HMP Britain

Events of the past week in HMP Britain have underlined a growing fissure between the governed and the governors, between the police and policed:

• 114 potential demonstrates were arrested outside a school on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage far away from the coal-filed power station.
• Damien Green MP’s computer, whilst seized by the police, was searched for the name of Shami Shakrabarti–the director of a civil rights organisation. Interesting questions have been raised over the police forensics.
• Video footage emerges of Ian Tomlinson being pushed to the ground by the police at the G20 protests. A second autopsy is performed showing he died of internal bleeding rather than a heart attack, suggesting he died from police actions. A police officer is suspended and questioned under caution on suspicion of manslaughter.
• Video footage emerges of Nicola Fisher being slapped across the face and then hit with a batton at the G20 protests. A second police officer is suspended.
• Other videos of police brutality have come to light and at last count, the complaints received by the IPCC stood at 145.
• An independent review has been requested by the Met by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary into its policies of policing protests.
• Further, it has emerged that strategy documents prepared by environmental protesters have been passed to E.On, an energy company that is the target of protests. The police and E.On also coordinated media strategies, shared PNC data on protesters and information on their movements.

It has not been a good week to be a police officer, or a citizen. 

In an interview with the Observer, Nick Hardwick, chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), hit the nail on the head when he said:

“I think that is unacceptable. It is about being servants, not masters: the police are there as public servants.”

A read of the ‘Principles of Good Policing’ would be well advised at this time. It is thought to written by Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne, first joint Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police:

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.

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