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A threat to public safety: policing, racism, the pandemic and beyond

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Scarlet Harris

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

How has the Covid-19 pandemic shaped experiences of police racism and racialised police violence, and what might new police powers mean for communities beyond the pandemic? 

As part of a collaboration between the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) and the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), we published a report that explores experiences of policing amongst racially minoritised groups across England at this critical juncture. The report draws on in-depth conversations with 22 individuals who had interactions with the police during the pandemic, focusing on the testimonies of those subjected to policing. The findings from the research demonstrate that, rather than contributing to public safety, policing during the pandemic has reproduced profound harms for those from racially minoritised groups and communities.

Safety is a prominent theme throughout the report, but – in a challenge to dominant police narratives – it is the police themselves who appear as a major threat to the safety and wellbeing of research participants and their wider communities. For instance, a number of those who took part in the study recount how police officers they had interacted with over the course of the pandemic had failed to socially distance or wear adequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). In a particularly disturbing case, one woman described being stopped multiple times while heavily pregnant, and repeatedly having to ask police officers to socially distance and wear masks. We now know that unvaccinated pregnant women are amongst the most vulnerable to severe illness from Covid-19. 

But risk of Covid-19 transmission due to police negligence is just one of the ways in which the harms caused by over-policing have been exacerbated in the context of the pandemic. 

Policing was made central to the British government’s response to Covid-19, and police forces were granted extraordinary powers to enforce restrictions on movement and social gatherings, administer fines and detain potentially infectious people. This raft of legislation was rushed through parliament with minimal scrutiny, having severe consequences.

The racialised impact of these increased police powers has been well-documented. For example, Black and Asian people have been issued Covid-related fines at a rate 1.8 times higher than white people, while the initial months of the pandemic saw a marked increase in police use of force, and stop and search practices, which continue to disproportionately affect racially minoritised groups and communities.

Discussions with research participants reflected these patterns, revealing how new police powers have interacted with long-standing forms of racial and class inequalities to further criminalise those communities already subject to forms of violent over-policing. The report documents a number of experiences in which Covid-related powers were used to stop or even arrest individuals in conjunction with other highly racialised police practices, such as drug-related police stops. One individual described policing under Covid as: “Like a golden ticket to […] go out there in Black communities and just ridicule us.” The use of Covid-related regulations in the kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer, which took place during the course of the research, was yet another heart-breaking reminder of how particular groups are rendered more (not less) vulnerable when police are granted exceptional powers.

Despite pleas from leading civil rights organisations to respond to the pandemic in a way that prioritised both public health and the upholding of civil rights, the government’s approach to policing reflected their ongoing commitment to an increasingly authoritarian agenda. Even as certain police measures are now scaled back while the pandemic develops, they have helped to pave the way for a massive expansion of policing in the coming years. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (now Act) is set to increase a multitude of police powers, ensuring even less police accountability and hitting racially minoritised communities hardest, all while clamping down on our legal right to protest. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the extent to which we do and must depend on each other – for our health, well-being and ultimately our lives. Now is the time to connect various struggles around a common message: policing is not a public service, but another critical threat to our collective safety.

Questions for Abolitionists

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Siobhan O’Neill (NPMP)

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

As someone who claims ‘I am an abolitionist’, I find myself asking questions about what this means and what questions come with taking up this position. While I am yet to have the answers – and perhaps need not have them all to imagine an alternative world – I share my ‘Questions for Abolitionists’ here in the hope that writing them down will help me think them through and perhaps be helpful for others too. I also hope that posing these questions might spark reflection and conversation amongst those of us interested in abolitionism. I frame these questions with police abolition specifically in mind – and in the context of the UK in particular – but it is important to note that police abolition is one part of a larger, global picture. Police abolition is linked, not only to prison abolition and the transformation of the criminal justice system, but also to the abolition of state violence in all its forms (for example border enforcement and migration controls) and, more broadly, of structures of global racial capitalism.  

Abolitionism, and police and prison abolitionism in particular, are not new. They have, however, become more widespread in popular discourse in recent times. Following the global Black Lives Matter mobilisations in 2020, which were ignited by widespread outrage at George Floyd’s death at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin in the US and the continuity of police violence this case represented, conversations about defunding, divesting and abolishing the police have become ever more prevalent. While the violence and harms of policing are also not new, more and more people are recognising and critiquing how problematic policing and the cultures embedded in police forces are.

According to figures based on Home Office, IOPC and other governmental agency data, there were 1,804 reported deaths in police custody and/or following other forms of contact with the police between 1990 and 2021. Racially minoritised people die disproportionately as a result of use of force or restraint by the police and “in the past ten years, 8% of those who died in custody were racialised as Black, despite representing only 3% of the population”

Racially minoritised people are “disproportionately represented in the CJS at every level, from stop-and-search to arrests, conviction and imprisonment and deaths in custody”. It has also been reported that “there were 1,500 accusations of sexual misconduct (including sexual harassment, exploitation of crime victims and child abuse)” against police officers between 2012 and 2018.

