‘I’D DO IT ALL AGAIN’
DEPARTING POLICE CHIEF
WHEN Andy Marsh joined Avon and Somerset police in 1987, the force had two riot vans located 24/7 on Ashley Road in St Pauls.
He recalls, as a young officer, being deployed in those vans, alongside a police sergeant and five other PCs – and simply sitting there.
“What must the presence of two riot vans have said to that Black community about what our role was in relation to them?” he asks.
Fast forward 34 years, and Mr Marsh is leaving the force after five years as chief constable. He believes that time has seen police come “an awful long way” in “closing the trust gap” with areas like St Pauls, which have historically had tensions with the force.
It is also a tenure which has overseen major incidents that prompted global scrutiny of the force, from the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue to the Kill the Bill riot and subsequent protests.
Time for change
The 55-year-old’s contract expires tomorrow, July 1, with his deputy Sarah Crew to be made temporary chief constable until a permanent replacement is appointed later this year. Mr Marsh plans to take some time to think about what he will do next in his career.
Mr Marsh says: “The long and short of it is I’ve served as chief a long time, it’s a good time to consider a change when a new Police and Crime Commissioner comes in [the Conservatives’ Mark Shelford was elected PCC in May] and any contract renewal would only have been a year, which I think probably wouldn’t be best for me or the force.
“It is my view that with the boss of a big organisation that makes important decisions about people’s lives and public safety, people need to be sure they will be here long enough to see through the consequences of those decisions.”
Colston’s statue
When Colston’s statue was toppled on June 7 last year, Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees was among those who praised the “ego-free policing” in the days after, though figures including Mark Shelford since elected as PCC - criticised “terrible senior police leadership” over the decision not to intervene.
How does Mr Marsh feel now about how it was handled?
“They faced a two-minute window where they had to decide whether the appropriate thing was to intervene or to stand back, a split-second decision,” he says.
“There was one crime that day, a criminal damage which a number of people have been brought to justice for, and a number of other people face a trial for. There was no violence against people.
“Actually, all I’ve done as chief constable, is explain to the public what [the officers] did, why they did it and support them. And what sort of chief constable would I be if I hadn’t done that?
“Public order policing is one of those situations where you really don’t know what you’ll face and you really must deal with every situation on its merits as they emerge - sometimes even if you make no mistakes there is no good outcome.
“If they’d intervened, I do genuinely believe there would have been very serious violence, lots of injuries and we may not have even been able to recover the statue or hold the line until it was safely removed.
“So actually, I do agree with what the officers did, but does it make me proud or happy that some criminal damage happened in Bristol and the police weren’t in a position to either prevent it or respond immediately? No, that doesn’t make me proud. I certainly do support the actions and professionalism of the officers on duty that day.”
Aftermath
The days after the toppling saw Bristol become the centre of the world’s attention. It was widely reported that Home Secretary Priti Patel was unhappy with the police response; the Daily Mail said she “stamped down her authority during a ‘firm’ conversation” with Mr Marsh.
He says: “It really would not be appropriate for me to comment on any private conversations I may or may not have had with the Home Secretary or other political leaders.”
He adds: “I never felt my position was in jeopardy. And I felt that because when you know that the people you’re responsible for have done their best in a no-win situation, how could your job be in jeopardy for standing up for them?
“It’s not for me to speak for the people of Bristol, but my very strong sense is the majority of the residents of Bristol understood why we did what we did and didn’t do what we didn’t do.
“I am actually proud of Bristol and I have a long relationship with Bristol. And actually I can’t even begin to describe how proud I am of Avon and Somerset police and what we stand for ... So to hear some people say nice things about either Bristol or the police is nice and good, of course.
“But on the other hand, to hear people say very negative things either about Bristol or the police or me, is somewhat difficult to bear. But let’s be fair, it goes with the job. If policing was easy I probably wouldn’t want to be involved in it, so you are going to have to make decisions some people disagree with and some people agree with.
“And the vast majority will accept, ‘Well, that’s a very difficult job and I’m sure he or she did the very best they could under the circumstances.’ That Goldilocks moment of everyone agreeing with you or applauding you really doesn’t ever happen in policing, and so I’ve got to say it goes with the job.
“It’s not for everyone, but I absolutely have loved my time in policing and I would do it all again, for all the difficult days.”
Protests and tactics
Avon and Somerset police were again the subject of national headlines on March 21, when a ‘Kill the Bill’ protest against the proposed Police and Crime Bill - which would curtail rights to peaceful protest - turned into a riot.
Police vehicles were set on fire, Bridewell police station damaged and 39 officers reported injured. In a series of further Kill the Bill demonstrations, the force faced accusations of heavy-handedness.
The Bristol Defendant Solidarity group said 62 people were injured by police, amid claims officers had used their shields as weapons.
Mr Marsh says: “What we witnessed in the riot was police officers’ helmets ripped off, their shields were dragged from them, items were thrown at them, they were stamped on and there was an extreme violence.
“You can’t respond in a public order situation by half-using force. You either use force or you don’t. We live in a media and public environment where imagery can be seen in full or in part, and every observer is potentially an armchair public order commander. There is either too much, too little and occasionally it’s about right, but there will always be people with views.
