Public wants to see more active policing

There is something of a paradox here: judging by the commentary, Keir Starmer’s response to the recent public unrest has been quite effective. The riots appear to have died down, the courts are making high-profile examples of those involved, and it seems to many that the prime minister has passed his first major test since taking office.

Again Opinion polls say otherwise. Judging by the public's reaction, the riots ended Starmers' honeymoon after just a month. According to YouGov, almost half of all respondents I think the government handled the riots badly.

This is not due to any latent sympathy for the rioters. According to another poll, the four words most used by the public to describe those involved in the unrest were “thugs,” “rioters,” “racist,” and “far right.” That’s hardly a ringing endorsement.

No, the problem is that the answer was not quite hard. For confirmation, YouGov has re-run one of my favorite polls: Do you think the police should or should not be able to use the following items in their response to rioters? Here are the percentages in favor of each option:

• Water cannon (75%)
• Taser (75%)
• Mounted police (72%)
• Curfews (72%)
• Tear gas (64%)
• Plastic balls (48%)
• Live ammunition (19%)

These figures are slightly lower than those of YouGov. I asked the same question following the 2011 riots, when nearly two-thirds of Britons supported baton beatings and a third The British have supported the idea of ​​letting the police shoot rioters in the streets. But the general point remains the same: the British are very much in favour of a proactive, kinetic approach to policing, which is completely at odds with what they are getting.

You may remember the furore over Theresa May’s refusal to buy water cannons for the Metropolitan Police, but that’s just the beginning. According to police sources, even officers with Level 1 public order training are not trained in the use of energy-dampening projectiles (plastic bullets or baton rounds to you and me); only instructors maintain this skill just in case. Meanwhile, CS gas is not permitted to be used in Britain at all.

Why? If one presses the question, as I have done in the past, one often gets a very vague appeal to the famous “Peelian principles”, the nine sayings stated by Sir Robert Peel when he founded the modern police force, which is supposed to make British policing unique and special.

Read the principles and you won’t have much to complain about. But there’s also no obvious connection between them and the way they’re presented in support of hands-off, soft policing. If the foundation of our model is that “the police are the public and the public are the police,” that should matter more to policymakers than the fact that the public were the police, that would be the French police – not really known for a cold blood approach to riots and public order.

Indeed, if we examine Peel’s remarks in detail, we see that the contradictions only increase. For example, the very first principle is: “The prevention of crime and disorder, as an alternative to their suppression by military force and the severity of legal sanctions.” Yet the hands-off approach of policing means that today, just as in 2011, a majority of the public is in favor deploy the army to restore order.

The second principle states that “the power of the police to perform their functions and duties depends upon public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and upon their ability to command and maintain public respect.” Again, modern methods fail this test, even if we set aside any question of two-tier policing. a majority of British They have no confidence in the police's ability to “protect people and property from further unrest.”

The inclusion of property in this issue is crucial. Currently, police doctrine does not focus on confronting rioters in defense of mere property. Instead, aggressive tactics and kinetic methods are only employed when there is a direct threat to life. The practical effect of this is to place the welfare of the rioter above the rights and property of law-abiding citizens, a situation that clearly (and rightly) displeases the public.

Defenders of the status quo might appeal to the sixth principle, which enjoins police “to use only the minimum degree of physical force necessary on a particular occasion to achieve a police objective.”

But this only underscores the previous point: the public clearly has a different and broader idea of ​​what the police's objectives should be in a riot. Why is it better to let someone's business be looted or set on fire than to let a potential arsonist try his luck under a baton or a blow from a truncheon?

Peelian principles are often summed up in the phrase “policing by consent.” But modern politics seems to have a grossly distorted interpretation of this phrase. Logic suggests, and the history of British riot policing confirms, that it means the consent of the general population, not the consent of criminals and rioters.

Last week, I looked at different ways The Prime Minister could thus expand the pool of properly trained law enforcement personnel available to police commanders and deliver on his promise to create a standing army. But as I said at the time, there is only limited use in having more personnel if they are not used appropriately. The Police Federation seems to agree.

This is why the government should seriously consider creating a new, operationally separate, public order force. Not only would this provide an opportunity to instill a new culture of command in the public order police, but having riot control duties carried out by a separate force would also appease those who object that a more heavy-handed approach to public order would damage police-community relations and compromise their ordinary work.

So far, Starmer's Standing Army is little more than an organisational sleight of hand. But there is every reason to believe that public opinion would be very much in favour of its implementation.

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