Furthermore, “at least 15 women have been killed by police officers” and “one woman a week comes forward to report a serving police officer for domestic or sexual violence” with “700+ reports of domestic abuse” being made against police officers between April 2015-2018. Not only is it clear that “at every level, racism defines UK policing”, evidently, sexism too is a constituent part of UK policing (see Connelly, article five). As well as the statistical evidence, specific cases – such as the murder of Sarah Everard by Met Police Officer Wayne Couzens (and the excessive use of police force at the vigil held for her) as well as the (racialised) policing practices throughout the COVID-19 pandemic (see Harris, article two) – have demonstrated tangibly just how problematic the institution and cultures of policing are here in the UK (and beyond).

These are not problems that can be ‘reformed’ away, they are systemic and entrenched in the foundations of policing. From its emergence, policing has always been about ‘discipline and control’, ‘protecting private property, quelling social unrest, putting down strikes’ and disciplining the unruly poor rather than preventing crimes and protecting ‘the people’, as is commonly argued. Given these roots, refining and improving such an institution – one designed with these racialised, classed and gendered power dynamics embedded in it – is an extremely limited intervention. Rather than addressing the problems of policing through superficial reforms that make policing friendlier and more diverse, and seek to hold ‘bad apples’ accountable for their individual wrongdoings, abolition offers us a transformative solution to the problems of policing, by understanding those individual wrongdoings to be institutionally mediated. Thus, abolition is a process of dismantling the institution as a whole and the logics that underpin it, it pushes us to open up our political imaginations beyond the systems, structures and institutions that we take for granted. This, however, is not simple and there are a lot of challenging questions that arise through considerations of abolitionism, below I consider just a few.

What do we do in the meantime?

For abolitionists, building an alternative world is the goal. Yet building such a world is a challenge that takes time and a lot of work. The goal can feel a long way off so what do we do in the meantime? I begin with this question because it feels the most immediate.

In a context where policing is taken for granted and deeply embedded in our societies and cultures, what is best practice for abolitionists in the meantime? For instance, if I were to witness a man being violent and threatening towards a woman in public, and if that man were armed and I felt unequipped to intervene and that my safety might also be at risk, what should I do? Though I would feel conflicted about doing so, in such a situation and in a context in which policing seems to be the only option (or at least the most available option), I would be inclined to call the police, even as I acknowledge the inadequacy and risks of doing so. Similarly, if someone were to break into my flat late at night and I felt I was in immediate danger, what should I do? As a young woman of colour, the police don’t invoke a sense of safety and security for me. However, in a situation where there is immediate danger and no established alternatives to turn to, calling the police seems like an action I might have to take.  As abolitionists how can we reckon with this? What is the best course of action when there are not alternative and legitimate channels available? What is best practice for abolitionists in societies where we are yet to establish alternatives and in which we are striving for, but have not yet reached, abolition?

What are the alternatives to policing?

Following this, what are the alternatives to policing – and the current criminal justice system – and do we need to know what they are in order to be abolitionists? As Ruth Wilson Gilmore argues, “abolition is not absence, it is presence, it is “building the future”. As well as setting out to dismantle the institution of policing, we must adopt “proactive, visionary positions that centre alternatives to policing”. With this in mind, what are the processes, practices and institutions we would want to see in the quest to build alternative, better and more just societies?

Some of the alternatives should be structural solutions that tackle the issues at the root of ‘crime’. Investing in education and health services, building up and providing accessible mental health and counselling services, decriminalising and destigmatising drugs and sex work, as well as broadly tackling poverty would drastically transform our societies, opening up opportunities to those who have been disadvantaged and excluded from the formal economy. If people are denied access to or success in the formal economy, and if they are constrained to living in areas that have been neglected by the state, ‘crime’ can be the only option for survival. Dealing with the structural causes in this way would massively reduce ‘crime’ and thus the need for policing. This is especially pertinent given that, in policing and the popular imagination, the label of ‘crime’ is primarily reserved for the actions and behaviours of the poor and working classes.

As such, the police – and criminal justice system more broadly – tend to ‘excuse and ignore’ the crimes of elites while ‘intensely criminalising’ the poor and working classes. An example of this is the way that those whose actions led to the endangerment of tenants’ lives and actual deaths when Grenfell Tower caught fire in 2017 – the Kensington Tenants Management organisation, local and central government, and the companies that supplied the flammable cladding to Grenfell Tower – have not been held accountable.

As well as these systemic alternatives, are there alternative institutions we want in our abolitionist future? While abolitionists and those who have had bad experiences with the police take issue with the police’s self-appointed role as ‘protectors of the people’ who keep us safe, there is a question to be asked about what kinds of institutions and people we want to keep us safe, and when interpersonal violence does arise, what kinds of non-punitive and non-carceral processes might we have in place?

There is no singular or simple alternative to policing and the current criminal justice system. As Angela Davis says, we should look for “an array of alternatives that will require radical transformations of many aspects of our society”. What are some of the various options we might want? And relatedly, do we need to know exactly what our alternatives are to be abolitionists or is it enough to want to dismantle policing without having alternatives in mind?

