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Statement from Family of Brandon Geasley following inquest

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At the end of the inquest, on 8 July 2022, Brandon’s family say:

“Brandon was a loving son and brother. We miss him so much.

We believe Brandon was killed as a result of the unnecessary and disproportionate police pursuit. It cannot be right that the police pursue at over 120 mph, for minor allegations, with such a significant risk to life and safety.

GMP showed a complete disregard for the life of Brandon and the public.

We are pleased the evidence in the inquest demonstrated that he did NOT steal the vehicle that he was driving. It also showed that he had ADHD, which would have impaired his decision making.

So many young boys are being killed in this way and enough is enough. We are working with other affected families and we are planning to a launch a major campaign alongside other bereaved families.

The experience of losing Brandon has been devastating. We wish our experience never to be repeated. We wish to create a legacy in the memory of Brandon. We will continue to pursue justice for him and other loved ones and we thank everyone for the enormous support we have received throughout. 

We give our thanks to the Coroner, Adrian Farrow, for his sensitive and detailed investigation.

We also extend our condolences to the family of Mr Faulkner. If they ever felt ready to speak to us, we would always be open to doing so.”

Policing as Crisis

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Remi Joseph-Salisbury and Katy Sian (NPMP)

This article is from NPMP’s annual magazine. You can see the full magazine online, and order physical copies here.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) have recently come under unprecedented scrutiny. In December 2020, an investigation into the force found ‘serious cause for concern’. The force was placed into special measures, and along with negative media coverage, a range of changes followed. Most notable among these was the introduction of a new Chief Constable, and the setting out of GMP’s ‘strategic delivery plan’ and ‘promises to the public’. 

GMP’s placement in special measures was the culmination of a series of concerns raised over several years. In 2016, the force was deemed to be inadequate in terms of the recording of crime. A subsequent report in 2018 found that the force still required improvement in several key areas, particularly regarding its service to ‘vulnerable victims of crime’, including the recording of rape crimes and domestic abuse (see Connelly, article five of the magazine). In 2019, concerns were again raised that the force was putting ‘victims’ and vulnerable people at risk. It was suggested that, despite needing to improve, GMP’s performance had declined further since the last inspection. It was in this context that the 2020 report found over 80,000 crimes had gone unrecorded over the latest one-year period. 

Recognition that GMP is in crisis should be welcomed, as should increased public scrutiny of police forces. However, a narrow focus on faulty computer systems and crime (under)recording practices obscures the true nature of the crisis. 

The socio-political backdrop of the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings, alongside the protests following the police murder of Sarah Everard, and ongoing Kill the Bill mobilisations signal a more fundamental crisis. This reframed understanding of ‘crisis’ draws our attention to endemic racism, sexism, and violence in policing. It also points to the devastating effects of the persistent criminalisation of certain communities, and to an institution that stands in the way of the pursuit of social justice. This is evident in the brutal tasering of Desmond Ziggy Mombeyarara in front of his young son, in the growing number of killings following police pursuits (see Pimblott, article six of the magazine), and in the persistent efforts to undermine and thwart social movements. 

This stark contrast in definitions of ‘crisis’ is significant because it shapes proposed solutions, outcomes and implementation. GMP’s response has been to adopt a ‘tough on crime’ stance, with promises of a ‘relentless’ pursuit of ‘criminals’, more policing, and more arrests and ‘high-profile operations’. 

However, taking heed of the crisis as recognised by social movements allows us to see that rising authoritarianism and criminalisation will deepen, rather than address, the fundamental crisis of policing and the crises caused by policing. And, as the impact of the expansion of police powers under Covid attests (see Harris, article 2 of the magazine), increased and tougher policing will be felt most harshly by minoritised communities, those who historically and presently remain at the sharp end of policing. The new Chief Constable’s forceful denial of the presence of institutional racism in the force, even in the face of insurmountable evidence, suggests he and his force will be ill-equipped and unwilling to recognize and address these issues as they deepen. Indeed, the issue of institutional racism in GMP continues to be brushed aside, with superficial ad campaigns to recruit more people of colour and women. These empty gestures are merely cosmetic, unable to tackle the structural issues of embedded racism and sexism that persist.

