The end of April witnessed the annual Counter Terror Expo, taking place, as in previous years, at London Olympia. As ever, it proved to be one of the year’s most interesting events, offering many perspectives on a subject which – to this writer’s mind at least – is one of the most compelling for anyone involved in the emergency services.

However, as well as providing delegates with up-to-the-minute intelligence on how to respond to the ongoing terror threat, the event is also instructive from a broader strategic, cultural perspective. In other words, not just on how to tackle those intent on causing massive disruption and mitigate the effects of their actions, but how to stop them in the first place by persuading them that it’s a bad idea.

The past 12 months has seen a raft of game-changing developments taking place across the globe. These include UK-wide riots, the rise of the Occupy movement, the sudden prominence of global hacking organisations such as Anonymous, the ascendance of what is being called ‘political Islam’ via the Arab Spring, and last but by no means least, a seeming-shift of Al Qaeda’s operational base from Pakistan and Afghanistan to parts of Africa.

Other than sharing a certain disruptive potential, these developments all have the same thing in common in that they speak of an environment where borders are beginning to mean much less, whether in relation to the movement of people, money or information.  This in turn reveals a world where power itself has shifted, and traditional notions of identity themselves are being profoundly challenged. 

One illustration of this is the way social - and indeed criminal - movements now organise and gather in ways that their predecessors would not necessarily have recognised. Whereas previously groups would have assembled mainly according to traditional, top-down notions of self (class, ethnicity, national or even gang identity), they now connect through often disparate and rapidly changing ‘narratives’ (anti-capitalism, anti-westernism, anti-police, pro-mischief, consumerism), endlessly proliferated via the media and social networking.

Clearly, this has profound implications for the emergency services from an operational point of view, as the Met found out during recent civil disturbances which saw trouble-makers being able to change their tactics on an almost minute-by-minute basis using social media. Just as urgent an issue however, is the impact that these developments may have on community engagement across the board. Just how do you begin to connect with large portions of a population who have little or no moral compass beyond what they see on the television? How can the emergency services appear as anything other than ‘the enemy’ to a young man who sees Osama Bin Laden as the latest in a line of folk heroes?      

One of the most interesting speakers at Counter Terror was Maajid Nawaz, Director of Quilliam, an organisation dedicated to de-‘Islamisation’ through debate and citizenship-based political participation. He suggested that in order to stop the ongoing process of radicalisation it is essential to defeat extremism at the level of ideas themselves. The best way to do this he said, is by putting new discourses in place through what he called the ‘rebranding’ of the democratic west at a cultural level, in order to make extremist ideas as unacceptable in civil society as racism and homophobia have been for the past decade. Tear up the narratives before they even have the chance to take root in other words, by embedding inclusivity, empathy and mutual respect across the board. 

To take this forward, he called for new ‘symbols’ of leadership, in particular on the part of politicians and community figureheads. This chimed with me because it is exactly this kind of community leadership that the emergency services have been involved in for years to different degrees – for instance the equality and diversity agenda has been central in ensuring ongoing liaison with ‘minority’ groups across the board in the Fire and Rescue Service’s continuing quest to reduce fire deaths. .  

At a time when money is becoming increasingly scarce, and the political will is entirely focussed on what is known as the frontline, the temptation might be for services to turn their attention from this area. However, with the world becoming less predictable all the time, there is clearly a necessity for this work not just to continue, but to become even more integral to everything the emergency services do.

On Friday 28 April Tony Melville - my successor as chief constable of Gloucestershire and in office since January 2010 - resigned over his ‘grave concerns about some elements of the police reform agenda, especially the election of police and crime commissioners in six months’ time’.

It is, of course, entirely his personal decision when, why and how to end his career, but it begs some bigger questions.  How valid are the concerns that party politics will become enmeshed in policing, or that the ‘operational independence’ of forces would be compromised?

There is every reason to be concerned about party political machinations becoming more of a fact of everyday policing life at the top. It’s not that policing under the current system is a politics free zone, far from it, but the ‘tripartite structure’ at least constrained the impetus for political policing. In the new system checks and balances will be fewer and weaker.

Electoral realities dictate that most, if not all, of the commissioners elected in November will be from the main political parties, in fact probably just Conservative or Labour. Despite the new legislation technically guaranteeing the chief constable’s ‘direction and control’ of the force, there is little in practice to stop a commissioner using behind the scenes influence. Most of the current chiefs, long in service, may be able to see off that challenge, but the next generation, on even shorter-term contracts, may find it more difficult.