What does justice look like after abolition?

Related to the idea of alternatives, there is a question to be asked about what justice looks like after abolition. What might we imagine justice to be when it is not punitive or carceral? In an abolitionist future, what does justice look like for those who have been subjected to violence and harm? What might a community-based system of justice look like and what steps must we take to implement such a system?

When thinking about these questions about abolitionist justice – particularly in terms of the way we approach the perpetrators of violence and injustice – I think especially about those police officers who have been responsible and/or involved in the unlawful killings of people like Sean Rigg, Christopher Alder, Joy Gardner, Leon Patterson, Sheku Bayoh, Ronaldo Johnson (see Pimblott, article six) and many others (see the United Families and Friends Campaign) who have died at the hands of the police. How can we hold these police officers – and others in the criminal justice system – to account? How do we seek justice while also being abolitionists who oppose the current structure and punitive ideology of the criminal justice system? How, as abolitionists, can we balance our goals with the immense grief and need to see those who have committed serious harms held accountable for their actions? In what ways can we give space to those who have lost loved ones and been so deeply harmed by violence and injustice that they might turn to carceral responses?

In an abolitionist future – which is one in which we no longer dehumanise those who have caused harm to others as the current criminal justice system does – what does justice look like when we recognise the humanity in those who we are holding accountable for their wrongdoing? How can we simultaneously hold people accountable and honour those who have been the victims of wrongdoing while recognising the humanity of perpetrators?

Does alternative language help or hinder abolitionist goals?

Following this idea of alternatives through, I wonder how using alternative language might help or hinder abolitionist goals? Often, the language of divestment and defunding comes alongside (or instead of) abolition. These terms may be useful as they might be less alienating to those for whom the idea of complete abolition is unimaginable, intimidating or too extreme. The idea of diverting money away from policing and channelling it into education, healthcare, poverty alleviation, youth centres and so on seems to be more compelling to a wider public and to those who are critical of policing but think that there might be a role for such an institution in our societies – even if that role is reduced or reformed.

In this way, it seems valuable that a wider range of people can be brought into conversations about the problems of policing, and perhaps these people might be likely to ‘get on board’ with abolition given that they are already have some shared ideas of defunding and divesting and looking for alternatives to practices of policing. However, I wonder how using alternative (more palatable) language might dilute some of the radical intentions behind abolitionism. With this in mind, as abolitionists, should we use alternative language and, when we do, what is best practice to ensure that it is effective and, simultaneously, allows us to retain the radical and transformative nature of abolitionism?

Can we abolish the police without abolishing the state?

If the police function, as many abolitionists argue, to protect and uphold the state as agents of state violence and control, should we shift our abolitionist focus from the institutions of the state to the state itself? If the state has shifted from the “(potential) provider of social goods to […] security machine pre-emptively weeding out threat”,

does it have a place in the abolitionist future? And in what ways might we organise our politics if we are to move away from this?

Returning to policing and the criminal justice system as the focus, is it possible to abolish the police (and prisons) without abolishing the state? Perhaps, but as Ida Danewid articulated when I asked her the same question, if we abolish the institution of the police without dismantling the state, its violence will likely be carried out by another institution and/or in different forms. In which case, abolishing the state seems necessary. A secondary question that emerges from this is, should (or can) our solutions include the government? Given that the government can be understood as the particular group of people who govern the state and who have control over state apparatuses, is a solution that includes the government necessarily limited in that it does not extend to the state? While the concept of government is different from that of the state – the state is a political organisation that has jurisdiction over a particular territory and the government is one part of that organisation – the two are inseparable. I’m thinking about Alex Vitale’s ‘The End of Policing’ here, in which he argues “we need to build the capacity of communities to solve problems on their own or in true partnership with government”, and “we can use the power of communities and government to make our cities safer without relying on police, courts, and prisons”. Vitale imagines the government to be a “non-punitive” one, but does the inclusion of a government, no matter how non-punitive, necessarily limit abolitionist goals because of its inseparability from the state?  

For those abolitionists who are in favour of abolishing the state, there is another question about where our focus should lie. If we decide that it is in fact necessary to abolish the state, should we work from the bottom-up (abolishing various institutions in order to abolish the state) or from the top-down (abolish the state and the rest will follow)? Maybe it’s both or somewhere in between. There does not seem to be a clear answer. Referring back to the first question I posed – concerning ‘what we do in the meantime’ – might be useful here too. If state abolition is an unimaginable, far-off and contentious goal, to what extent can and should we include non-punitive governments in our steps towards abolishing the police while we are striving toward a broader, more radical abolition? Can we work with the state and/or governments in the meantime?

Concluding Remarks

These are big questions, to which I don’t have the answers, however, it is clear that we should continually engage with and grapple with these (and more) questions as we work toward abolitionist goals. There are no singular or simple answers to these questions, but it is important that we think about them collectively, not only for ourselves, but also that we might be better placed to respond to those who oppose abolition or who are yet to be convinced that we can imagine other societies.

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.