20 hours ago
Police are training ordinary people to stop crime — I went to see if it works
It was one sunny Friday afternoon when I found myself in a police station, staring at two officers.
I'd volunteered to be there — as had the 13 other men and women who sat with me, to take part in Active Bystander Training.
The idea is simple: teach members of the public how to safely intervene in volatile or dangerous situations, because the police can't always be there.
After being spat on by two men on two separate occasions — and no one stepping in to help — I'd asked the police what they were doing to combat violence against women. This two hour session, offered throughout the year, was their solution.
The training was first introduced in Bradford, and has just recently been implemented in Surrey. Since March 2024, it's been delivered to 1,103 people.
The term 'bystanderism' has become more well known in recent years, particularly after the horrific 2023 case of a 20-year-old woman who was raped on the Tube. It describes the phenomenon of witnessing a crime, and not intervening.
And while it's easy to question how you could standby while someone is in danger, it's hard to know how to act without escalating the situation, or putting yourself in harm's way too.
Several content creators have taken to social media, to share harrowing incidences of being attacked, while others watched on.
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Scarlett Owens, 24, shared how she was assaulted on the tube by a man who began shouting at her and kicked her in the leg in June last year. Her TikTok, which shows her crying after the fact, hit 6.7 million views. She later said: 'No one came to see if I was okay. I made eye contact with a guy opposite me, and he just shrugged.'
It was a video like this that landed on chief inspector Nick Haigh's desk, and inspired him to take action.
In Bradford, there's already a public space protection order against making sexualised comments or gestures. If breached, it can result in a £1000 fine, but Nick felt 'enforcement alone wouldn't resolve [the problem]'.
The active bystander training was initially offered at run clubs, as part of the JogOn initiative, but has since been expanded to to anyone who wants to learn how to make our streets safer.
It's needed now more than ever, given that ore than 70% of women admitted to experiencing sexual harassment in public, and more than 300,000 women have been spat on by men while running.
What had I expected from this training? A mix of roleplay exercises, or some good old fashioned self-defence. But instead, I felt like I was back at school.
I sat down with my cup of squash amongst a crowd of teachers and parent types waiting for the session to start, and noticed one young man alone. He was 18, about 20 years younger than the rest of the attendees, and had come voluntarily after recently finishing college.
In public, if you see a situation taking place, you're a bystander by default. But you're only an active bystander if you do something to help.
There's no right or wrong way to intervene in a situation, as officer Becky says: 'The only wrong approach is to do nothing.'
There are two types of intervention the police reccomend: Indirect intervention: This means you defer to others during or after the situation has taken place. Maybe you alert the staff of the establishment where the incident is taking place, or you call the police if it's serious enough. You can always make a report through StreetSafe too. Direct intervention: This means you get directly involved in the situation to prevent abuse or harm. It might be addressing the person instigating the situation, or talking to the victim and removing them from the situation.
When speaking with me, he chose to remain anonymous, at risk of being branded a snitch by gangs in the area or endangering himself and his family.
The month before the training, he'd seen footage from his local area of someone's hand being amputated in a knife attack.
'He was on the floor bleeding and crying – no one was there,' he told Metro. 'When I was at college last year, I saw two people my age pull knives on each other in the town centre.
'I don't feel safe, the police are never there, they just arrive after to pick up the pieces.'
His female best friend was jumped by a group of boys in the park, too. 'No one helped, apart from one elderly woman, all the boys were recording her getting banged. She still gets that video sent to her, being laughed at.'
So, we settled in, ready to learn how to make a difference. 'We're not expecting anybody to leave here and go and be superheroes, wear a cape and get involved in everything you can,' said officer Becky.
'We've got to think of ourselves first, but there are a lot of vulnerable people who need our support.'
The session is two hours in total and covers your responsibility as a bystander, how to challenge negative behaviour and the Ask For Angela initiative. Each topic has an open floor for discussion and questions.
Yes, we watched videos on the social science of the bystander effect (which theorises that the more people present when an incident occurs, the less likely it is anyone will step in to help), and discussed reasons someone might not get involved.
Everyone has a responsibility to help people in need, and the training discussed interventions as standing between two people who need to cool off, without even saying a word.
I'll say upfront that you aren't going to learn anything too groundbreaking here, but the message itself is actually pretty inspiring.
The aim is to get people to burst that protective bubble we all form around ourselves in public. To stop avoiding eye contact, be aware, and shift your perspective.
What really resonated with me during the training, were the stories shared of people who, if it weren't for a stranger stepping in to help, would likely be dead or seriously hurt.
The most harrowing came from a young woman who had attended an active bystander training session herself, and officer Becky read out her story.
She'd been on a night out at Newcastle University and a guy she was talking to had secretly spiked her drink. He hung around waiting for her to become unresponsive, then picked her up, put her over his shoulder and carried her out the bar.
'Nobody did anything,' Becky says. He walked down the road with her limp over his shoulder until two young men shouted at him, prompting him to throw her to the floor and run off. An ambulance came and she was finally safe.
The young woman had told her training cohort: 'If you can, please do something, because I don't know what could've happened to me if those two lads hadn't done something. I could have been assaulted, raped, murdered.'
It was as if someone doused me in ice cold water, and at that moment, I understood how important this training was.
There are moments when the news cycle can make you feel hopeless, like when Sarah Everard was murdered by a police officer, or when 26 children were attacked and three were killed in the Southport stabbings – and sadly, this training won't change that. More Trending
But, as Becky says to me: 'It's about building a community. It's about looking out for each other, rather than yourself.'
It's the type of sentiment you feel at the end of a superhero movie, but the 1,000 people trained so far aren't going to fix an epidemic of violence in the UK alone.
Right now, it might feel like a plaster on a larger problem, but as Becky said, it's better than doing nothing at all.
She added: 'All this training is about the power of one person and how they can change something.'
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