By turning to the uprisings and cross-community mass mobilisations of recent years we can see that solutions to the fundamental crisis of policing cannot be solved by having more police on our streets, or through superficial measures that fail to address decades of discrimination and violence in the force. Rather, we need to question the logic that sees us repeatedly turn to the police to solve social problems. This is what is invoked by calls to ‘defund the police’: calls to shift power and resources away from policing and into the development of supportive social infrastructures, particularly in communities that have been most deprived by austerity and an unjust economic system. 

When we think critically about the role of the police, we see that the very ‘victims’ of crime that GMP claims to want to serve are better supported through the funding of women’s centres, youth clubs, community centres, mentoring schemes, counselling and mental health services, and community-driven and led programmes. Of course, there is a need for us to remain critical about how oppressive tendencies can (and do) manifest in these spaces too, particularly those tied to the state, but this is an ongoing task. 

The answer in tackling the police crisis lies not with more policing or diversity recruitment drives. Rather, it centres on investing in marginalised communities to empower and enrich them. For too long, these communities have been overpoliced, harassed and subjected to violence by GMP. And while we are doing the long-haul work of imagining, building and resourcing alternative institutions, we need to fight back against efforts to expand police powers via the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the encroachment of police in schools and universities (see Virgo, article 11 of the magazine), and the rising militarisation of the police. We must also continue to develop our survival programmes in the form of police monitoring, collective solidarities and  community empowerment. 

The police cannot keep us safe: Violence Against Women and Institutional Misogyny

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LAURA CONNELLY (NPMP)

This article is from NPMP’s annual magazine. You can see the full magazine online, and order physical copies here.

From the state-facilitated kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard and the Metropolitan Police’s brutality towards women attending the vigil in her honour, to the degrading and sexist treatment of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman’s bodies, recent events have shone a light on police violence against women.

These events – alongside a resistance movement sparked by a rallying cry from Sisters Uncut – have attracted the attention of a wider public to the long-standing problems of state sanctioned harm and institutional misogyny in the police (see Begum, article one). These problems are both deep-rooted and endemic. They’re often felt most by those from racially minoritised communities, those with precarious immigration status, and/or those belonging to other marginalised populations, such as sex workers.

In response to rising public concern over physical and sexual violence against women, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) has instructed officers to “do more to reassure the public, particularly women and girls, that [they] are here to protect”. But we would be foolish to listen to their reassurances, for GMP has a long history of misogyny, racism and violence.

Supporters of Jackie Berkeley outside of court.
Photographer. Denis Thorpe, The Guardian, 25 February 1985

GMP did not protect Jackie Berkeley, a 20-year-old Black woman who accused two male officers of rape whilst two women officers restrained her, at Moss Side police station in 1984. Instead, they detained her for longer than legally required, preventing collection of physical evidence of the rape. Despite being able to identify three of the four perpetrators in a line-up and the fourth from a description of his clothing, Jackie was held up in court on charges of wasting police time and making a false complaint. In court, the prosecution set about assassinating Jackie’s character and, using the four officers’ (contradictory) testimonies, constructing a web of lies that resulted not only in the conviction of Jackie but – as Gus John, member of the Jackie Berkeley Defence Committee, describes – the psychological destruction of Jackie.

GMP-perpetrated sexual violence is not, however, confined to the past. According to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, there have been allegations of sexual misconduct against 158 serving GMP officers in the past five years. The number of allegations against GMP is higher than that for any other police force in England and Wales. In November 2019, a GMP officer was found guilty at a misconduct hearing of sexual assault, one count of assault by penetration, twelve counts of voyeurism and two counts of taking indecent images of children. At a hearing in June 2021, it was found that an officer “gained authorised access to police data regarding known sex workers, one of whom the officer then met”. We know from organisations such as the English Collective of Prostitutes that police too often abuse their power to demand free sex, steal sex workers’ money or perpetrate violence with impunity. Unsurprisingly, the state has taken up the well-worn ‘few bad apples’ narrative to explain away officers’ violence against women, but the systemic nature of the problem also manifests in GMP’s treatment of women when they experience victimisation. A recent Inspectorate report found that GMP fails to record more than one in four reported violent crimes, with particularly notable recording gaps concerning domestic abuse, harassment, stalking and coercive control – harms known to be gendered in nature. Victim-blaming attitudes among officers are rife, and contribute to women’s reluctance to report victimisation: a recent poll by YouGov found that 96% of women aged 18-24 who had experienced sexual harassment chose not to report it to the police.