However, the commissioners do not have to use improper influence to have immense influence over the way a force works for they will possess an impressive range of lawful powers. They will set strategy and budgets, ‘address’ community concerns, distribute community safety grants, and appoint and dismiss chiefs. Chiefs for their part will be under a statutory obligation to do what is reasonable to realise the commissioner’s strategy.

Furthermore, being politicians, commissioners will want to grab the media limelight, especially when there is success.  Chiefs will have to learn to step aside and the let the commissioner through. In this they will become more like local authority chief executives.

What if chiefs don’t or can’t adapt to their new circumstances? The chances are they won’t last long. Met Commissioner Ian Blair was never subject to any kind of formal dismissal process but, when it became clear that he and Mayor Johnson were not ‘simpatico’ it was Blair who went.

It is important, however, to get this in proportion. In the majority of cases, because chiefs and commissioners will want to work constructively together, the new system will function satisfactorily and without controversy. Equally, in some it will not. There will be personality clashes, real and imagined slights. It will be the chiefs who will have to adapt.  If they don’t, there will be only one winner, and it won’t be the chief.

There is also a big constitutional issue here. Elected commissioners may not be the best solution for the ‘democratic deficit’ that exists in police governance. I argued, with others, that fully elected police authorities would be the best course; some favoured no change to the present system. But Parliament thought differently and in a democracy that’s what counts. It’s now the job of chief constables to lead their forces through a period of huge change.

There may be others who feel that they cannot do that, but most will at least give it a try. For every one that doesn’t, however, come November there will be a police and crime commissioner rubbing their hands at the gift of the early opportunity to get their own person in.

Recent allegations of racist language, sectarianism, and bullying in the Service has rightly been met with dismay. Action has been taken, those accused have been suspended and inquiries have begun into the allegations. Fair enough.

However, isn’t all this too familiar? IPCC data suggests that year on year, complaints of incivilities for example are on an upward trend. Meanwhile a recent article in a national newspaper suggested that police officers are trained to see the community they police as the enemy (http://bit.ly/HSmhry) - an assertion that is all the more remarkable, made as it was by a former deputy assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan police.

If true, how and why has this been allowed to happen? We have had major reports such as MacPherson - as well as a whole generation of training courses and awareness information for police officers - so why should this problem persist? One theory lies in cultural values within groups and individuals that continue over long periods of time - values being passed on from one police officer to another, then one generation to another. Training and education has been suggested as one way to tackle the problem. Well, police officers have been trained for a number of years in diversity awareness and tackling unacceptable behaviour and so on, and the problem still persists. Further, the police currently do not appear to universally support its recruits undergoing recognised higher education qualifications. This means  they will not get the exposure that other individuals get to wider ideas, thoughts and beliefs. Internal and closed training of police officers listens to the murmur of the culture.

Recruiting in the main from those who have formally been employed within the police organisation, such as special constables, community support officers and so on, will not assist in widening the cultural values of the Police Service.

With that in mind, perhaps the answer to the start of this process actually lies within the recommendations of Winsor 2. The proposal regarding the direct entry scheme at Inspector level, despite the outcry against it, may offer some hope of tackling the seemingly never-ending story of complaints such as these.

These leaders and managers will not have been exposed to possibly harmful cultural values. They will not have been exposed to outmoded attitudes at street level, nor will they have had to ‘fit in’ with stronger willed individuals at grass roots level in order to survive. They may very well bring a fresh attitude.

Just as importantly, they will not be afraid to challenge inappropriate behaviour through any sense of misguided loyalty – the ‘us against them’ mentality that has been suggested by the article mentioned above.

The police in England and Wales are under enormous pressure economically and structurally to change how they deliver their services to the people they are there to protect. Incidents such as the ones recently reported only add fuel to the argument that perhaps this kind of change isn’t such a bad thing after all.

So, the Met have reviewed their response to the August 2011 riots and concluded that next time they will be ready to use baton rounds.

The word ‘ready’ is my truncation of a complicated situation.  In a strictly technical sense they were ‘ready’ in August 2011.  They possessed them and had trained officers available, while the scale of rioting, in certain locations, had reached the legal threshold for their use.

