Intelligence and trust in neighbourhoods

Attention to date on police intelligence has primarily focused on the common good and that of society, however, there are very different realities to community policing – rural, urban, inner city, town centre, neighbourhood and communities.

A common denominator is that the fiscal settlement announced in last autumn’s Budget enables the Home Office to make progress on its first steps of continued investment to support frontline policing levels across the country and put us on track to start to deliver more neighbourhood police officers and police community support officers.

That said, let us not take for granted there is one further serious commonality – victims.

Publication last October by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) of its report – ‘Crime in England and Wales: Year ending June 2024’ – provided statistical evidence of the problems facing neighbourhoods. Additionally, there is an inevitable caveat presented with statistical reporting of underlying trends that are not quantifiable, ie, reputational damage perceived by a national retailer as a consequence of being a victim of organised crime shoplifting gangs. If their data were to be recorded it would add considerably to the 469,788 reported, whereas at the other end of the violence spectrum, robbery sits with an ONS estimate of 139,000 victims, set against police recorded crime of violence against the person sitting at 1,984,344 victims.

A current yardstick used by the media, politicians and the public alike which is negatively affecting neighbourhoods is anti-social behaviour (ASB). It is approaching three decades since ‘sub-criminal disorder’ was recognised in the Crime and Disorder Act, 1998. The Criminal Damage Act 1971, Public Order Act 1986, followed the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 all of which correspondingly further define arrestable offences within those attributed in common parlance as anti-social behaviour.

Realisation of the undertaking is only one characteristic as nescient understanding is no defence. Policing in the UK being at the vanguard of community safety is the impartial, autonomous, independent, arbiter of objective integrity and as such employs discretion through its objective interventions.

A balance for mainstream policing to gauge is an evenness sought of intrusive dictatorial authority combating ASB while restoring the authority of the rule of law on our streets, weighed against that of fair and just attentiveness to the demands of communities.

A further contrast of the pervasive policing culture of scrutiny protecting citizens from harm is presented as one of community safety being dominant over that of privacy.

An equilibrium is sought; a conundrum that must protect our rights to privacy and those of our neighbours alike, in a world where individually and collectively information is being harvested at a greater rate than at any previous time.

In terms of policing, data is arguably becoming the most important weapon at its disposal, the introduction of evidence-based policing with the development of what is known as, Precision Policing being thrust into the limelight alongside that of the expansion of artificial intelligence (in admiration of West Midlands Police’s, ‘Andi-Esra’ virtual phone answering assistant), and facial recognition technology that is further evidenced by the introduction of the ‘Data Use and Access Bill’, to Parliament in October last year.

The dichotomy that is the contradiction of privacy with community policing is a valid distinction, because carrying understanding forward for something to be private or public is not a definition we can excessively use in policing as it’s an oversimplification of a generalisation.

A reality is presented when considering the ONS’s figures of 620,861 victims of stalking and harassment (this is for the complete crime), that is how many times is this to be multiplied to capture the number of people who are suffering indignity and abuse every single day of the week but as yet do not qualify as the full offence?

Expanding the approach to address objectively the question of privacy over that of the greater good when discussing neighbourhood policing methodology adds little to the distinction of what is private. Here is where the body politic and the individual citizen differ. Fortunately what is private and public in policing terms is made easier through explaining what criminal activity is, or that of what is for a policing purpose; neighbourhood police officers must be able to distinguish between not just legally but morally and ethically their authority when undertaking core civic duties.

Unsurprisingly there isn’t a paradigm of an ‘off duty’ police officer, because regularly an officer’s private time may not be distinguishable from that of their sworn duty and public responsibilities. Officers are perpetually mindful of their surroundings and events occurring in their vicinity, even to the point of subconsciously recording facts and features; that said, officers are entitled to private space and time as per every other citizen.

Privacy for the general public is a two-fold consideration of what is personal, that is; metaphorical space or personal information. Likewise, understanding what differentiates opinion from a justified belief is one component of intelligence evaluation, but frankly almost an irrelevance in the harvesting of information at a community level (including malicious and criminal intent submissions).

Community intelligence-led policing methodology (CILPM) is the repayment of trust for the sharing of privacy, counterbalanced by the opportunity for all members of communities to have their views, opinions, thoughts, beliefs, observations, experiences, accepted.

A consequence of addressing current discourse is reiterated as the issue of ASB plagues the lives of citizens of every persuasion up and down the country.

