Police

A lockdown crackdown is no walk in the park

Jessica Allen and Eliza Moore had a bad experience with the Derbyshire police last week. The two women met for a socially distanced walk roughly a five-mile drive away from their home. This resulted in the pair being ‘surrounded’ by police officers, who fined them £200 for leaving their local area and drinking takeaway coffee, which the officers classified as a ‘picnic’. Since the story broke last week, the police force has backed down significantly and are reviewing their policies as a result of the incident. Allen and Moore were not, it seems, breaking any laws (although No. 10 and other departments remain unsure about how this fits into government guidance).

What Unicef doesn’t understand about police and tasers

Use of force isn’t like the movies. It’s often messy, frightening and it can go sideways very quickly. I vividly remember my first arrest as a volunteer police officer, surrounded by jeering teenagers in a seaside amusement arcade wrestling on the ground with a completely non-compliant powerfully built kid. When we eventually got the cuffs on him, it turned out he was deaf and most of his resistance was because he couldn’t understand my repeated attempts to negotiate with him.  As head of security at HMP Wandsworth, I recall standing in the centre supervising an entirely correct and proportionate restraint and relocation of a prisoner. All the staff were white. The

Why I can no longer police the coronavirus restrictions

Earlier this month I resigned as a Special Constable, after serving for ten years as a volunteer officer in three different police forces. Policing has been an important part of my life for a long time, and I will miss serving my community and working with extremely dedicated, brave, and caring officers. But I have long been disturbed by decisions made by the government during the coronavirus crisis, and have decided that I can no longer in good conscience play any part in enforcing the restrictions. I have had concerns about the government’s coronavirus policies since the first lockdown. While I have volunteered as a Special Constable, my full-time job

The strange case of the ‘alleged bonfire’

The council has told me that what I saw was an ‘alleged bonfire’. When I described flames towering into the sky and black smoke curling over the village, that was an ‘alleged bonfire’. When the builder boyfriend was shutting the field gate and could see a bright blue explosion, what he was witnessing was the start of an ‘alleged bonfire’. We often meet at the horses after he finishes work, then we drive home in our separate cars. He let me out the gate first and stayed behind to lock it. After he rang me and told me what he could see on the horizon, I turned round and drove

Bas Javid: Why I joined the police

There’s no such thing as a typical week in policing and this last one was no different. It started on a high and ended, tragically, on the lowest of lows. I’ve been asked recently why I joined the police — what or who inspired me. My first answer is: Lieutenant Carl Downing. He was my divisional officer in the Navy and one day, though I went on to be the most unlikely copper you could ever meet, he turned to me and asked: ‘Have you thought about the police? You’d be great at it.’ I remember thinking: where did that come from? Nonetheless, five years later I found myself signing

Letters: We must sing again

Growing pains Sir: James Forsyth (‘Rewiring the state’, 4 July) shocked this loyal Spectator reader with the following: ‘Even before Covid, this country was in a productivity crisis and it’s nigh-on impossible to improve productivity without government involvement. Increasing productivity requires improvements to be made to physical and digital infrastructure and to the skill base, and those need public investment.’ James clearly has not studied the sources of productivity growth (or lack of it). In the 50 years to 2008, the UK experienced around 2 per cent p.a. growth in real Gross Value Added per hour worked — which is what politicians generally mean when they talk about productivity. Since

Letters: Why Hugh Dowding deserves a statue

Police relations Sir: As a former Met Police officer, with a similar background to Kevin Hurley, I was surprised how much I disagreed with his article (‘Cop out’, 27 June). Central to this was the lack of emphasis he placed on the attitude of police officers. The emphasis on violent gang crime undoubtedly leads to a distortion in how young black men are perceived by the police, and this in turn can quickly lead to confrontation on the street. The attitude of young police officers is key to avoiding an escalating reaction between them and members of the public. Senior officers need to develop more holistic ways of addressing crime,

Culture is going underground: meet the rebel army

Among the first to arrive was a Labour grandee. Then others drifted over: academics, musicians, writers, a nurse. They came from different directions, some looking shifty, others excited. The secret meeting point was an inconspicuous pub in north London. Queueing shoppers nearby assumed the growing crowd was waiting to get into the supermarket. In groups of five those gathered were led down a suburban street to a derelict leisure centre. For one night only, the gym had been turned into a makeshift theatre. The audience, of up to 30 people, had congregated to flick a collective V at the social distancing measures, and to watch A Hero of Our Time,

Letters: Police must focus on deterring crime, not responding to it

Deterring crime Sir: Rod Liddle is right to highlight the politicisation of the police as a source of their inadequacies, but I think he misses the crucial point (‘Defund the police’, 27 June). We simply do not have bobbies on the beat to even feel sympathy for, and this means that constructive relationships between a recognisable police officer and their community are a rarity. As Kevin Hurley describes, many black youths in our cities have nothing but hatred towards police officers, and this cannot be a surprise when the only interactions they have with them are being forced to empty their pockets after being suspected of criminal activity. Mr Liddle

Sunday shows round-up: Violence against police to be met with ‘full force of the law’, says Priti Patel

Priti Patel – Violence against police will be met with ‘full force of the law’ Sophy Ridge interviewed the Home Secretary Priti Patel, asking her about the difficulties involved in policing Britain under lockdown. Recent weeks have not only seen mass protests on the streets, but also scenes like an illegal street party in Brixton where police officers were attacked. The Metropolitan Police’s chief commissioner Cressida Dick has said that around 140 officers have been hurt over the past three weeks. Patel told Ridge that the government was tightening measures to protect key workers: PP: I’m committed, and we’ll be putting measures in place to double the sentencing on assaults