So why were they not used? The Met’s own review points to a practical, not moral or legal inhibition. There simply were insufficient specialist Kestrel units available at the most intensive trouble spots.

This is a curious admission. Baton rounds have been around as a tactical option in riots since the early 1980s. They had been introduced as part of a thorough overall in police riot training, tactics and philosophy following the failure to get to grips with the inner-city riots of 1981. Gone would be long lines of containing shield rows - in came short-shields, riot helmets, snatch-squads and baton rounds (or more strictly ‘Attenuated Energy Projectiles’).

Even then baton rounds were not new to the UK. They had been used in their countless thousands throughout the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland as alternatives to lethal real bullets and the somewhat impractical water canon.  Occasionally Westminster politicians would raise a few eyebrows over their use, but no one seriously suggested that other options should be available until Patten reported in 1999.

However, despite being available for use in riots for over 30 years, baton rounds have only been used twice in England, and then as a less-lethal option in firearms incidents and not serious general disorder. There have been a couple of close calls, however.

These occurred in the autumn of 1985 during the Handsworth and Broadwater Farm riots. Their use was contemplated but not authorised when two men died protecting their shop. Their use was authorised during the Broadwater Farm riot, which saw the murder of PC Blakelock, but baton rounds, as in August 2011, were not available until after the circumstances appropriate for their use had passed.

Herein lies the big problem with baton rounds - they must be used against specific not general targets.  Their use must also be ‘reasonable’ under the Criminal Law Act and ‘proportionate’ under the Human Rights Act. 

In other words, the specialist unit must be in the right place and at the right time, a difficult feat to pull off in the fluidity of a major riot. It is this reasoning that lies behind the Met’s public order review. In order to have a chance of using baton rounds appropriately the Met simply needs more units.

So it will be different next time?  Maybe; maybe not. It’s not just a question of tactics, circumstances and availability.   

Last August Sir Hugh Orde, ACPO President and a chief officer with considerable baton round use experience, counseled caution. ‘I do not think it would be sensible in any way shape or form to deploy water cannon or baton rounds in London’, he said.

Armchair generals might stand aghast at his statement, but it demands serious attention. Fire one baton round in England or Wales and a Rubicon will have been crossed. Expect a political storm to follow.

There simply may be no choice, however. Allowing riots to spread unchecked again is unthinkable, especially in Olympic year. But when rounds are fired, the decisions and actions of the officers involved will come under the greatest scrutiny.

Then it will be the time for those who have supported baton round use to stand up and be counted.  

Much of what you buy in a supermarket arrived there on a metal roll cage of some kind.  You almost certainly used a metal trolley to prowl the aisles.  Manufacturers, distributors and retailers buy millions of pounds worth of metal transit assets every year but -they have to buy a lot more than they want or even should need. 

Why is that? Well, it’s a combination of poor processes, driver discipline, extended supply chains and- most worryingly - theft.  This all adds to the price of goods in the shops - and the problem is getting worse, as the price of mild steel rises and certain elements of society believe it is their right to pick up and sell anything that hasn’t been secured. Take for example the case of the disappearing supermarket trolleys.   

You probably think paying a £1 deposit for your shopping trolley acts as a deterrent to thieves.  Actually, it’s a small price to pay for something that’s worth £180 per ton to unscrupulous scrap dealers and recyclers. So what?  It’s only a few trolleys, I hear you say.  Well it isn’t really. A supermarket in East London recently opened up to find that every trolley it owned had been stolen overnight.  Someone had carefully planned a robbery that will have involved several trips with a large goods vehicle.  The cost of this theft is more far reaching than you might think. 

• The cost of replacement ran into tens of thousands of pounds 

• The supermarket was unable to trade for at least a day 
• Thousands of pounds worth of fresh produce, bread, cakes, milk, etc. had to be thrown away. 
• Shoppers in the area were badly inconvenienced and in many cases it will have cost money to arrange an alternative place to shop 
• More money is now spent on security, not just at this supermarket but other stores across the country. 

All in all, this one theft had a marked impact on the supermarket, the customer and, ultimately the price of food that now attracts more costs as this behaviour continues. This kind of thing happens across the country as ‘mobile’ thieves steal anything metal they can get their hands on. The impact on the economy is substantial. Until we start to tackle security and recovery of our valuable transit and mobile assets the problem will only get worse. 

