isn't there? Because historically we've had a problem,
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or the police have had a problem with minority communities, yeah?
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And now there's another community that they seem to have a problem with, and that's conservative
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communities, yeah? Which is totally different than the past. Historically, it was traditionally
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the West Indian black community had significant issues when riots have, you know, gone on from there.
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Now we have a right wing or right wing extremists, conservators, whatever you like to call them.
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I've got a big problem with the police who they don't feel they're represented. So,
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yes, things have changed. Things have changed because of higher profile officers who've let
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the service down, you know, murderers, rapists have hit the headlines and tarnished the police
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and everyone who works for the police, which is a shame. So they're fighting different battles,
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lots of different battles, more battles in fact, putting out more fires than they did in the past,
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definitely. And one of the things, like you, I think you know us well at this point, you know
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that we're never coming at it from a pointing the finger at all police officers at all. And you know,
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the Manchester airport situation is a very good example where I looked at the videos that have
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been released and I was like, there's no way this is the full context. There's no way a police officer
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is going to behave like this, knowing there's cameras on it, unless there's been some kind of very
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serious incident prior to that. But so many people jumped to conclusions. Do you think,
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you know, you obviously, you're not in the service now. Do you think it's almost impossible now to do
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that job when anything you do is going to get clipped out of context, shoved on social media,
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and then you're in trouble? You have to realise that when, as soon as you join a place, you're very,
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very, very conscious that you've got this uniform on and everyone's looking at you basically. Yeah,
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you know that as soon as you walk out first day. The difference is now, obviously, everyone's,
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everyone is a reporter, everyone's got a phone. Yeah. And you could get involved in an incident
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and quite often policing is messy. If you actually, one of those officers who actually get their hands
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dirty, you know, a lot who don't. Yeah. But a lot of them who do get down the people who make the
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difference. These are people I'm talking about. Yeah. Who actually will intervene and trying to disrupt
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groups with knives and people who are actually making the pain for the rest of us.
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It can get very messy. Yeah. And in isolation, it doesn't look good. The optics are not very,
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very good sometimes. And in the past, we would have that little roll around or whatever,
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and it wouldn't be on social media before you got to the back to the nick to make your notes and
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justify your use of force. You're already being judged on social media for whatever way they want
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it to be. And that's very hard to undo. It's very hard to undo, but you have to be aware of it.
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And it's a different world that you live in. And it is difficult, but it's different. It's just
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different more than anything. You've got to know your powers very well. You've got to be very confident
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with your powers and don't be shy to use them and know that this could look bad, but I'm going to
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adjust for it. And more than anything is that my senior officers above me are going to, or the PR
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machine that should be supporting policing, are going to try and rebut whatever is coming out.
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Often doesn't happen there. Well, that's the thing is like,
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a lot of the time you see police officers who, I've never been in a situation where I've got a
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firearm, someone's punched me in the face, punched my colleagues in the face, I'm having to restrain those
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people. And then the people who are supposed to back me, they're the ones throwing me under the
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bus. Well, this is a big problem to a lot of police officers on the ground level. I come from
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firearms, probably all the backgrounds. There are two areas that get most police officers in trouble,
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or the most difficult areas of policing really, as far as the public is concerned anyway.
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And you want backing from senior officers. You want backing from senior officers. And it matters.
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And not just senior officers, the PR machine that backs police and should be counteracting things.
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Obviously, they're bound by legal restraints, whereas people on social media aren't, you know?
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So there is that concern. But I mean, the Manchester issue is a difficult one, is a difficult one,
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because that officer won't be judged. Put it this way, if he was judged in the court of public
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opinion, he'd probably be fine. But he's not going to be judged in the court of public opinion. He's
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been judged by the law. So every individual parts of his action, he's going to have to justify. I'm
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not saying he won't, in looking at the whole thing. But he's going to have to justify each action.
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That's the standard that a police officer is having. It's different. I've not spoken to anyone
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who hasn't said, oh, yeah, I think that was okay. You know, as a police, as a member of the public,
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think, you know, what happened to him before. But that's not how he's going to be judged. He's
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going to be judged by the law. And each individual use the force he's going to have to justify.
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And I'm sure, you know, he may well be able to do it. Yeah.
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Chris, do you think part of the problem is as well, is that people go on Twitter or eggs or whatever,
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and they see an American officer behaving in a certain way. Then they'll see an American officer
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from another city in America, maybe even thousands of miles away, behaving in a certain way.