To save black lives, police top brass must face reality

I was a borough commander in west London and come from a long line of officers — and I can tell you that it’s fast becoming impossible to police the streets. The police are attacked on all sides. They’re told both that they’re too aggressive and too politically correct; too understanding and too intolerant. They’re required to reduce the level of violent crime on the street and yet told they’re racist if they stop and search young black men and ‘put hands in pockets’ to check for knives. As a society we can shout and scream at the police, regulate them, scrutinise them, sack a few, bring in external bosses

Rod Liddle

The police have become too politicised to function

Of the many admirable demands made by supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, such as dismantling capitalism and making white people pay for centuries of vile oppression, none commended themselves to me more than the demand that we should defund the police. This is a hugely attractive proposition, I thought, as I watched the chief constable of Kent, Alan Pughsley, ‘take the knee’ in solidarity with people who want him abolished. I felt much the same upon hearing the words of Superintendent Andrew ‘Andy’ Bennett of Avon and Somerset Police, who watched as BLM protestors threw a statue of Edward Colston into the river. ‘Andy’ instructed his men to

America’s immune system is failing

‘This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,’ said President Donald Trump in his inauguration speech on January 20, 2017. Three and a half years later, in the early summer of 2020, a bout of heavy riots has broken out, like a virus spreading, in cities across America. Minneapolis rioted for days on end. Other cities erupted: in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, New York and Washington. A mob now menaces the White House. Maybe that American carnage is just beginning. This latest unrest, coming as it does in the middle of an ongoing global health crisis and a concomitant economic recession, feels more devastating

The curious case of the coronavirus conviction

Last Saturday, a 41-year-old woman was arrested for what police described as ‘loitering between platforms’ at Newcastle Central station. By Monday, she had been successfully prosecuted – finding herself with a criminal conviction for breaching the newly enacted Coronavirus Act 2020. Days later, the conviction was dropped after police accepted they had misunderstood the law.  Why does all this matter? Well, clearly it’s important when law enforcement misuses some of the most draconian legislation passed in living memory. But the case tells us something else about the state of our criminal justice system. British justice, like the other parts of our constitution, is designed precisely so that failures like this do not occur.

Police must be flexible when enforcing social distancing rules

One recognises the need for firm rules about social distancing and other measures to control the coronavirus spread; but one should also recognise the need to keep things going. We rightly hail the NHS workers. We should also applaud the tremendously efficient businesses which continue to supply grocers’ shops and pharmacies. Given the difficulties and sudden demands, I am amazed by how well these markets are holding up. What on earth would Covid-19 have been like if it had arrived in pre-internet days? The authorities should themselves recognise difference of circumstances and adjust the rules accordingly as things change over the coming weeks.  Take the construction industry. It is obvious

Letters: We need career detectives, not fast-tracked officers

We need career detectives Sir: Your lead article (Trial and error, 29 February) rightly condemns Tom Watson for pressurising police into investigating the spurious allegations of Carl Beech. What should urgently be abandoned is the fast-tracking of police officers into senior positions, and the promotion of uniformed inspectors into detective ranks without them having the necessary experience and training to be effective investigators. It was well known in junior police circles that Operation Midland was a non-runner virtually from the start, but pressure from on high demanded that the investigation continued. The senior officers responsible for that, lacking detective ability and nous, seem to have heeded Tom Watson’s exhortations and

The ‘Westminster paedophile ring’ is a lesson in how not to carry out a police investigation

A cornerstone of any -functioning democracy is the separation of police and the courts on one hand, and government and parliament on the other. Where the latter are charged with making the law, they should never, ever be allowed to interfere with the enforcement of that law. Politicians have no power to tell the police what to investigate. As Lord Denning once observed, no policeman is subject to orders of the Secretary of State: ‘No minister of the Crown can tell him that he must, or must not, keep observation on this place or that. Or that he must prosecute this man or that one… He is answerable to the

Letters: How to really revitalise the North

Devolved or decentralised? Sir: Paul Collier (‘Northern lights’, 22 February) conflates what devolution has come to mean, in UK terms, with decentralisation of authority. Thus it is adrift to imply that Edinburgh has benefited from a conscious decentralising of powers from central government. It was simply that Scotland as a whole got devolution and Edinburgh is its capital city, whereby it administers the devolved responsibilities. Until such time as commentators and politicians distinguish properly between devolution and decentralisation, they will continue to prompt fears that England could be balkanised rather than treated as a national entity on a par with Scotland. Situate its devolved English parliament and government in a

Cyclists have become an easy police target

Most Britons assume at the outset that any misfortune involving a cyclist is the cyclist’s fault. After all, many a two-wheeled hellion has earned contempt. But put aside the understandable cynicism. This is not one of those stories. A week ago, I was cycling around Buckingham Palace while some low-key royal whatnot was pending but not under way. The vicinity was closed to traffic but not to bikes. As usual, I was heading for Hyde Park Corner via Constitution Hill, because the bike path on the right-hand side in Green Park is insensibly ‘shared use’ — meaning, teeming with pedestrians, and I see no point in our inconveniencing one another.

I’ve practically solved the crime myself but still the police won’t help

‘Thank you for calling Surrey Police. We want to help you with your inquiry as quickly as possible. Did you know you can go online…’ That is probably the most depressing sentence in the English language. It is not only preposterous to suggest crime will be better dealt with by a website, it is insulting. I was ringing 101 to persevere with the police after trying to solve the burglaries in the barn myself, and after almost catching the thieves red-handed. After putting up game cameras, I captured images of them when they came back a second time. But I needed help with the grainy footage, and if the registration