It used to be just lead and copper wiring but things have moved on as the price of metal has increased. 

Posted 16/03/2012 - Bill Howie is Chief Executive of Acqsys Supply Chain Solutions Limited, a company that specialises in the management and recovery of mobile and transit assets for manufacturers distributors and retailers. 

I was interested to read the recent comments made by Lord Stevens to the Leveson inquiry concerning the seemingly symbiotic relationship between the police and the media.

In his comments, clearly he does not condone any wrongdoing. However, he does suggest that following recent revelations the police are now afraid of any contact with the press. Well, in certain ways, they should be. They should be aware of the risks involved in what is being said, and in how it is being said. They should also be aware of the damage they can be inflict upon individuals and communities in relation to press contact.

That, however, this is not really the purpose of these musings. What drew my attention to the evidence offered by Lord Stevens is the following quote from a newspaper. It is reported that Lord Stevens thinks a breakdown in the relationship between the police and the media could bring about outbreaks of rioting. The quote is worth reading in full: ‘The media need to know what the police are doing… If there’s no engagement then the police risk not being part of the community. This will ultimately result in them being distrusted. It is precisely in these conditions that public order outbreaks occur as community tensions are heightened and there is public concern over the actions of the police’.

Can it be that the media play such a vital role in community engagement and accountability? Were the riots in England last summer started because of a lack of engagement between police and the media? Or rather, was it due to a perfect storm of disperate factors as suggested in certain reports?

The reasons why the police might be mistrusted I would argue, would be less that the media are not being briefed properly, but more about the lack of real engagement by police with the communities they are there to serve. It is more about an apparent – at least to the public - lack of accountability, or even the assumption by people that the police are not prepared to say sorry when they have made mistakes.

The comments by Lord Stevens saddened me, demonstrating as they did how much store a former UK most-senior-police-officer places in the power of the media regarding community relations. The comments also assume a massive amount of power over the police and their interaction with community to the point that a lack of contact between the two could cause riots.

The media’s purpose in relation to the Police Service is to provide part of the accountability and engagement process along with other agencies such as the IPCC. Why Lord Stevens should portray them in the way that he has is beyond me.

Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe’s declaration that he intends to overhaul stop and search in London is welcome news. It has long been recognised that policing by consent is crucial to maintaining public cooperation, and given the number of encounters the public has with the police through stop and search – there were well over one million searches conducted in 2009/10 – it is vitally important that the police get it right.

One of the most contentious aspects of stop and search has been its disproportionate use on people from ethnic minorities. In 2009/10, black people were seven times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people, and Asian people twice as likely, while according to LSE research black people are nearly 30 times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people under Section 60 powers. Whether this level of disproportionality amounts to racial discrimination is of course open to question. Other factors may be at play, such as the available population for searching, and age, employment and exclusion from school also affect the likelihood of being stopped and searched. Nevertheless, it is indisputable that the disproportionate use of stop and search on black and ethnic minority communities is perceived by them as racially motivated and therefore needs to be taken very seriously, whether or not there is any racist intent.

 There’s certainly no lack of guidance on stop and search. The Association of Chief Police Officers notes that in forces with lower levels of disproportionality, force policy explicitly states that an officer’s performance will not be assessed on the number of stops and searches they have performed, but on the outcomes and quality of their searches.

The National Police Improvement Agency suggests that greater attention should be placed on maximising the quality of arrests and that searches should therefore focus on, for example, prolific offenders to ensure the most effective use of resources. The ACPO Stop and Search manual encourages the police to take note of any legitimate stop and search complaints they receive and to use this information to improve operational practice.

And the Independent Police Complaints Commission advises local police commanders to inform communities about how stop and search is being used and give the public the opportunity to raise concerns about the tactic. This seems eminently sensible given that, according to research, the public does not wholly object to the use of stop and search provided it is used fairly and properly.

There is no simple solution to how to best to deploy the tactic of stop and search. What is clear, however, is that if the police are to better target their searches it is important that they get to know the local communities that they serve. In the longer term, a force where officers are representative of the local population would seem to be a sensible way forward. But in the shorter term the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners presents a real opportunity for forces to reach decisions based on local concerns and priorities, although it would be best if these could encompass how policing is carried out and not just what the police do.