In response to an awakening to institutional misogyny in the police, some, including women ex-officers, have pointed the finger at gender imbalances in the police, with two-thirds of officers across all ranks being male. But we must be clear: just as more Black officers won’t end institutional racism, more women officers won’t end institutional misogyny and the police perpetration of violence against women. To think that it will is to grossly underestimate how deeply embedded misogyny is in the culture, policies and operations of (the institution of) the police, and wrongly assume that gendered solidarity exists between women police officers and the women that they police. More women officers won’t end state-sanctioned violence against women but it will create the dangerous illusion of change and, in turn, legitimise the police.

The police have proven time and again, not only that they are ill-equipped to protect women, but also that they are quick to abuse their status to engage in violence against women and girls. With this in mind, we must resist calls for new laws and ‘better’ policing to address the epidemic of sexual violence and harassment. That Sarah Everard’s rapist and murderer probably used his knowledge of Covid police powers (alongside his warrant card and police-issued handcuffs) demonstrates the inherent problem of giving the police more powers, particularly for women and those from marginalised groups – a point that is particularly pertinent as police are set to receive more powers through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (see Sisters Uncut Mcr, article 12).

Just as the Jackie Berkeley Defence Committee organised around GMP’s sexual violence and brutality in the 1980s, we will continue to play our part today in a growing and powerful anti-racist and feminist infrastructure to fight back in Greater Manchester and beyond. The police cannot keep us safe, but by coupling the development of a strong resistance movement with community-based programmes for public safety, we – collectively – can.

Statement on the Unjust and Racist Prosecution of 10 Boys in Manchester

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We write in outrage at the unjust, racist and classist prosecution of 10 boys from our city found guilty by association for the crimes of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit GBH. No one was killed in this case and, nearly forty days in court revealed, many of those prosecuted were never involved in or accused of direct involvement in any violence. Rather the prosecution deployed a racist ‘gang’ narrative drawing upon text messages, drill lyrics and videos to bind and implicate all ten in a criminal conspiracy. We recognise that the few who committed harm admitted this and accepted responsibility for hurting others. Others who committed no harm were implicated simply for sending text messages in grief following the death of a childhood friend. These boys needed support and care in dealing with their grief. All are now facing lengthy prison sentences, their lives and freedom – the years of their 20s and 30s – stripped from them. Their families and friends are facing the devastating loss of their kin and loved ones.

We stand in solidarity with the 10 boys, their families, friends and loved ones and all those found guilty by association. 

We condemn the State’s punitive response to the grief of our young people and the lack of societal care for those who needed support. The testimony given by these boys should educate us all in the interlocking structures of state violence responsible for the real conspiracy to strip young Black and working-class people of their freedom. Those structures can be tracked from draconian school exclusion policies and racist policing practices to the £2.5 million super court in which this, and many other ‘gang’ prosecutions, will be held. 

We thank Kids of Colour and their director Roxy, one of our steering group members, for supporting the boys and for telling us all about who they really are. We are grateful for your tireless reporting, keeping us all informed and challenging the racist ‘gang’ narrative painted by the prosecution and media. 

This is not the first and it will not be the last case of collective punishment. We stand with Kids of Colour and JENGbA in calling for the abolition of the Joint Enterprise doctrine and ‘guilt by association’ in all its forms and we back the call for the creation of healing-centered alternatives that create safety in our communities not punishment. 

CALL TO ACTION

Join us at the daytime demo in solidarity with the boys and all those found guilty by association on Saturday 28th May 2022 at 1pm, St. Peter’s Sq. 

Come to the sentencing on Thursday 30th June at 11am, Manchester Crown Court. 

