THE CHAIR ASKS


<<< Continued from previous page


3: What we can expect from a Police Covenant


JA: You touched on the Police Covenant – something I’m incredibly proud of and something PFEW has campaigned for. Many people compare it to the military covenant, but it’s going to be very different. What do you want to see from the Covenant?


MH: I think the really important point for me is this end to end point. It must be the life cycle of someone through their police service and I think we need to think about retirees. I’ve been pushing to extend it to the family as well, because what we all do has a pretty significant impact on all of those nearest and dearest to us and we are often reliant on the support that they provide.


The work we’ve done around officer


safety needs to be written large, also the work around wellbeing and health, and particularly mental health. We have got to make this tangible so anyone in the service can look and say “that’s the promise you as the government are making to me about the way that I will be treated”.


4: Releasing body worn video could redress social media balance


JA: Body worn video (BWV) is one of the best bits of kit policing has had over the past decade or so. It shows how professional our colleagues are. We are seeing more members of the public releasing footage of interactions between police officers and themselves. They are putting it on social media and generating a lot of hostility and anger. But the context is not there. What’s your view on releasing footage to balance coverage when it is legally possible to do?


MH: This is a phenomenon we’ve got to deal with. We are increasingly seeing footage appearing that goes viral and officers and Forces get pilloried. I can only imagine how hideous that must be if you are that officer. Suddenly you’re on social media and in the news being filmed for doing your job.


We’ve really got to respond to that but also make sure we get the balance right and don’t do something that makes situations worse. We need to get a clear set of guidance around that about what the dangers are, what the positives are, and be creative. Chief Constable Andy Marsh from Avon and Somerset is doing a review of this on our behalf along with the College of Policing. I think there are things that we can definitely post.


One of the other points is pushing body worn video being shown in trials when it demonstrates the behaviour that the officers had to put up with. When we’ve had officers assaulted and the defendant pleads guilty, courts say “well we don’t need to see the video”. We must be making sure that everybody sees precisely what it is our officers and staff sometimes are having to deal with. I was in the Met until fairly recently, and


in London almost every interaction police officers have with communities there’s someone or many people filming. We’ve got to make sure we are supporting our people properly when they find themselves being criticised on the basis of a short clip of film and by people who weren’t there and don’t necessarily understand what they’re even watching. So, it is a big issue for us.


5: How policing has coped with the coronavirus pandemic


JA: One thing policing does excellently is respond to a crisis. A recent survey by the Office of National Statistics found that 91 per cent of the public believe that


the police have responded well to the pandemic. Do you agree, and what do you think the pressures are going forward?


MH: I picked up the gold role on behalf of UK policing when [Covid] kicked off which amazingly is over six months ago now. I think the police service has been fantastic. The big discussions at the start were about how we would carry on with 20 or 30 per cent of our staff missing. Instead we have had incredibly low levels of absence.


This is a medical crisis and an economic crisis with big policing consequences. Our folks have carried on doing what they do in areas such as domestic abuse and child abuse. Some amazing crime work has been done around things like County Lines and generally I think the service has performed incredibly well. So, I think we should all take great pride in the way that we’ve done. I think the difference between this


and almost any other crisis is that it effects every part of the country and you’ve got no idea when it’s going to come to an end. We are going to see this process of localised lockdowns against the backdrop of crime being back to where it was. We’ve got other challenges coming down the track – we’re now seeing demonstrations like with Extinction Rebellion in London. That’s going to carry on as we go through the rest of this year and the subject that got forgotten for a little while is now back on the table, EU exit. I have no doubt that we will start to see protests and if people are going to lose their jobs, that creates all those tensions in communities.


I think the next few months are going to see quite a pressure on the service.


12 | POLICE | OCTOBER 2020


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