To read the briefing: www.police-foundation.org.uk

Lincolnshire Police has opened a new state-of-the-art police station. This would normally be a matter of local pride, and be received as some good news for the community and workforce. It would certainly not usually be expected to raise much national media interest. 

However, the news coming from Lincolnshire last week was a bit different – not only did the Grantham station attract huge national attention, it also found itself on the end of some scepticism from the local Police Federation. Why? Because the station is being run by Lincolnshire alongside a strategic partner – security firm G4S -, who will employ civilian staff in often public-facing roles. The question is, is this really such a big deal?

As it happens, the reality of staff working for the police while being employed by someone else has been around for quite some time - in fact from the very beginnings of the modern Police Service itself.

Until the 1994 Police and Magistrates’ Courts Act all police civilian staff were employed by someone else. In fact police forces didn’t strictly employ anyone, as constables were not and are still not ‘employees’. In provincial forces, civilian staff were employed by the county or municipal authority for the area. In the Metropolitan Police all civilians were part of the Home Civil Service. 

It did not seem to matter too much to those of us serving at the time. The job got done and civilians took their orders from senior police officers - even if these tended to be given with more civility than those issued to officers. Civilians undertook certain specialist and back officer roles, and the police officer was the principal point of contact with the public.

However, in the mid-1980s civilians in the police began the process of changing from being largely peripheral to mainstream service delivery, a process encouraged by a series of Home Office Circulars.

By the mid-1990s, meanwhile, civilians were serving in front offices, control rooms, scenes of crime as well as specialist functions. Somewhat boldly I was given permission to use them as support gaolers when a superintendent in Basingstoke in the early 1990s.

Parallel to this was the spread of outsourcing to private sector organisations of what would later be termed ‘facilities’ management - cleaning, maintenance and the like. It worked, and it was then but a small step to the Private Finance Initiative of Tony Blair’s Labour Government and the powers for chief officers to delegate certain powers to civilian staff, whether directly or indirectly employed.

Some forces were more enthusiastic than others, but in Gloucestershire we outsourced custody support and built a new state-of-the-art HQ, both with conspicuous success. There are now plenty of examples of similar schemes.

So why all the fuss about Lincolnshire? The answer is in the timing. All forces are cutting officers and staff, and more besides, yet here’s Lincolnshire opening a station and outsourcing their staff. Could it be the way all forces will go? Is Lincolnshire pointing the way out of the cutback hole?

Unfortunately not.  In 2009 the Lincolnshire Police Authority, urged on by the chief constable, Richard Crompton, boldly introduced a high council tax when others were already cutting back. In the short term they were ‘capped’, but it still left them with an advantage because what was left of the increase still boosted the base budget. Most police authorities now lack the financial strength to follow Lincolnshire’s example.  

So, it’s congratulations to Lincolnshire twice over. First, for its exciting new police station with its enthusiastic staff, and secondly for having the courage to buck the financial trend three years ago.  

The London 2012 Olympic Games will be one of the largest events ever staged in the UK.  An estimated 15,000 athletes from 205 nations will take part in a total of 300 events. We can also expect a huge influx of people into the country, with Lord Coe talking about one million extra visitors. Many of these, needless to say, will be looking to spend heavily.

As a result, there is likely to be a rise in all types of opportunist offending from pickpocketing to ticket fraud, and from money laundering to email scams. When combined with normal, every day policing activity, this will likely put a huge strain on police resources.

The need for resourcing will be a major issue in the run-up to the Games, with police in London possibly drawing manpower from a wide array of provincial forces and even bringing in extra officers from back-office functions into frontline policing.

On the face of it, this makes perfect sense – after all, the surge in police numbers proved effective in combating the recent London riots. Policing the Olympics is, however, a completely different challenge, involving a far wider range of potential threats, few of which will be solved by simply putting more Bobbies on the beat.

The truth is that solving the criminal threat presented by the Olympics will require a more strategic approach, involving integration and cooperation across different police forces. This should extend not just to numbers on the ground but also sharing information and intelligence. The key is in the identification of increased risks and dealing with these before and during the Games. The ability to pool intelligence not just about antisocial behaviour – the approach to organised crime and terrorism will be critical as well.

