Police chiefs must learn to use their common sense

Spectator

18 hours ago

Britain's top cop club has released new guidance to forces in England and Wales on when and how to describe the suspects of serious crimes. It's a day late and a dollar short. The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), stirred from their deckchairs by nationwide riots of only twelve months ago, are now advising constabularies that it's probably a good thing in most circumstances if people's ethnicity and immigration status are disclosed at the point of charge. If you're wondering why it takes this body in conjunction with the College of Policing to tell chiefs they are allowed to use common sense, you're in good company.
But let's apply this new dispensation to a real-life example to see if it flies. Say, the one where police obfuscation over the identity of a suspect contributed to the worst public order breakdown for over a decade. Alex Rudukabana, the Southport child murderer, was arrested on 29 July last year. Police gave the first information about him to the public later that same evening, which did nothing to contradict misinformation already halfway round the world. Its selectivity only fuelled public anger. After arrest for multiple murders, the police had 96 hours to charge or release him under legislation. By the time police announced he had been charged on the morning of 1 August, serious disorder had broken out in five locations with dozens of officers injured and a violent contagion was released across the UK.
It's fair to say that this anaemic intervention should at least stop huge inconsistencies that exist across the country. Chief officers are clearly befuddled by what they perceive to be legal or community tension obstacles to doing the right thing at the right time. Merseyside police, perhaps stung by their mishandling of the Southport massacre comms, swung into action when a car-ramming horror happened on the streets of Liverpool in May. The ethnicity of the alleged assailant – 'a white British man' – was released two hours after his arrest and long before Paul Doyle was charged with multiple counts of GBH.
Contrast this with the arrant idiocy of Warwickshire police, whose extreme reluctance to confirm the immigration status and ethnicity of two reported asylum seekers suspected of the rape of a 12 year old girl in Nuneaton recently was based not on any legislative obstacle but on the lack of guidance to tell them they could. The precise status of the alleged attackers Ahmad Mulakhil and Mohammad Kabir is still shrouded in mystery.
While they are entitled to the presumption of innocence and due process, I can't see anything that would preclude those facts from being released. Beyond, of course, the cack-eyed fealty to 'community cohesion', which seems to eternally ignore the fact that this social contract relies on the majority in the country believing in it. There is no substitute for the fullest information being disclosed accurately and fast. Where there might be a legal impediment, for example age, that is relied upon to stop any early disclosure, this must be changed.
The National Police Chiefs Council ought to be an anachronism these days. We introduced local democratic accountability years ago in the form of policing and crime commissioners (PCCs). But they are too often incompetent duds and political retreads far behind the curve of public opinion that elected them.
If this architecture must exist along with the insatiable bureaucracy of the College of Policing, it ought to spend more time ensuring that police chiefs and their guidance are both fit for purpose. Otherwise we will continue to see people like Essex Chief Ben-Julian Harrington well over his head when it comes to policing protests, such as those tinderbox concerns over illegal migration, despite being the NPCC lead for public order. His misunderstanding of the Human Rights Act and the convention it is built on meant that masked antifa protestors from outside the community were given a police escort into and away from a then peaceful demonstration by townspeople outside a hotel for migrants in Epping. This had disastrous results both in terms of disorder and public confidence.
One thing PCCs can do is hire chief officers who are able and willing to do the thing public trust relies on – police without fear or favour – and fire those who can't. Perhaps it is not too late for them to step up.