Follow and support Kids of Colour and JENGbA for more information and actions you can take. 

Letter of concern regarding police pursuits in Greater Manchester

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Manchester Stands in Solidarity with Child Q and Calls for ‘No Police in Schools’

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Kerry Pimblott, Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP)

Hundreds gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Manchester on Friday to express solidarity and outrage at the treatment of ‘Child Q’, a 15-year of Black girl subjected to a strip-search by Metropolitan police officers at her school without the presence of an appropriate adult or parental consent. Organised by a coalition of local groups – including the Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP), Kids of Colour, No More Exclusions, Sisters Uncut, Kill the Bill MCR, and MCR Copwatch – the demonstration renewed calls for the removal of police from schools and the realisation of abolition in our lifetimes.  

A picture containing building, outdoor, sidewalk, people

Description automatically generatedNPMP’s Zara Manoehoetoe addresses the crowd in St. Peter’s Square

In Manchester these demands are far from new. Following a series of complaints raised by young people in 2019, NPMP and Kids of Colour submitted a Freedom of Information request that revealed that Greater Manchester Police (GMP) planned to put twenty additional police in schools for the 2020/21 academic year. As the nation went into lockdown following the outbreak of Covid-19, grassroots organisers held forums, crafted an open letter to Mayor Andy Burnham, and launched an online survey to consult young people, parents, teachers, and wider communities about their views on the decision. The results of the survey provided the foundation for a subsequent report, Decriminalise the Classroom: A Community Response to Police in Greater Manchester’s Schools (2020), which, as NPMP member Siobhan O’Neill explained, revealed widespread opposition to police in schools and concerns that their presence exacerbates existing inequalities, foster a culture of low expectations and create a climate of hostility that leads to the criminalisation of young people, particularly working-class and racially minoritised students. Instead, respondents overwhelmingly called for funding to be spent on non-punitive alternatives such as youth workers, counsellors, and more teachers. 

A person holding a sign

Description automatically generated with low confidenceNPMP’s Siobhan O’Neill describes the findings of the 2020 Decriminalise the Classroom report

During Friday’s demonstration, these concerns were echoed once again by parents, campaigners, and young people outraged by the account of sexuall abuse and trauma experienced by Child Q. Among the speakers was Lisa Eigbadon: ‘I felt compelled to speak today because No Police in Schools is a movement and campaign I’m very passionate about because I went to a school with a school based police officer,’ Eigbadon explained. ‘When I heard about Child Q I felt sick in my stomach, and I put myself in her position and her shoes because I’ve been subject to police confrontation […] in school’. 

A picture containing person

Description automatically generatedLisa Eigbadon describes attending a school with a school-based police officer in Manchester

Angela Henry of the Manchester branch of No More Exclusions and Eline Davies of Kill the Bill Manchester connected Child Q’s experience to wider systemic patterns of racialised surveillance, discrimination and violence in schools. As Angela Henry explained, ‘Child Q is not the first Black young person that finds themselves being dealt with disproportionately, aggressively, illegally and traumatically at the hand of police who are supposed to serve and protect, and she won’t be the last under current policing structures.’ All of the speakers insisted that ‘police have no place in schools’ and joined Henry in calling for non-punitive transformative justice interventions of the type outlined in the recent No More Exclusions report, ‘“What about the Other 29?”: Demystifying Abolition in the UK Education System’. ‘Abolition’, as NPMP member Zara Manoehoetoe explained, ‘is about putting love and care at the centre of our approach.’ 

A group of people standing on steps holding a sign

Description automatically generated with low confidenceKids of Colour founder, Roxy Legane, addresses the crowd in Manchester.