Even when relevant data is available, it will be of little benefit unless it is used effectively. If disparate data, different structures, formats and update rates are not brought together in a way which makes sense to operatives, decision-making is likely to be slow and inaccurate and investigations will be delayed. It will be difficult for forces to predict and prevent crime.

It is not just about sharing and consolidating this information effectively, however.  Analytic techniques will be vital in order to reveal patterns, anomalies, key variables and relationships in the data, leading ultimately to new insights and better answers, faster.

Thankfully agencies are now moving towards such an intelligence-led approach. There is growing recognition that the ability to convert data and information into actionable intelligence is one of most powerful tools that the police can use in the battle against Olympics crime.

Time was when the United Kingdom Government declared that 75 per cent of all of the terrorist activity in the country could be sourced to Pakistan. The links between extremist Islamic groups in Pakistan and the United Kingdom were self evident in the bombings on the 7^th of July in London in 2005. That situation no longer prevails.

Even before Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan, the importance of the link between the two countries had started to wane. The level of activity carried by United States unmanned drone aircraft in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) which provided a sanctuary to members of Al Qaeda, had seen many of those close to the upper echelons of the organisation killed. It is difficult to see how any group could readily survive the relentless series of strikes that were decapitating the organisation.

Al Qaeda as an organisation is nothing but adaptive. It can be liked to a Hydra. Kill one of the leadership and other willing volunteers step forward to take their place – always believing in the righteous nature of their cause. Of course over time this has an impact on the operational effectiveness of the organisation.

The lack of experience that now exists in the senior management group left marginalised in Pakistan must be a major source of concern. Many who gained their combat experience in the war against the Russians in Afghanistan are now dead. Despite the enthusiasm of the younger recruits and their ardent belief in their cause, their experience and knowledge needs time to be rebuilt. Al Qaeda needs an operational pause to reassemble its capabilities.

But to admit to that would be a catastrophic publicity blunder. Many of those that professed to be willing to fight for Al Qaeda’s core were stunned by the death of Bin Laden. Some may well have begun to doubt the efficacy of their cause. Many felt that all the time Bin Laden was able to evade the Americans that this was a sign that their cause was indeed a noble one. Bin Laden’s death has caused discussion in the various Jihadi chat rooms to emerge questioning the legitimacy of what they believe. The organisation itself is in turmoil and its new leader is fighting to establish himself as the rightful heir to Bin Laden.

Perceptibly over the last two years the main centre point of Al Qaeda has shifted to the west. As Pakistan became a difficult place in which to operate, the Yemen became a natural focus. The underpants bomber and the parcels that were intercepted on cargo planes clearly originated from the Yemen. The Arab Spring and the uprisings in the Yemen did provide a temporary respite for Al Qaeda. They saw their chance to exploit the chaos in the country to create areas which they would bring under their control. They did briefly seize a number of towns in the southern part of the country.

Their success however was short-lived, as the Yemeni security forces used the uprisings to clamp down on the towns that has been seized by Al Qaeda. With the Americans now operating drones over the Yemen and killing the influential cleric Awlaki, the Yemen has suddenly become less attractive to the organisation. The franchise that operates in that country had global aspirations to use the Yemen as a base to mount attacks on the west and came close to succeeding on two occasions.

As is the case with a Hydra, Al Qaeda is now shifting again the centre-point of its activity. Briefly the Al-Shabab franchise in Somalia became a focus. The invasion by Kenya in the wake of the hostage-seizures by the pirates in the latter part of 2011 has changed that dynamic. Al Shabab is busy defending its own position and cannot realistically mount attacks on the west. Even the expected wave of bombings in Kenya is retaliation for the invasion has yet to manifest itself.

Paradoxically with the westward shift, Al Qaeda’s main threat axis towards the west is heading inexorably closer to Europe. With the other main franchises heavily occupied in survival mode, the threat from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is now increasingly the focus of counter-terrorism planning. With AQIM links to people smuggling and other criminal activities becoming clear, the threat axis to the United Kingdom has shifted west from Pakistan, through the Yemen and briefly Somalia towards the countries in the North West of Africa. It is to this area that the focus of counter-terrorism activity needs to shift as it has the potential to emerge as the next nexus of Al Qaeda overseas activity.

Police boats zooming up the river alongside military marine craft and a Lynx Navy helicopter isn’t something you expect to see every day, particularly on the Thames in London. But this was exactly what happened last month, as officers from the Metropolitan Police joined forces with the Royal Marines to take part in a series of exercises ahead of the Olympics.

