Only a few bad apples
Steve Dodd says it is time to end internecine police bashing by distinguishing between what carries jeopardy and what does not.
Policing is typically being judged on biased commentary influenced by selective interpretations. Columnists, politicians, and commentators alike vainly refer to Sir Robert Peel’s 196-year-old vision.
Today, astute and clear foresight is far more difficult to distinguish because of the vast scope of responsibilities the police are endowed with; to serve, protect, prevent, detect, prosecute, and ‘any other business’.
Policing addresses each duty, obligation, role without fear or favour, unbiased, independent of external influence, professionally and within the law.
Here is the juxtaposition.
Reality dawns, maybe not fully, clearly or insightfully. Nonetheless, it is from the bizarreness of the everyday to departure from the required standard, be it through indifference, ignorance, or malice, but policing is being ‘played’ by politics.
Final touches are being applied to the Police and Crime Bill 2025, all-the-while third-party influencers continue their endeavours to regurgitate suffocating rhetoric under the weight of their own hubris.
Police officers predominantly appear in the general public’s life at the most devastating of times, in circumstances of unimaginable horror, or overwhelming sorrow, of life affecting consequences, or of horrendous pain and loss. Strong impartial direction is required; situations demand forthright control delivered with clarity, understanding, reassurance, and support irrespective of status; be they victim, witness or culprit.
The present feeling of abandoned isolation for individuals and communities alike is compounded as everyday attention is focused on AI and technical progress as policing and innovative developers are rightly delighted with advances in their crime fighting weaponry. These resounding successes puts further focus on their capabilities but can nevertheless, oppositely exacerbate the emotion of increased vulnerability within communities, and of there being high rates of delinquency with a perceived prevalence towards violent hooliganism engaged in anti-social behaviour rampaging across whole swathes of ‘no-go’ districts.
It is right and proper that law enforcement is predominantly focused on confronting crime, for policing is but one community resource, (councils, probation service, social services, alternative to custody programmes, private and charitable sector, etcetera). It is a contributor, nay, a guiding authority but it is not the oracle, that remains in the realms of politics.
I acknowledge the confusion, accepting ambiguity, but one could put a case for law enforcement being the victim of its own successful publicity, however it cannot be declared more forthrightly than; the police service exists to maintain the law.
The Neighbourhood Policing Programme is professionalising the role of the community officer; it is a disciple within the College of Policing’s, Policing Professional Profiles. It is akin to the Professionalising Investigations Programme (PIP) and Intelligence Professionalisation Programme (IPP). It is not tokenistic, it is a genuine development of specialisms within the service.
Community Intelligence-Led Policing Methodology (CILPM) is a further practical theory providing a dual solution of public engagement and community safety.
Firstly, engagement: reassuring citizens of safer environments through consistent local consultation; whilst providing neighbourhood policing with a tool to address community cohesion, plus tactical and strategic planning to tackle frontline crime head on.
Common understandings would include three descriptors for neighbourhood policing. Faith: defined as belief, conviction, care, confidence, expectation, reliance. Environment: Inner city, urban town centre, village green, rural hamlet, isolated homesteads. Community: including ethnicity, colour, age, race, gender, religion, sexuality, be they self-defined, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, determined on socio-economic scales, by geographic boundaries or political persuasion.
Centralised national guidelines are one thing, local application is a separate world. Policing is unique; it is not education working to a single curriculum, nor the National Health Service providing healthcare at the point of delivery. Neither is it confined by the vagaries of local government, complementarily though they are. Policing is both separate and irrevocably linked to the people and their civic masters.
Among the prioritiy outcomes in the National Audit Office’s overview of the Home Office 2024/25 published in October was ‘Deliver safer streets, prevent crime, reduce serious harm, increase confidence in policing and the criminal justice system’. 1
The geographic size of England and Wales is approximately 150,000 sq km, 43 constabularies provide law enforcement for a population rapidly approaching 70 million where in excess of nione million headline crime incidents are committed per annum. 2
Professionalism in each-and-every single action – nothing less is acceptable! Simply put, public confidence is not an ambition to be sought; it is inherent in sworn duty, the delivery of a professional service should negate any need to discuss the vagaries of individual experiences or of political persuasion.