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Then they'll see a British officer behaving in a certain way, and they'll go,
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all police behave like this. So, yeah. Yeah, I understand what you're saying.
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Because what is quite unique, though, is the British society and British police officers are
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held accountable for American police action. It's not the same the other way around, that's for sure.
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You travel to America, you know what I'm talking about. There's no way there's going to be
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a demonstration on the other side of the pond about police action in this country, no matter
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what it was. In all of my time in policing, no chance, yeah. However, whatever action happens in
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America directly affects policing, indirectly or indirectly affects policing here, rightly or wrongly,
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in my opinion. Black Lives Matter, do you know, that was, you know, George Floyd, it was a police
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action on the other side of the world. It bore no resemblance to policing here, as far as I'm concerned,
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yeah. And yet we had to suffer the replication, you know. So, yes, people do. But they often look at
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policing through an American eye anyway, through drama and films and stuff. Even when I've worked with
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writers who, with drama here, and they're speaking in an American language, I said to them, that's
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America. It's not England. It's not how we talk about policing here. And they've got it, even they've
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got it in their head. They're talking Americanisms because everyone's got this vision of policing
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being American. We're not armed, which still astonishes most police officers in the world,
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actually, are still astonished that the majority of police officers here aren't armed. And how brave they
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are to go out unarmed in quite a violent environment, to be fair, an increasingly violent
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environment. So, yeah, you can't talk about policing in the same way, because it's totally different.
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The way the rules of engagement are totally different. Their backup's totally different.
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Their law's totally different. But people often do, you're right. And, Chris, we've seen this term
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being used again and again, which is two-tier policing. Do you think that the people's criticisms,
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which is normally white working class people, making this criticism, that they get treated harsher
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than if an ethnic minority gets arrested? Do you think that is a fair criticism to make of the
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Well, no, not really. Obviously not, because the pendulum's swung, isn't it? It used to
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be the black community complaining about being over-policed, and now it's the white community,
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or sections of the white community, saying that they're unfairly treated. You can't win,
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really, can you? I can see where the sentiment comes from, definitely. If you're looking at
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demonstrations, it looks like, for particularly right-wing, or extremist, or far-right, whatever
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label you want to give them, their demonstration seems to be, it appears to be more robustly
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policed than, say, for instance, the Black Lives Matter, where everything has come from,
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everything stemmed from the way that was, and the police have already admitted they made some mistakes.
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Police in Black Lives Matter maybe should have been harder. I think they should have.
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Have they admitted that? I haven't come across this.
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Well, yeah, the senior officers have said there were mistakes made, particularly in taking a knee.
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That was a mistake, 100% mistake, and I think that officer knew it was, because he put his colleagues
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in a big problem, and it entered into that area of politicization, you know, and should you be
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involved in anything? And you shouldn't. I think I emphasized that way back in my first interview,
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that the police need to distance themselves from politics. And of course, people would argue that
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Black Lives Matter wasn't politics, it was human rights, but I distinctly think it was a
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political movement. So, yeah, there have been mistakes made, and public order particularly is
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very difficult. For instance, you could look more aggressive when you're policing a smaller group
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of people who maybe turn up with a drink in them or whatever in them, and have got people amongst them
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that are known for violence, yeah? You may approach that demonstration in a more aggressive manner,
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or seem to be, you know, you're tooled up, you've got more protection, and you look more aggressive.
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When you've got 100,000 people who are predominantly sober, yeah? But they've got,
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you're dealing with a different dynamic, which is signs that are offensive, or gestures that are offensive.
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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.
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People want to see that pattern going because you did it to us, you know? That kind of thing. It
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doesn't work like that. And it's more than two tiers of policing. There's multi-tiers of policing.
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You can, you know, depending on the intelligence you get, the resources, all kinds of factors
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go into a briefing, which are all public documents if they can be, you know, interrogated.
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And the briefings that you get before you go into one of these demonstrations
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are filmed, yeah? So everyone knows, it's no secret. No one's going to say, right,
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we've got a right wing today, boys and girls. Get stuck into them, you know? No one's going to,
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no one ever said that. No one ever said, right, we've got some slight left-leaning
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demonstrators here, we need to back off them because we believe in what they believe, you know?
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No one says that at any briefing. But I can see the perception. I can see the perception because
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the media eclipses it. And your algorithm feeds you what you believe already, remember?
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You know? So it certainly looked, the optics weren't good in some of the right wing moves. But
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I can understand that on the ground, the operational decisions they were making, you know? Because
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it's easier to go into a crowd of 100 and extract people than it is to a crowd of 100,000, you know?