As we get ready for the Games, the police are taking part in lots of different tests and exercises to make sure that we have the right plans and structures in place. The aim of these exercises on the river was to make sure that our police officers and the Marines are familiar with the way the river works. This is really important because the Met and the Marines will be working with each other on the Thames to keep it safe during the Games. It was also a chance to test how our tactics work together.

Whilst the exercise was on, I went to see it first hand and chat to my colleagues about what we could learn for Games time. I was really pleased with what I saw. We had officers from both the Met’s Marine Policing Unit and Force Firearms Unit working really well with military colleagues. If you want to see what the kind of maneuvers they were doing, click on the video tab on the right-hand side of this page.

Keeping the Olympic and Paralympic Games safe and secure is a police-led operation. However it can’t be delivered by any one agency alone. We need the support of the military, and all our other partners - especially for their specialist skills and capabilities.

We’ve got plenty more exercises coming up between now and Games time, to make sure we’ve got our planning right and that we’re ready. The Olympic and Paralympic Games are a fantastic world class sporting event, and we want them, and London, to be safe and secure for everyone.

The recent news that two detectives from South Wales police have been disciplined for supplying a young man with cider is very sad. For those not familiar with the story, the officers apparently took the man from prison and drove him around in an effort to gain offences taken into consideration, before subsequently interviewing him while denying him his right to have a solicitor present.

This harks back to incidents in UK policing history that the force may not be particularly proud of, involving practices not dissimilar to those reportedly employed in previous decades that led to the introduction of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984.

Now, I know this will be reported as an ‘isolated case’, that the detectives have been ‘dealt with’ and so on. However, let’s reflect upon this incident for a moment and consider some important questions. Why did the officers in question consider this type of action was acceptable? Did they not think they would be found out? Where did they learn this way of working? Perhaps most importantly, has this happened before and not been discovered?

There has been much written about the occupational subculture of the police by people such as Robert Reiner, Peter Manning  and Karl Klockers to name but a few. They point out the ‘mission’ aspect many police officers have - the ‘us and them’ approach, with the police seeing themselves as the only body able to prevent the country falling into anarchy and criminality.

Along with this, there is the idea of noble cause corruption – although, what there is to be considered noble about corruption is beyond me. Perhaps these police officers thought their mission was to increase detections as much as possible, and that they were ‘untouchable’ in the way they did it because they were carrying out a noble mission.

This is of course conjecture on my part, but how else can these actions be explained? What is certain is that this incident denigrates all the excellent work being carried out by other officers, both in and out of uniform.

The problem is this. At a time when the police profess themselves to be ‘professional’ in their dealings with people - after all the diversity and community training available to them, after all the partnership work, education and claims of accountability and transparency - unethical and indeed potentially illegal working practices that may have been used decades ago appear to be still somewhere in the police armoury. If that is the case, it means that for senior officers, cases such as this will potentially always surface and provide the media with embarrassing and harmful stories with which to criticise the Service. 

Did anyone notice the revolution last week? What revolution, you may ask. There was no shouting in the streets; no riots; no marching of victims to the guillotine. So where was the revolution?

Not all revolutions come in the form of violent overthrows of regimes. Some come quietly, perpetrated by men in grey suits, and last week's was like that. It's therefore not surprising that it passed without much notice.

It came in the form of the quiet demise of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), a corporate body with corporate responsibilities, and it’s replacement by just a single person, Kit Malthouse, one of the deputy mayors of London and chairman of the erstwhile authority.

But this is not a like-for-like replacement. Gone now, for good or ill, is multi-party consensus and in comes single person, single party focus. Operations and running the force will remain with the Commissioner, but strategy (which after all sets the operational context), budget and performance monitoring is now concentrated in the hands of ‘the Mayor’s Office for Police and Crime’. The mayor can, however, delegate the function and this is what Mayor Johnson has done. 

Add to this the power to appoint, dismiss and renew the fixed term appointment of the Commissioner and it all adds up to a powerful, unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of a single person. 

There has, in sum, been a decisive shift away from professional towards more politicised policing.

If there is any doubt that this is how it is then Mr Malthouse’s supporters will provide the evidence. For some time they have been saying it’s his hands which are now ‘on the tiller’ at Scotland Yard.