Kids of Colour founder, Roxy Legane, recounted some of the more recent developments in the local No Police in Schools campaign which through collaboration with young people, parents, and members of the National Education Union’s North West Black Members Organising Forum secured a landmark victory in July 2021 when Councillor Garry Bridges  announced that plans to introduce twenty additional officers were being scrapped. Despite these gains, Legane cautioned that police are still a presence in many local schools and that parents at a school in Trafford are currently embroiled in a battle to halt the introduction of additional officers. As Legane explained, such developments contradict the stated policy of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority that if a school does not want an officer, they will not be forced to have one, a reality that necessitates concerned parents, young people, and community members continue to push back. Pushing back, Manoehoetoe asserted, means identifying those schools that have, or are seeking to introduce, a police presence and contacting the board of governors and local councillors to express your discontent. Whether they are operating as ‘schools-based police officers’, ‘school resource officers’, ‘school liaison officers’ or by another name, if you are a teacher you should organise with your local union to pass motions opposing police in schools. And, you should join the more than 25,000 people that have already signed the No police in UK schools petition.

Withdraw your consent.

Abolition in our lifetimes. 

Statement regarding police precept tax increase

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On Monday 31st January, the Greater Manchester Police, Fire and Crime Panel voted unanimously to approve an increase in Council Tax to fund more police. 

Given that the Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s (GMCA) own consultation found only 23% of respondents to be in favour of the tax increase, the decision shows just how little regard GMCA have for the public of Greater Manchester, and particularly those who are subject to the harms of policing. 

The Council Tax increase will further exacerbate a cost-of-living crisis which is having a devastating impact across the city region, particularly for working class communities. It also comes amidst a raft of evidence of institutional racism in the force, at a time when GMP has been placed in special measures for systemic failings. 

In making his case for the increase, Mayor Burnham made a range of claims without evidence, only addressing the consultation when challenged by a member of the public. In so doing, he showed clearly just how undemocratic his decision-making is. 

As the live stream of the Panel meeting was stopped, members of the public were removed from the supposedly-public meeting, and others – including a member of the Greater Manchester Race Equality Panel – were denied entry. This led members of the public to ask, ‘is this what democracy looks like?’

It is clear that those in power in Greater Manchester feel able to make decisions, far removed from members of the public, in comfortable boardrooms without public scrutiny or challenge. However, as Kill the Bill, Black Lives Matter, and other mobilisations of the last few years have shown, affected communities are increasingly demanding non-police responses centred on care. As part of a wider coalition of resistance, NPMP will continue to advocate for such alternatives.

Why Greater Manchester Police is (still) institutionally racist despite their latest report

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July 2021

On July 27, 2021, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) published its long awaited Achieving Race Equality Report. Drawing on previously unpublished data from April 2020 to March 2021, the report acknowledges significant racial disproportionalities in policing from stop-and-search to arrests and use of force. The report finds that these disproportionalities are particularly acute for people racialised as Black, who – in comparison to white people – are noted to be:

However, much like the recent report from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, the authors refuse to attribute racial disproportionality to institutional racism or discrimination in policing practices. In fact, the word ‘racism’ is used only once in the report in a broad, generic reference to the Black Lives Matter Movement, detached from discussions of policing.

Key claims of the Achieving Race Equality Report

Instead, the report suggests a series of alternative rationales for entrenched racial disproportionalities in policing. The core rationale is that racial disproportionalities are reflective of the greater ‘concentration of crime and policing in the City of Manchester, where a majority of Black residents of GMP live’ (p.8). In short, the report argues that crime rates are higher in inner-city districts with larger Black populations resulting in a greater police presence and interactions. In explaining the causes of higher crime rates in inner-city districts, the report draws  upon ‘colourblind’ logics to infer a correlation between crime and broader ‘societal inequalities’ also disproportionately experienced by racially minoritised people, particularly in the areas of child poverty, housing, education and employment (p.13). As Chief Constable Steve Watson surmised at the report’s launch

‘We know that crime thrives in deprived communities and we know that because of many of those other drivers many of the people that live in deprived communities are also overrepresented in the sense of themselves coming from minority communities and if crime is thriving in these communities that is where policing happens.’

But what of racial disproportionalities in policing within the multi-racial working class and across diverse neighborhoods? Here, the report develops a secondary line of argumentation drawn from the research of Gavin Hale, Senior Associate Fellow of the Police Foundation, in asserting that age (like geography) matters more than race(ism). According to the authors, the majority of police interactions take place with younger people and ‘Black, Asian and mixed populations are more youthful than the White population.’ They argue that this is a factor that contributes to disproportionalities but has apparently not been considered in calculations which ‘tend to use all-age population counts’ (p.7). 

