Transcript slides - Police Foundation

Lessons from the riots:
policing and community
engagement
October 2012
Introduction
2
Background
The Government’s response
Following the riots the Prime Minister, Deputy
Prime Minister and Leader of the Official
Opposition established the Riots, Communities
and Victims Panel.
What happened?
Our remit:
►
What may have motivated the small minority of
people who took part in rioting?
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Why did the riots happened in some areas and not
others?
The costs were £0.5 billion to total; plus
impacts on tourism
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How key public services engaged with communities
before, during and after the riots?
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4,000 suspected rioters were arrested
►
►
Over 5,000 crimes were committed
What motivated local people to come together to
resist riots in their area or to clean up after riots had
taken place?
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31 areas experienced over 40 crimes
each – mainly London but also Greater
Manchester, West Midlands, and
Merseyside
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How communities can be made more socially and
economically resilient in the future, in order to prevent
future problems?
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What could have been done differently to prevent or
manage the riots?
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There were 13,000 to 15,000 “active
rioters”
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5 people died
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What communities think...
Recommendations are supported up by research commissioned from IPSOS MORI in six equally deprived areas, four
which suffered riots. Of the 1200 people surveyed:
Public services:
► 37% felt public services listen to
the public
►
50% did not feel public services
work effectively together.
Community:
►
24% felt that the quality of life in
their local area is poor.
►
59% felt members of the
community did not treat each other
with respect.
Trust with the police:
►
.
53% felt it unlikely anything would be done as a result of making a complaint to the police
►
49% did not agree the crime and anti social behaviour issues that mattered in their area were being tackled
Key findings from the Report
The report focuses on six key areas:
1
2
Building personal
resilience:
How to support young
people to be responsible,
ambitious, determined and
conscientious
Children and parents:
How to support parents to
provide the best chances for
their children.
4
3
5
Riots and the brands:
How brands can use their
influence for the good of the
community.
Hopes and dreams:
How to tackle youth
employment and a real and
perceived lack of opportunity
by young people.
6
Usual suspects:
How to help reduce reoffending for the good of the
community and individuals.
Police and the public:
How to improve perceptions
of and relationships between
communities and the police.
Police and the Public
Key Themes
Trust
Contact
with the
police
Communication
Accountability
Integrity
Our Findings
Trust in the police is vitally important in any community:
• Leads to communities getting more involved in policing
Trust
• Ensures the police can understand local communities’
• Helps to break down cultural barriers
When the public trust police motives, they are willing to support them by reporting crimes or
antisocial behaviour, by providing local intelligence and acting as witnesses.
One in three people are concerned about the possibility of corruption in police forces, and one in
five are worried that police might be dishonest.
Integrity
Contact
with the
police
While not suggesting this is in any way accurate, this perception must be damaging to the police’s
relationship with the communities they serve.
Black and minority ethnic happiness following contact with the police is significantly worse than it
is for white people – 64 per cent, compared to 77 per cent.
In our Neighbourhood Survey, one in four who had recent contact with the police were unhappy at
the way they were treated. In some areas it was as high as one in three.
The Metropolitan Police were cited in particular as having issues around positive or ‘quality’
contact.
Our Findings
• Communicating about police action, should be seen as equally important as the action
itself
Communication
• Capability around social media communication.
• Community engagement
A key aspect of accountability is public confidence in a robust complaints procedure. In
England and Wales, complaints against the police are handled either locally by police forces
or, in the most serious cases, by the IPCC.
Accountability
In an IPCC survey of confidence in the police complaints system, 43 per cent of black people
felt a complaint against the police would not be dealt with impartially (compared to 31 per
cent of people generally).
In our Neighbourhood Survey, over 50 per cent of respondents felt it unlikely that something
would be done as a result of a making a complaint against the police.
Recommendations
Integrity and Community Engagement
The report put forward a number of recommendations to police forces
to improve community engagement:
• Engage directly with their communities
• Improve the quality of minor encounters
• Give greater recognition to excellence in building community
relationships
• Social media capability
• Ensure the views of their communities are taken into account
• More transparent in the justification for and use of their stop and
search powers.
• Identify all “trust hotspots” – particularly neighbourhoods were there
is very low trust in the police – and immediately put in place a
programme to improve confidence in these areas
Accountability
Accountability plays a large part in forming community relationships.
Recommendations to police forces:
Recommendations to the IPPC
• All police services should make their
local arrangements for dealing with
complaints more widely known and
understood to prevent escalation of
issues
• IPCC should develop and implement a
strategy to close the gap in trust levels
in the police complaints system between
the overall public and BAME
communities by 2013
• Police services should review their
individual complaints system in order to
reduce the number of rejected
complaints subsequently overturned on
appeal
• The IPCC should look to reduce its use
of former police officers and staff as
investigators, particularly at senior levels
• When rejecting a complaint, the police
should highlight the percentage of
complaints from their force that are
overturned on appeal
• Managed investigations should no
longer be undertaken by the IPCC.
Resources should instead be transferred
so the IPCC’s own investigators can
undertake more independent
investigations
One year on...
Looking ahead
• From November, Police and Crime Commissioners will be
responsible for ensuring that local people’s voices are heard and
acted upon and make sure that the police are delivering the
priorities of the local community
• Stop and search
• Troubled Families programme
• Community Budgets
• Riot Damages Act