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Well, for me, the comparison would be not so much, look, the BLM thing and your point about,
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say, let's say pro-Palestine protests, where you've got, like you said, 100,000 people. I understand
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that while actually in some situations it might be desirable to communicate that certain types of
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behaviour is unacceptable, you don't have enough police officers to go in there and do it. I get that.
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But what we had prior to the recent riots was the situation in Leeds, where people in a minority
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community were burning things down, burning down buses, et cetera, et cetera. They didn't get the
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same treatment. That's what people were pointing at. Yeah, yeah. I can understand that. And it's
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like, well, it's like football matches, isn't it? The inconsistency in a VIR at a lighter level.
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You'll never get consistency all the way through the country. All the different forces are never
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going to be consistent. They've got different resources, they've got different experience.
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You don't know who's on the ground available at the time. You don't know who the governor is
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making the decisions to go in. And you can easily find inconsistencies in any organisation,
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easily. And policing is out there and it's more public than most. And everyone would want to see
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people who could break the law be dealt with on the same level, you know, go in and arrest them.
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They're burning things. So I don't care what colour. I've never cared what colour. I've never worked with
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any public order officer who were particularly concerned about the colour of the lawbreakers,
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not at all. They're trained to deal with, you know, when you volunteer to be a public order
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officer, which is a higher level of fitness, high level of scrutiny, and you pass tests to do it,
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and you're extracted from your normal duty and you lose a lot of your own public personal time,
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you don't get to a demo and think, you know, there are blacks, so we need to keep off them. It's
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down to the governors above to direct that group. That's what I'm getting at though, Chris, because
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I don't think most, look, speaking to people, I think lots of people are frustrated with policing.
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In this country, they're frustrated with crime not being investigated. We talked about this last
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time, burglaries, all sorts of things. And increasingly also, and this isn't a policing issue,
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but a lot of, when the government goes, you know, we've got to make sure we're prosecuting rape,
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right? A lot of people who don't have a good case against them get taken all the way to the court,
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just so they can tick a box. All of that's going on, people are frustrated. I don't think most people
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in this country, in my sense at least, are annoyed with ordinary police officers. No, no, no. I don't
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think so at all. But to a lot of people, this is really the question, right? You say no one turns
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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
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all of this other stuff going on. The question is, is there one of these people with a rainbow
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lanyard sitting in the commander's office somewhere going, you know, Keir Starmer or, you know,
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Rishi Sunak, whoever has told me we need to crack down on this. You know, let me give the orders
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so that we really make sure we do our job this time. No, I don't know about the lanyards, but I can
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tell you. But you know what I mean, don't you? I know what you mean, but there is political
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interference, 100% political interference. There are phone calls between senior officers
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and politicians, or people in power, asking them what their actions are, put it that way.
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Absolutely. It's been said by the inspectorate. One of the inspectorate's findings was undue
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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
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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,
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and I can't really evidence it, is that they've been undue, sometimes they've been unduly,
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they feel too much pressure from political. And if that political personality is not entirely honest,
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or has got some other motives, put it that way, dishonest motives, then it's not, it doesn't make
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policing look that good, does it? Because policing's there, the police, those people,
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people behind that, those decisions aren't going to stand up and say, oh, sorry, it was me.
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The police officer, the commissioner is going to have to stand and front it up
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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
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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
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
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murders of the three girls, um, uh, up in, um, Southport, uh, was, uh, horrible, horrible, shocking,
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but it got overrun then by the, the, the, the asylum issue, the immigration, the migration issue.
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Not everyone forgot about the girls, which is really, really sad, really sad, but it was a tension
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that was building, obviously. It could see it from, from decades, not, not, not to, it was a tension
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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.
00:19:18.400
I can show you, you said it was white sometime, you know? Uh, so if social media aren't against
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,
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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.
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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,
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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,
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there's not as many arrests. There's not many stop and search. Uh, and these people are getting
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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
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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,
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.
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.
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
00:29:42.400
woman has different skills going into hyper. Yes. She might not be able to wrestle with a six foot
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.
00:29:54.480
But I can tell you from actual, uh, uh, experience, uh, you know, that women have a different,
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
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
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
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
00:35:53.360
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
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
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
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.
00:40:54.560
I can tell you, there won't be going, oh, thank God. Do you know what?
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
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
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
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,
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
00:45:51.840
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
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
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,
00:49:54.960
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?