There are a few nods in the executive summary to other potential contributors to racial disproportionalities. For example, the authors intimate that the increased roll out of Taser ‘may have played a role in increasing disproportionality’ in use of force specifically, though no explanation is offered for how or why this might be the case. The report also establishes that officers are ‘more likely to refer to the physique of Black people’ when explaining the impact factors that contributed to use of force, a fact that suggests – in the authors’ words – that there ‘may be biases in relation to officers’ decision making’ (emphasis ours). Beyond use of force, the executive summary also notes the possibility that an ‘organisational focus on robbery and knife crime’ in particular districts combined with ‘the use of relatively broad stop and search powers to police these types of offences’ may also be contributing factors (p.8). However, none of these lines of inquiry are explored in much, if any, detail in the body of the report itself. Indeed, they feel more like afterthoughts (or concessions?) disconnected from the central findings and rationale of the report and it’s subsequent recommendations. 

Viewing racial disproportionalities in policing chiefly as a by-product of deeper socio-economic problems and poor data handling means that, in the eye’s of the authors, there is little to fix at GMP beyond the false perceptions of affected communities. Indeed, the introduction clearly states that the chief aim of the report is to ‘reinforce the legitimacy of [GMP’s] practices’ not transform them. (p.4) Speaking with The Guardian following the report’s publication, Chief Constable Steve Watson reinforced this position, stating: 

‘I do not accept that GMP is institutionally racist, but I do accept that a lot of people think we are. And their view is really important because they are the folks we serve, and so we have to address those concerns head on.’ 

As a result, it should come as no surprise that the report’s recommendations focus less on substantive operational changes than reframing public perceptions of GMP as accountable, representative, and transparent. We see this in recommendations for: the creation of a new Diversity and Equality Board headed by the Chief Constable, the establishment of Community Scrutiny Panels, the recruitment of more Black and Asian officers, and the commitment to publish quarterly data on the use of force and stop-and-search. These are recommendations designed to address perceptions of racial disproportionality not ‘achieve racial equality’ as the report claims.

Serious flaws in the Achieving Race Equality Report 

Accordingly, the Northern Police Monitoring Project strongly condemns the Achieving Race Equality Report and joins other community members and organisations – including Elizabeth Cameron, chair of the Greater Manchester Race Equality panel – in asserting the unequivocal and persistent presence of institutional racism within GMP. 

Our monitoring work brings us into regular contact with community members who have borne the brunt of very real, racially discriminatory policing practices including the over-policing of inner-city districts outlined in the report. The use of crime statistics – in this case, data on what is described as ‘Police Recorded Crime’ – to justify racial disproportionalities stemming in part from spatially disparate policing strategies raises a number of pressing concerns. First, government agencies – including the UK Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee – have questioned the accuracy of Police Recorded Crime data, identifying ‘strong evidence’ of under-recording by local forces. Indeed, it was systemic failures in crime recording that resulted in GMP being placed in ‘special measures’ at the end of last year. Between 1 July 2019 and 30 June 2020, GMP failed to record an estimated 80,100 crimes. In total, one in every five crimes reported to GMP by members of the public went unrecorded including serious violent offences such as harassment, sexual assault and domestic abuse. Despite these concerns, GMP’s report draws heavily on the same, highly questionable Police Recorded Crime data to support claims about the causal relationship between crime, policing and racial disproportionality. This fact alone seriously undermines any facade of legitimacy the report carries. 

