Revelations highlight why London police officers need to be proactive

Ayoung, black man growing up in London is nine times more likely to be murdered than his white peers, rising to 24 times more likely when taking the UK as a whole. Pause and reflect on why we don’t hear that number frequently in debate on policing yet reports on the ‘disproportionality of stop and search’ seem to be released weekly. Why are we more concerned with criticising police operations than with understanding the reason for the tragic concentration of crime in a few communities?

I was moved to collaborate with Policy Exchange on their insightful new report, Knife Crime in the Capital, to try to help break the dangerous logjam in the debate on policing, stop and search, and knife crime.

Policy Exchange reveals that the temporary reduction in violent types of knife crime over the pandemic will be just that, temporary. Much of the reduction in knife crime since 2019 is attributable to coronavirus restrictions, not to a successful strategy to counter it.

Furthermore, widely reported fatal stabbings are merely the tip of the iceberg in the knife crime data. Below the surface, hidden away in the most dangerous estates in the capital, hundreds of injuries are inflicted on young people by knives every year. It is only improvements in NHS trauma care that have prevented the numbers of those killed in stabbings skyrocketing over the past decades.

Policy Exchange also provide unique analysis of the variety of strategies being used across big cities and finds London adopts an extraordinarily different approach to West Midlands, Merseyside and west Yorkshire. Having policed Birmingham, Surrey, London and led national policing functions in my career, I understand the degree to which some differences in approach between police forces are necessary. However, it seems extraordinary that the Metropolitan Police service (MPS) stop and search rate is 5.5 times that of west Yorkshire, yet the rate at which they apprehend drug traffickers (usually only recorded upon arrest) is less than a third that of Merseyside, and the strength of Neighbourhood Policing in London is just over half that of the West Midlands and less than half that of Merseyside.

The Met appears to adopt a highly suppressive approach yet puts fewer resources and less effort into community policing and proactive prosecution of drugs gangs. This is not an argument against stop and search

– it is a vital tactic that the Commissioner was right to increase – but it is an argument for a fresh look at whether a different combination of tactics may be more successful.

Having seen the evidence presented in this report from the limited amount of public data, I am at a loss as to why organisations such as the College of Policing or HMICFRS (Her Majesty’s

Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services) are not producing this type of analysis. These are the organisations tasked with inspecting the activities of the police, yet they have failed to raise awareness as to the unusual and apparently unsuccessful imbalance in the MPS’ strategy. The Home Secretary, Mayor, PCCS and police chiefs can hardly be expected to make the best decisions, if the quality of research they are being presented with is below par.

While I am familiar with the policing side of tackling knife and gang-related crime, I have been shocked by Policy Exchange’s revelations as to the societal context. This report reveals how social media has transformed gang relations and the appalling lack of action social media companies have taken against the promulgation of illegal activity on their platforms. This is compounded by the music, entertainment, and fashion industry, who can turn a blind eye to the context in which some drill music is created.

Policing is a tough profession and inevitably contentious operating as it does at the fractures in communities where the dangerous and the vulnerable collide. It’s time for a more constructive, innovative and collaborative approach to solving this all too real tragedy and we as a society we must consider the consequences of the naïve legitimisation of gang culture, the victims of which are concentrated in a few communities.