Reassurance is borne through the provision of service, delivered with authority, application of the law, impartially and a committed strength of conviction.
A phenomenon which appears as yet adequately explained is the motivation of an individual to become a police officer. It takes a unique blend of character traits to suit being a rank-and-file police officer (for they are predominantly ordinary people doing a paid job, with mortgages, debts, families, private lives with their own children with many having to take a second job).
Just for one moment try to understand the turmoil, heartache, stress, sheer horror officers faced when these ordinary citizens attended the vicinity of the Southport murder scene.
Which in no way conceivably compares or detracts from that of the family’s grief.
Imagine if you can the nature of the duties those officers were to undertake or assist with at the commencement of their tour of duty on the fateful day of July 29, 2024. Now, try and comprehend how they internalised the murder of three little girls and the stabbing with a chef’s knife of eight other children and the two persons who intervened to save their lives.
The very next day as these officers were rationalising, relying heavily on their personal coping mechanisms in an unimaginable attempt to understand the abhorrence of the events. Then, there they were back on the same street, merely 400m from the scene of the murders controlling rioters who violently attacked them with bricks and bottles, looting a corner shop, setting fire to a police car and causing injury to 39 fellow officers, eight receiving serious injury and 27 requiring hospital treatment.
I must be candid for a moment; this is where confidence, loyalty and faith in our police service is held – it is in the police doing their job: it is a job. What a job.
The baseness of misogyny, sexism, racism, and cowardly violence as alleged at Charing Cross police station undermines integrity and standards of behaviour.
The Home Secretary announced in January 2025 a £200,000,000 increase in police funding, with officer numbers this year in the region of 146,000 out of an operational workforce nearing 250,000. 3 All potentially devalued as a BBC Panorama programme purported to expose a ‘hidden culture’ in the Metropolitan Police Service. 4
Prior to its broadcast it could be held that a misconception was of the IOPC’s disclosure of it having notified 11 police officers based at Charing Cross police station that they were under investigation for potential gross misconduct sets a negative impression forming mistrust within the general population. 5
Although, equally and oppositely, it can also have be portrayed as a sign of openness and confidence in an independent system that cannot be corrupted. For the record, in the region of 1,500 persons have been dismissed by the Metropolitan Police Service in the past three years, removals running at almost 11 staff members a week, though I accepted viewing Panorama’s footage left an impression difficult for the public to come to terms with.
Interestingly, what is well ingrained in the operational policing culture are the legal parameters and rules of evidence pertaining to agent provocateur or undercover policing. These were not explained in the broadcast, likewise, were rules considered and disregarded in the name of expediency for a ‘good story’?
Fairness on television and in court being two completely different definitions – all about viewing figures, not genuinely about jeopardy.
Were leading questions put to the officers? I do recollect that section 78 PACE, written over 40 years ago set out the grounds on which a court can exclude evidence that has been unfairly obtained – the questionable use of copious amounts of alcohol would surely qualify.
Similar knowledge of Article 6 of E.C.H.R. and of the quarter of a century old Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, (irrespective of R v. Loosely) come to mind; on that matter the general public may enquire, was the CPS consulted and what was the BBC’s own legal advice?
What will reinforce confidence and restore trust in policing is that those persons suspected of misconduct or criminal offences are treated in the same way as every other citizen would be. The law is the law, application of it is just. Openness and transparency, no exemptions, likewise no over-reactions, no hysteria, mere matter of factly letting the process take its course without undue influence.
Balance: let justice be done and be seen to be done.
Here again it is easy to apportion blame on the Metropolitan Police Service for lack of supervision, which by the way could easily be a direct result of inadequate funding. A glaring issue the Panorama documentary exposed is lack of support.
Guilt apportioning condemnation of an individual is easy, what has been far more difficult to provide is a conducive environment, a refuge for all who don a uniform and walk-the-walk. An atmosphere of understanding, support, comradery; structured supervision for all ranks beneficial to operational demands, physical, mental, spiritual, and psychological refuge which would invalidate the behaviour witnessed and condemn it to oblivion.
There is one value of the Panorama programme; it emphasised two centuries of disregarding a duty of care to one’s employees.