In addition to these problems of accuracy, Police Recorded Crime data is not objective and cannot be separated out from policing practices on the ground. When GMP engages in practices of over-policing or adopts operational approaches that target particular groups or communities the outcome is subsequently reproduced in the Police Recorded Crime data. Simply put, if police officers focus all of their attention on Place A, and not Place B, it should be unsurprising when they find more crime – or, rather, criminalise more people – in Place A. This dynamic is also present  in the policing of certain types of crime including what the executive summary describes as the ‘use of relatively broad stop and search powers’ when policing drug-related crime. As lawyer and human rights activist Michelle Alexander famously observed in The New Jim Crow, while the majority of illegal drug users and dealers in the United States are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses are Black and Latinx. Such disproportionate outcomes, as Alexander argues, can only be explained by the extraordinary discretion afforded to officers in determining who to stop, search and arrest combined with strategic operational decisions that result in the over-policing of specific communities. For this reason, crime statistics cannot be taken as a reflection of some kind of objective reality of ‘crime’ separate from the historical and contemporaneous practice of over-policing. And, this data certainly should not be used as a justification for the continuation of such practices as this report does.

This failure to acknowledge the integral role over-policing plays in (re)-producing racially disparate crime statistics is particularly apparent in the report’s approach to interpreting the relationship between young people and the police. The authors’ flat assertion ‘that police officers tend to interact with younger people, and that Black, Asian and mixed populations are more youthful than the White population’ belies the institutional and officer-led choices that inform that dynamic. Setting aside that disparities persist even when age is controlled for, the policing of young people is not natural or value free, but is shaped by assumptions and stereotypes about youth, and particularly Black youth. It was fear of these very types of assumptions that fueled anxiety about the recently defeated proposal that twenty additional police officers be placed in Greater Manchester schools.  As our jointly authored report showed, a majority of local teachers, students and parents surveyed opposed the proposal in part because they believed officers would be placed in schools located in working-class areas with significant racialised populations. That institutional choice many feared would inevitably lead to greater criminalisation. The Achieving Race Equality report’s uncritical engagement with crime data related to place, age and race only reinforces such anxieties.

Ultimately, the Achieving Race Equality Report confirms what we already knew: racial disproportionalities are endemic to policing in Greater Manchester. The central point of contention is whether GMP bears any responsibility. GMP have reflected for over a year on the question and concluded that they do not. We beg to differ.

Police Pursuits: We Must Kill the Bill

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Greater Manchester Police (GMP) are on track to report a record high number of fatalities arising from road traffic incidents involving the force’s officers. Since September 2020, eight people – Patrick ‘Paddy’ Connors (36), Thomas ‘Tommy’ Sharp (29), Shae Marlow (16), Kyle Hudson (16), Ronaldo Johnson (17), Diyar Khoshnaw (24), Devonte Scott (18), and Brandon Geasley Pryde (18) – have died following pursuits by GMP officers. [1] Earlier this month, another young man was left in critical condition after coming off his moped during a pursuit initiated by GMP officers engaged in an anti-social behaviour project known as Operation Bluefin. This unprecedented surge in road traffic deaths raises urgent questions about police protocols in the initiation and progression of pursuits. Yet this important dialogue is being sidelined by a coordinated national effort to protect police officers involved in road traffic incidents.

The Conservative Government has touted the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill as part of its first duty ‘to protect its citizens and communities, keep them safe and to ensure that they can get on with their daily lives peacefully and without unnecessary interference.’ Yet, as many have pointed out, the bill’s provisions invasively expand policing powers, pitting the interests of powerful police lobbyists against the safety and well-being of communities. 

One provision that has received relatively little attention pertains to Police driving standards (Part 1, Sections 4-6) and includes proposed amendments to the Road Traffic Act 1988 likely to make it even harder to hold police accountable.

Located in Part 1 of the Bill titled, ‘Protection of the Police etc’, the provision responds to a concerted campaign by the Police Federation of England and Wales, a professional association representing over 130,000 police officers. Currently, officers involved in road traffic incidents are subject to internal investigation with the exception of cases that result in death or serious injury, which are referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). During investigations, the IOPC is responsible for ascertaining whether any criminal offence has been committed and, where appropriate, making recommendations to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). If charges are filed, police officers are subject to the same offences of ‘careless’ and ‘dangerous driving’ under the Road Traffic Act 1988 as all other drivers. In Section 2A and 3ZA of the Road Traffic Act 1988, a person is regarded as driving without due care or dangerously if the way they drive either falls ‘below’ or ‘far below’ what would be expected of a competent and careful driver.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill proposes amendments to the Road Traffic Act 1988 in which police drivers charged with the offences of careless and dangerous driving would be compared to what is expected of a competent and careful trained police driver as opposed to a civilian driver. According to the explanatory notes accompanying the Bill, this reform acknowledges that officers receive additional training in pursuit and response driving techniques from the College of Policing and are exempt from some aspects of road traffic legislation including speed limits and a range of road signs and markings. The Police Federation contend that without reform police officers are vulnerable to lengthy investigations, suspensions and criminal prosecution for violations of the Road Traffic Act 1988.