In the year ending March 2024, the Crime Survey for England and Wales showed that around 35 per cent of respondents personally witnessed or experienced ASB in their local area…

A survey conducted in 2023 by YouGov on behalf of Resolve found that more than 58 per cent of victims or witnesses do not report ASB.

The Government’s commitment to its Safer Streets Mission includes an integral element of a Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee and promoting the multi-agency Anti-Social Behaviour Case Review strategy. These are complemented for the betterment of all communities by what the Home Office envisages will be a forthcoming increase in neighbourhood police officer numbers, the enactment of new ASB legislation and the College of Policing’s, new Neighbourhood Policing Pathway.

The Home Secretary’s announcement of a policy package on police accountability published last October is a recent reassurance of its commitment to restoring trust, balanced with the College of Policing’s support of the national anti-social behaviour awareness week in November maintains attention on community safety.

The Chancellor’s Budget was structured to allow the Home Office to form a “wider police reform package to rebuild confidence in policing”. The settlement will support the Government’s priorities to tackle violence against women and girls and knife crime, which includes implementing Raneem’s Law to put domestic abuse specialists in control rooms and establishing trailblazer Young Futures Hubs to prevent young people being drawn into crime.

CILPM is an information repository, an intelligence reservoir. It offers a facility for officers and staff to communicate observations, knowledge, concerns, hunches, opinions; submit a contribution on an event, investigation, complaint, action, incident, accident, crime, or on ASB. It is about protection from harm.

What I also envisage is the inclusion of all employees of a police service, on or off-duty, fostering those who in their capacity as a private citizen attend public forums, the Neighbourhood Watch, council meetings, their local village association, or religious gatherings, protests, ceremonies, formally or informally, officially or unofficially, those who shop, walk their dogs, exercise, tend the garden, or socialise within their neighbourhoods to contribute to their local community, bridging observation and conversation undertaken within the ritual of everyday life.

Tautologically presenting CILPM as not only conditional on the consultation, continuity, and the consensus apparatus of community policing reinforces understanding; it adds layers of authenticity, scrutiny and accuracy to intelligence products, furthermore, it tempers exuberance; for society reassuringly requires openness in terms of trustworthiness, accountability, safety, equality and justice.

The benefits for policing at grassroots level, within multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, city centre landscapes, or urban, rural, domestic town centre neighbourhoods of obtaining information through the apparent insignificance of everyday life is devised to corroborate and underwrite incident reports, occurrence notifications, crime complaints, intelligence submissions, evidential investigations, or partner-agency referrals.

There is hyperbole because at its core it is a pragmatic, proactive, transformative methodology. The principle is not just a system and programme for policing, it is a doctrine of change – one of improvement, accountability, evidenced based practice, putting people at the heart of the strategy of protecting the public from harm.

Transparency of government spending and an accountability of elected body provides a degree of oversight which informs as well as reassures.

The previous government had a financial plan for 2024/25 that would provide policing with an increase up to £842.9 million. A written statement in January of this year by Lord Sharpe of Epsom, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office said: “Available funding to local policing bodies will increase next year by up to an additional £922.2 million… (potentially) taking total funding for local policing bodies to £16.4 billion.” These figures follow 2021/22’s £13,721.7 billion and 2022/23’s £14,517.5 billion.

The Chancellor’s Budget statement to the House of Commons included a total Home Office funding increase from £20.3 billion in 2023/24 to £22.1 billion in 2025/26, an investment in average real terms of an additional 5.6 per cent.

Scrutiny is mirrored in police officer resources, The Government’s official website provides a surfeit amount of data; as of March 31, 2024, in England and Wales, 64,565 officers were employed in local policing roles out of a contingent of 147,746 officers, a decrease of 4.8 per cent in volume but accounting for 47.8 per cent of the total. A total police workforce including officers, staff, police community support officers and designated officers stands at 236,588, an increase of 1.2 per cent on the previous year.

Community policing is confidently reinforced as a government priority.

Steve Dodd is a retired South Wales Police detective. He is a subject matter expert on police intelligence having authored the force’s Community Intelligence Force Policy. An adviser on the College of Policing’s Intelligence Professionalisation Programme, he was deployed on the Government’s working group on the Western Balkans Serious Organised Crime strategy. An international liaison officer, he is an international airline certified extradition officer, plus National Financial Investigator qualified. He is currently writing his ‘Community Intelligence-Led Policing Methodology’ including the octahedron pyramid, a transtheoretical approach, and an inverted strategy thesis.