Interpretation of what was transmitted highlighted the enormous issues for officers and support staff alike, for the service as a whole, but just as importantly for the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council. Passing the buck was blatantly obvious, the formality of dismissive responsibility hiding under the umbrella of ‘integrity and strength of character’, hoping that it somewhat exempts the higher echelons from acknowledging policing’s core problems.
Within 24 hours of the Panorama broadcast a Greater Manchester Police (GMP) officer was required to take the life of another human being to save others, and what of the tragic loss of the innocent life. The public have confidence knowing that policing goes on irrespective of a TV programme; GMP officers have had rest days cancelled (another part of the ‘job’), while in London within two days of the Manchester Synagogue murder, a pro-Palestinian march saw the arrest of more than 400 persons in and around the vicinity of Trafalgar Square – where Charing Cross police station is located [incidentally].
Let us now take just one news article off the broadcast sheet of the BBC on October 3; a recent editorial from the murder trial of two-year-old Ethan Ives-Griffiths.
Mr Justice Griffiths presiding over the trial of the child’s mother and grandparents for her murder: “It was an act that would horrify any independent bystander”; it so harrowing the judge excused the jurors from ever having to sit on a jury again. 6
Of the investigation, North Wales Police Detective Constable Lee Harshey-Jones said: “Clearly all of us involved in this investigation… all of us will always find it difficult to think about. We’ve all had to suffer investigating this”.
Detective Superintendent Chris Bell, the senior investigating officer, described it as “the most emotionally-challenging case I’ve ever been on”.
“We’re not machines. We are humans, we are parents, we do live in the community,” he said.
“People may be forgiven for thinking that we don’t take it home, but we do. It’s impossible to close the door.”
Crown Prosecution Service specialist prosecutor Ms Nicola Rees said: “It stays with you, because it is so difficult to watch… it’s shocking, even after all these years in this job.”
She is further quoted as saying experienced medical professionals were reduced to tears while giving evidence “because they’ve never seen anything like it”.
Let me be candid for one moment; this is a police officer’s proud duty – serving justice; it is the establishment’s responsibility to protect each officer from the consequences of the oath taken.
All policing in the UK is community.
Each force is divided by equivalents of division, sector, beat, resulting in officers having more than just an allegiance to their roles, they know where; centres of religious worship, hotels, sports clubs, businesses, schools, hospitals, public houses, care homes, shops, factories are; and yes, the local ‘café’.
They know where criminals reside and drug dealers supply from, where the crime hot-spots are and where priority enforcement districts are located; they possess an intimate knowledge of their ‘patch’, be they designated authorised firearms, dog handlers, roads policing, response or neighbourhood.
CILPM enhances the value of the service by magnifying self-worth and professional pride of officers. A system specifically designed to engage deeper within communities, to facilitate greater understanding and insight.
A neighbourhood officer attending an advisory panel, or perambulating to take a victim/witness statement, following up with home visit to a victim of crime, delivering crime prevention advice to a village assembly, and pride of place, visiting a ‘tea-stop’ – each venue patrolled on foot.
All information obtained for a policing purpose in the course of a tour of duty is relevant, but information superfluous to a crime complaint, occurrence report, incident update, statement taking, likewise a conversation held with a member of the public, an observation made, or material deemed insufficient for intelligence submission is not recorded.
This data is fundamental to laminated intelligence methodology, a core component of CILPM, where understanding and context of crime and criminals is used to inform.
The current system is devoid of a process for capturing, collating, analysing and disseminating information perceived as mundane, of irrelevance to the task in hand. This is the very material that qualifies evidence-based policing, it quantifies problem-oriented policing and informs the strategies of solution-oriented practice.
Policing a community means knowing who is doing what, where and when and making law enforcement preparations.
CILPM’s pyramidal octahedron, provides top-down direction while authorising bottom-up action, it emancipates neighbourhood policing. Officers using their professional judgment to better police their communities, forces having access to far greater volumes of intelligence to strategise and plan interventions with foresight, or corroborating data analysis.
CILPM is frontline policing looking after its officers and individual communities; it is the solidarity of neighbourliness providing forces with a tool to combat crime and to enhance the public’s confidence in the knowledge policing is working for each one of them.
1 https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/home-office-overview-2024-25.pdf
2 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice
4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgq06d44jyo
7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yj9nw937lo
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.
