Recruitment – This is where the problem starts. The necessarily authoritarian nature of policing tends to attract the very kind of personality which is least able to act appropriately in situations where empathy and human consideration are needed. Of course, not all recruits are inappropriate, I accept that. However, I think they should include personality tests which could help weed out the wrong kind of recruit. Proper and appropriate record keeping should be done on the recruits.
I looked up recruitment in Wales policing and found this extraordinary sentence,
“So you’re wondering what other benefits there are to being a PC, apart from the super cool hats”. I appreciate this is supposed to be the Marketing Department’s idea of a joke but what people are you actually trying to attract? Is not the point that we are trying to bring in intelligent and educated officers determined to be dedicated in serving the people of Wales. Is this how we get the best of the best? I do not think so. Obviously there is a three year training programme and then there are specific areas of choice but I do feel that areas of choice need to be under guidance.
They say they want you to move on but there does not seem to be the proper incentives for this, just, money and power. Obviously, the training must include ethics, accountability, dealing with institutional racism in all the police forces and learning to be honourable. They are supposed to protect the public and care about victims, but instead they often protect each other from the public. The thin blue line is more important than the victims they are supposed to be helping.
Attitudes towards women are a real problem in the Police Forces around the country within and outside these organisations. An example of this many years ago in the Devon and Cornwall police, a young police officer was present and observed a lone police woman was regularly stripped and tied up etc. He was horrified but was too frightened to intervene. So much for respect for women.
By the way, the motto for their police force is “To the assistance of everyone”. They turned a fellow officer into a victim instead of a colleague. People may say that this doesn’t happen today. I beg to differ as I give you further examples from so many different police forces.
Institutional racism is definitely prevalent throughout all our police forces.
It needs to be dealt with properly.. It is not just a matter of making sure that they know the correct form of people’s sexuality but it is about understanding racism within and outside the force and taking it seriously.
7 officers of the Gwent police are being investigated about a car crash where 3 young people died and 2 others were trapped for almost 48 hours. Their missing person reports were allegedly badly handled. They dealt with family members appallingly and they are being investigated in the method of carrying out searches and remarks made at the scene. One officer is under criminal investigation for falsifying their witness statements.
An inspector was quoted as saying,
“At the end of our investigation, we will make decisions as to whether any officer should face disciplinary proceedings and whether any matters should be referred to the Crown Prosecution Service. “
As nothing has been heard since, it’s all too easy to think these officers will end up walking away free.
In Scotland, Emma Caldwell’s murderer could have been brought to justice 2 decades ago if it were not for the sustained failings of the Strathclyde police. It took Emma’s mother those ten years to get justice for her daughter and to see her killer, Iain Packer at last jailed for 36 years.
Last year, Nottinghamshire police force was the sixth force to be put into special measures because they have been so appalling. Victims are being let down in crimes of domestic abuse and burglary.
The Head of Britain’s police forces said;
“That policing is institutionally racist and he has called for a fundamental redesign of national policies and practices to eliminate discrimination. Too little progress had been made to reform policing”
Their policies, procedures and training have been designed and implemented for many years and no voices of Black people were involved.
Have things changed? Hardly, when a police detective was sacked for racism in the Met police and has since been reinstated, still a detective sergeant.
Then we look at Wayne Couzens who murdered Sarah Everard. It has been said many times that he should never have been allowed to join the police force. This goes back to my points about recruitment. They knew that he was often exposing himself to women and they did nothing about it. He drove around London hunting for a woman and used his warrant card and police powers to convince Sarah to get in his car. Who can you trust? A police officer, surely! He then raped and killed her and scattered her remains around the Kent countryside. Three forces could and should have stopped this killer but no one did.
It was the same with Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper as he was known. When he was killing prostitutes the police didn’t bother much even though they already had him in their sights, but, of course, women like that are not important, are they? It was only when he killed the first “good” girl that they picked up on him again. By that time several women had been killed who could have been saved.
As you can see, policing is a very serious occupation where men and women should serve the public correctly and with respect and honour, not because of a super cool hat!
