Police told: Treat people with more respect
NORTH Wales Police has been told it needs to treat people “more fairly”.
Watchdogs praised the force for the way it keeps people safe and reduces crime, but a report says it needs to work on treating the people it serves with “fairness and respect”.
In its annual inspection, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) said some members of the force did not understand “unconscious bias”.
It said there is a lack of “local level advisory groups representative of the communities they serve”, which limits the effectiveness of their scrutiny.
The grounds for the use of stop and search powers were also deemed to be “not well understood by all officers who apply them”.
Grading North Wales Police as a whole as “good” – the categories are outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate – the report says: “North Wales Police has a good ethical culture.
“This is demonstrated by senior leaders and staff throughout the organisation who take an ethical approach to decision making.
“Members of the public are able to complain easily when they feel they have not received the service they expect.
“Furthermore, the force is good at providing its workforce with the skills needed to identify, respond and investigate discrimination.”
But it adds: “Although the force is good at understanding the importance of treating all the people it serves with fairness and respect, it nevertheless requires improvement in the way that it does this.”
Recommended areas of improvement are that officers and staff should have a good understanding of how to recognise and overcome unconscious bias.
The force should also improve its process for “regularly and frequently” scrutinising a broad range of stop and search data and information, to gain a “better understanding of the relation- ship between age, gender and ethnicity”.
The force should ensure that all external scrutiny groups have diverse membership representative of its local communities, including young people.
Responding to the report yesterday, assistant chief constable Richard Debicki said: “We recognise our relationships with the public as absolutely essential and continually work hard to ensure that our communities have confidence in us.
“We are proud to serve local people, and I believe this is reflected in the excellent work identified by Her Majesty’s Inspectors in this report.
“It is important to recognise that North Wales Police continues to perform well set against the continuing national picture of austerity and reducing budgets, which will continue to bring challenges not only to the force but to policing as a whole.
“We are examining any areas for improvement from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate findings, and will determine whether there are improvements that we can make in order to ensure we offer the best service possible to our communities.”