As members of Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP) we are deeply concerned about the proposed amendments to the Road Traffic Act 1988 and their potential impacts on police conduct and accountability. As indicated, in the late nine months alone, eight people have died following pursuits by GMP. Reflecting national trends, most of those who lost their lives were young men and disproportionately from racially minoritised communities. The IOPC reports that between 2004/5 and 2019/20 there were 471 fatalities arising from road traffic incidents involving the police in England and Wales. Eighty per cent were male and more than one-quarter (28%) were under the age of 20. Despite efforts by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), (now known as the IOPC)  and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) to reform protocols related to police pursuits, the numbers of fatalities have steadily increased [2]. In 2018/19, forty-two people died following road traffic incidents involving police in England and Wales marking a new ten year high.

The IOPC is now investigating the deaths of the eight young men from Greater Manchester, a process that is likely to take up to a year or more. Kelly Darlington, an associate partner and head of inquests at Farleys solicitors in Manchester, informed the Manchester Evening News that the firm is currently acting for families in seven road death cases. As Darlington explained, ‘One of the things that families always ask is, whether the pursuit needed to take place at all when the seriousness of the [suspected] crime is quite often relatively low, compared to the risk to the public.’ Academics and professional bodies reinforce such concerns. In Police Road Traffic Incidents: A Study of Cases Involving Serious and Fatal Injuries (2007), the IPCC pointed to a growing body of evidence related to the ‘high level of discretion exercised by police drivers in terms of initiating and progressing with a pursuit’ as well as the ‘lack of justifiable cause for initiating a dangerous pursuit’.

Despite these concerns, precedent suggests that prosecutions are highly unlikely. During a governmental consultation related to the proposed reforms to police driving standards in 2018, the IOPC reported that their statistics ‘[did] not show that a high or disproportionate number of officers were prosecuted following an IOPC/IPCC investigation.’ In fact, of the ninety-seven investigations into road traffic incidents completed between 1 April 2012 and 30 September 2018 only two officers were prosecuted for pursuit-related incidents and five for emergency response driving incidents. None were convicted.  Such small numbers of prosecutions raise inevitable questions about the rationale for the proposed reforms in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, suggesting that The Police Federation’s concerns about the vulnerability of officers to criminal conviction are misplaced. At the same time, the small number of prosecutions raises broader societal concerns about the ability of families to secure justice for loved ones unnecessarily killed in road traffic incidents involving the police. While the full implications of the new reforms are still unclear, it appears that one of the few remaining tools by which officers might be held to account, limited as it may be, is being eroded. 

[1] For annual statistics on the number of road traffic fatalities by force see, Independent Office for Police Conduct, ‘Deaths during or following police contact: Statistics for England and Wales – Time series tables 2004/05 to 2019/20’ (IOPC, 2020). Accessed online: https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/research-and-learning/statistics/annual-deaths-during-or-following-police-contact-statistics. The eight fatalities in Greater Manchester took place between September 2020 and May 2021 while IOPC annual statistics are maintained by financial year. Annual statistics for 2020/21 will be released by the IOPC later this year.

[2] For example, see Independent Police Complaints Commission, Police road traffic incidents: a study of cases involving serious and fatal injuries (London: IPCC, 2007) and Association of Chief Police Officer of England, Wales and Northern Ireland, The Management of Police Pursuits Guidance (London: ACPO, 2008).

VIDEO: Black Resistance to British Policing

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Panel discussion – NPMP with Adam Elliot-Cooper, Zara Manoehoetoe, & Asad Rehman