“Some of the tactics which people were not happy to see were police officers using their shields to
chop down to make people let go of them. Actually, it’s incredibly difficult to deal with a group of people, some of whom might appear to be peaceful or passive on the floor, when some people not far behind them are throwing missiles, bottles of urine, bottles of ammonia, fireworks at the police officers.
“How do you deal with that mix? Now what we tend to do is try and persuade the peaceful, passive people to disperse, so we can deal more robustly with the people trying to cause damage and harm.”
Mr Marsh says “lots of warnings” were given by loudhailer before any dispersals were made.
“And actually you can’t walk through people lying on the ground, some of whom are trying to grab hold of your equipment and shield and pull you down, without it looking quite nasty. And so I’ve got to say I make no apology for those officers’ tactics. That’s what they did and that’s what they’re trained to do and they deserve my support.”
Asked if criticism over the handling of the statue incident may have impacted on the Kill the Bill policing, Mr Marsh says: “I don’t believe the Black Lives Matter protest had any bearing whatsoever on the Kill the Bill protest.”
Mr Marsh says one of the main learnings was the importance of transparency around police tactics.
“The tactics we were using were all accredited by the College of Policing, but there was not enough transparency about why we used them and when we used them.”
He says this realisation led to journalists being invited into the police control room for later protests so they could better understand the decisions being made.
“What I feel is the antidote or vaccine to mistrust is openness and transparency,” he adds.
Trust and transparency
The Kill the Bill events saw hundreds of people march through Bristol city centre, many chanting “defund the police” and carrying placards with anti-poilice messages.
How did Mr Marsh feel when he saw and heard those sentiments?
“I passionately believe in policing by consent. Where we see such displays of hostility and violence, it is obviously painful to see, but I will be quite frank with you. The vast majority of the public actually do respect and support the police.
“If you look at the British Crime Survey, the most recent one shows Avon and Somerset as having the seventh highest levels of public confidence in England and Wales, and actually this is a really edgy area. For an edgy area to have those levels of confidence – 78 to 80 per cent – when I see those placards I know we are talking about a minority of people.”
Asked what he means by “edgy”, Mr Marsh says: “Bristol is a city full of inequality, full of diverse political views, and it’s a city which is difficult to police for those reasons.
“The police have got huge public confidence compared to politiconstable, cians and journalists. I’m not complacent about the need to have confidence and the wish to have it better, but actually to have the seventh highest in England and Wales? I know the vast majority of the public are on our side.”
Challenge and change
When Mr Marsh took over in February 2016, he says the force faced some major challenges.
“I’d say we were facing a critical problem of staff morale. I was the sixth chief constable or temporary chief constable in four turbulent years.”
After disabled Iranian refugee Bijan Ebrahimi was murdered in 2013, a Safer Bristol Partnership report found there had been “institutional racism” and “collective failure” by the force and Bristol City Council. The force was also rated “requires improvement” by the Inspectorate in 2016 for protecting vulnerable people from harm.
Mr Marsh says: “We’re now graded as good and I understand came the closest of any force in England and Wales to achieving an ‘outstanding’ grading for vulnerability.”
He adds: “One of the most powerful things we’ve done is refresh our four values of learning, caring, courage and inclusion.”
Mr Marsh believes, in line with those values, there has been a “seismic shift in the culture” of the force.
“If I can put this in very blunt terms, we all expect, very reasonably, police to care about victims of crime and care about the services we provide... If we have those expectations of police officers and police staff, then actually we need to care for them and make sure they are serving in an inclusive environment where they can be themselves. Those standards are set internally.”
Across Avon and Somerset police, 3.43 per cent of officers are black or an ethnic minority. This is up from 2.56 per cent in 2017.
When it comes to senior officers, the proportion is two per cent, up from 0.87 per cent, which Mr Marsh describes as a “massive improvement”.
The workforce has gone from being 29.02 per cent women officers in 2017, to 33.33 per cent in 2021. Women account for 48.43 per cent of senior officers, up from 47.91 per cent.
Asked if there has been enough progress, Mr Marsh says: “It takes three years to train a police officer. It takes a long time to grow a diverse workforce, and so we’ve made good and significant progress, but we haven’t made enough progress and we’d like to make progress more quickly.”
He says working with organisations like Stand Against Racism & Inequality (SARI) has been key to improving the figures.
Asked about the prospect of the force appointing a black chief Mr Marsh replies: “It’s much more than a hope. It’s an inevitability. It’s a question of how soon it happens. The PCC is about to advertise for a chief constable and there are certainly candidates eligible that are from the black community.”
When he recalls his days in the late 1980s in a riot van parked in St Pauls, it makes him think how far the force has come.
“I look back to what I remember as a police constable in a van, frightened of the community, because that was the way I’d been conditioned. And let’s just think for a moment - it doesn’t matter what I felt sitting in that van. I was being paid to do a job. What must the presence of two riot vans have said to that Black community about what our role was in relation to them?
“And this is where the ‘overpoliced, underprotected’ accusation actually has got more than a ring of truth about it, and we continue to try and close that gap in trust and confidence so we are everyone’s police force.
“Wind forward to 2021: I walk through St Pauls and Ashley Road on my own, in uniform, and I feel safe and the Black community talk to me. I’m not saying our relationship is perfect. I’m not saying the trust gap has completely closed, but my goodness, what I’m saying is we’ve come an awful long way.