Book Review: The Public and the Police

The Public and the Police
Harriet Sergeant
Civitas
May 2008

This latest Civitas publication on the field of Criminal Justice seems sadly to be a case of treading water. It is gossipy and is the result of a whole host of interviews strung together for their anecdotal impact. Rather like an extended op-ed piece bemoaning the state of society at large. It points to solutions, along the lines of elected police chiefs a la US but not much more.

Yes Ms Sergeant hits all the right spots on the pointlessness of targets and the ineffectualness of the Crown Prosecution Service but to anybody who has read David Fraser or Peter Hitchens on crime and policing in Britain then nothing here feels knew. It makes a slightly more academic postscript to David Copperfield's 'Wasting Police Time'.

To be fair some of the anecdotes are priceless such as the CPS lawyer talking to a,

"group of incredulous police sergeants: 'Well of course I take disorder on our streets seriously. I have seen it on TV. It looks awful'.

Its key points are that nobody, apart from maybe some of the political senior police officers and their Home office minders are happy. The police on the ground are being pulled from pillar to post by the Sisyphean task of responding to targets and dictates. The public are utterly disillusioned by the way in which they are first ignored and then ill treated. The fundamental deceit of community policing due to resource reallocation and the hidebound way in which the justice system works when it is out of police hands.

It finishes with the Nine Principles of Policing, often called Peels Nine Principles but, we the author thinks drawn up by Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne, the first joint Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police in the years preceding 1850. They are of course unarguable, and therefore ignored.

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.

6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

Only the dead can complain

Astonishing behaviour in a Moscow court in May. Reported in the Gazeta Wyborcza the court announced that only the direct victims of the Katyn massacre could demand a pro^per investigation in to the masacre,

Descendants of ten Polish officers murdered by the NKVD in Katyn in the spring of 1940 are demanding from Russia's Chief Military Prosecutor's Office that they are recognised as victims of political reprisals and officially rehabilitated.The prosecutor's office replies it cannot do that, because there is no conclusive proof that the 25,000 Polish army and police officers, border guards, officials, and business owners were murdered on the basis of an unfair ruling issued by a Soviet court.

Indeed, there's no such proof, and there won't ever be. The executions were carried out on the basis not of a court sentence, but a decision of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) Central Committee's Politburo dated 5 March 1940, which stated explicitly they were to be shot 'without interrogation, without charges, without an investigation, and without an indictment'.

The Katyn victims' relatives appealed against the prosecutor office's decision through their Moscow lawyers to the district court in Moscow Khamovniki. The court issued a ruling on 16 May, and the official writ has just reached Poland.

Judge Igor Tulenev answered the Katyn victims' relatives in a style similar to that used earlier by the military prosecutor's office: 'The literal interpretation of the meaning of the Article 8.1 of the Russian Federation's Act on the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Reprisals is such that only the citizens whose rights have been directly violated are entitled to appeal against the [Military Prosecutor's Office's] decision'. 'The judge told us clearly: only the victims would be able to appeal against the prosecutor's absurd decision. Their children don't have the right to demand justice', said Anna Stawicka, counsel to the families of the Katyn victims in Russia.

Nark Nation

I am not sure what part of this story worries me more, though I know which bit doesn't worry me much.

It appears that William Hague's 79 year old father has ben cautiond by the police for "a racist jibe".

"Mr Hague gave his opinion when he was speaking to a builder he had employed to
do work at his home.
"The builder said that he came from the Black Country area of the West Midlands and Mr Hague is said to have responded about black people going back to their own country."

OK so what he said was lacking nuance, but for goodness sake he is 79. What on earth was the builder doing getting so upset about the opinions of one so old? Was he inciting volence? Not in any way. Was he trying to offend? I very much doubt it, just making a poorly judged joke. So whatever neighbour it was that ran squealing to the Police must be castigated for disgraceful behaviour. Just grow up.

And what the hell are the police doing following this up. Do they not have the wit to tell a busyboding, curtain twitching informant that they have more important things to do. After all Rotherham has apaling crime figures, only robbery is below the national average (2006/7),

Figures per 1000
Violence against the person 20.8 National Average 16.7
Robbery offences 0.6 National Average 1.2
Theft of a motor vehicle offences 5.0 National Average 2.9
Sexual offences 0.9 National Average 0.9
Burglary dwelling offences 5.8 National Average 4.3
Theft from a vehicle offences 10.7 National Average 7.6

Given that the local MP, the excrable Denis MacShane wrote in the Guardian,

The number one issue for my constituents in Rotherham is the loutish, often violent, sometimes feral behaviour of different groups in working class communities. Freedom from fear is a freedom I wish my constituents to enjoy.

this sort of harrasment, almost occaisioned to cause the old man's son embarrasment, is an affront to decency. I do not believe that the builder, or for that point his Asian girlfriend in any way felt fearful of Hague senior.

Comment thread

Bloodthirsty pacifists

Campaigners against smoking always try to present themselves as decent people. You know, they care so much about other people's health that they enact legislation to make them better.

Of course if people refuse to be made better then they deserve what is coming to them.

Have a read of this,

Non-smoker jailed for attacking deaf smoker

A NON-smoker was jailed for two years yesterday for attacking a “deaf and mute” man who refused to stub out a cigarette.

Robert Russo, 35, asked Glyn Robbins to stop smoking while they were waiting at a bus stop. But he didn’t realise Mr Robbins, 56, couldn’t hear him, and thought he was being rude.

Cardiff Crown Court heard Russo then punched him in the face and kneed him as he fell to the floor. CCTV footage was played to the court showing Russo kick Mr Robbins as he lay on the floor. A witness called police and Russo was arrested.

Russo, of Snowden Road, Ely, Cardiff, admitted wounding with intent and unlawful wounding.

He told police, “I told him to stop smoking and I thought he was going to have a go at me so I hit him.”

Mr Robbins was left bleeding from the nose and ear after the attack at Cardiff Central bus station.

The reporting is a bit strange. The deaf mute 56 year old "refused" to stop smoking. From reading this one gets the feeling he did no such thing. He didn't hear the request. That is not a refusal. Smoking at a bus stop is not against the law, indeed I often find that the only way to get a bus to turn up at all is to light a cigarette.

The self justification of the thug is a classic of its kind. Please note, "I told him", no he didn't ask him politely, he told him. If I am told to do anything I am far less likly to do it than if I am asked. Simple manners. Then the younger man felt the older one was going to "have a go", what does that mean, tell him to piss off and muind his own business? Take a swing at him? It isn't clear but I suspect the former. Which justifies punching kneeing and kicking on the ground obviously.

I wionder if Russo should serve not merely his two year sentance, but maybe should have a court order banning him from anywhere where cigarettes may be smoked.