Police committed to combatting anti-semitism as public tensions rise, says NPCC

It has received a number of ‘duplicated communications’ from members of the public, expressing a belief that “policing has not been robust enough in its response to material and chanting during public demonstrations throughout the UK”.

The NPCC says the same formatted communication was sent to other organisations and some media outlets.

In a statement, it said: “A proportionate response to upholding human rights and freedoms is a vital part of how policing protects our society.

“Human rights underpin our lives, but they often compete. Quite often, they are contentious to people upholding different views on national or global events.

“Police colleagues and commanders have to make dynamic decisions, taking into consideration competing rights, but also practical and tactical decisions about how to prevent escalation of tensions and to keep our communities safe in the short and long term.

“Inevitably, there will be occasions where people feel the police decisions are wrong and that officers have over or under-reacted.”

The NPCC said operational decisions for policing events and responding to reported criminality are the responsibility of individual officers, operational commanders, and local chief officers.

“All police colleagues know and expect that they will be asked to justify their decisions and explain why they took them,” it said. “There are established procedures in place to challenge or complain about operational decisions. This is not within the remit of the NPCC.

“Given the large number of emails received into NPCC, it is clear that tensions and levels of fear remain extremely high, particularly in the wake of the tragedy of the terrorist attack in Manchester.

“For this reason, we think it is vital to restate our commitment to combat anti-semitism and to bring to justice those who commit crime fuelled by that hostility.”

In a statement to the House of Commons, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the right to protest is a fundamental freedom, but it must be balanced against the right the public have to their safety and security.

“In my conversations with community leaders and the police, it is clear that balance has not been struck,” she said.

The Home Secretary is giving police forces new powers to put conditions on repeat protests. Forces will be authorised to consider the ‘cumulative impact’ of protests, assessing previous activity when deciding to impose limits on protesters.

And as the Manchester attack showed, she warned that “the reality is we now face a domestic terrorist threat in this country that is more complex, less predictable, and harder to detect than ever before”.

The NPCC said: “We believe that UK policing has had a strong history of responding to anti-semitism for many years. We have collected and shared data on anti-semitic crime since 2008, and in 2014 we were the first institution globally to adopt the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia definition of anti-semitism, a forerunner to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition that was later adopted by HM Government.

“We work extremely closely with the Jewish community, particularly our trusted and invaluable partners at the Community Security Trust, with whom we have a data-sharing agreement. This allows us to meet regularly to exchange data and also to raise concerns that are held by the Jewish community.

“Whilst we have a duty to uphold the right to free speech and freedom to protest, that right does not extend to criminal actions, and the police will not tolerate anti-semitic or other hate crime. We will always seek to bring such criminals to justice where it is lawful and proportionate to do so.”