Of course, we have been softened up for this move. The process started with the alignment of the Mayor’s Office and the MPA when Ken Livingstone was mayor. Messrs Johnson and Malthouse’s policing profiles, meanwhile, have been rising for some time.  

However, Mr Malthouse's accession to office is but the beginning of the implementation of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act, passed last autumn. It is in effect a precursor to the replacement of police authorities across England and Wales by single person elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) later this year.  

There will be some check on the individual power of PCCs in the form of a Police and Crime Panel, but as this will comprise entirely local councilors it offers the prospect of more not less political involvement in policing.

In all this it is curious to note that voters in Greater London have been denied the same direct electoral opportunity that those in the rest of the country will have. Everywhere outside London, voters will at least be able to elect their PCC. In Greater London voters will have to make do with to whomsoever the mayor delegates the function.

Even these arrangements, however, may not last for very long. Later this year elections are due for both the mayor and London Assembly. This holds out some interesting possibilities – Mayor Livingstone replacing Mayor Johnson; Mr Livingstone resuming direct responsibility for policing opposite a Conservative Home Secretary; the Assembly having a majority of councilors from a different party from the mayor. The result? Yet more politics.

For one group of voters - those entitled to vote for the City of London Corporation - all this will be of no more than academic interest, for their PCCs and the Mayor’s Office for Police and Crime will not travel. Within the bastion of the ‘Square Mile’ the police authority will remain the ‘Common Council’. Even revolutions have their limitations.

The global franchise model has served the Al Qaeda leadership well. It heralds from Osama Bin Laden’s own exposure to corporate business models when he read business studies at university in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden’s university career was originally intended to give him the background needed to join the family construction business in Saudi Arabia.

One of the innovations that entered the business vernacular at the time Bin Laden was carrying out his studies was the notion of power to the edge. This new business model was heralded as being more flexible and innovative. It avoided all the time delays of centralised decision making, allowing business leaders at the edge of organisations to grasp opportunities that arose in what is often a fast-changing market situation where centralised decision making would create inertia.

Osama Bin Laden studied this model and took the unique step of applying it to a global terrorist organisation. After all if global corporations think that power to the edge is a great model why not use it to de-centralise terror?

Decentralising the decision-making in terrorist groups was not a totally new idea. In Northern Ireland the Irish Republican Army had evolved a sophisticated approach to creating cells that would operate autonomously on the British mainland. This was driven primarily by operational security issues and fears that the movement had been penetrated at the highest levels by the British Security Services. Those fears ultimately proved to be correct as several high profile people have come forward since the Good Friday Agreement was implemented to speak of their work inside the terrorist group.

In the past, other groups such as the Bader-Meinhoff and Red Brigades all suffered from being centralised. Once the key leaders were arrested the power of those groups waned. Once the charismatic leaders had been removed little thought had been put into how an organisation could survive. Bader-Meinhoff and the Red Brigade’s focus on being against the state and what they saw as the model of capitalism prevented them from seeing what it might offer them as a business model. Osama Bin Laden had no such qualms.

When Bin Laden chose to allow franchises to emerge across the world he may have anticipated that one day the United States Special Forces would finally catch up with him. This is when the kind of corporate disaster recovery thinking that would have featured in Bin Laden’s studies also comes to the fore. When disasters happen, the agile and flexible business models enable rapid responses that minimise the disruption to its operations. By creating a global franchise, Bin Laden realised he was creating an enduring and robust business mode for Al Qaeda that would survive his death.

Despite the setback that Bin Laden’s death inevitably had on Al Qaeda’s business operations, the business model that Bin Laden created is still functioning. On Christmas Day in Nigeria one of Al Qaeda’s franchises, Boko Haram, conducted for the second year in a row a number of attacks upon Christian churches. With over 40 people reported to have been killed and many more seriously injured this was yet another example of an Al Qaeda franchise showing that it could continue to conduct acts of terrorism despite recent security clampdowns by the Nigerian Government.

Just before Christmas a wave of attacks with 18 bombs in a 36 hour period rocked Baghdad. Days later those attacks were claimed by the local franchise of Al Qaeda operating in Iraq. Despite all the hopes that many people in the Arab World have expressed as the Arab Spring brought dramatic change to the Middle East the ideology and conviction of those that take their direction from a very different form of societal model appears undiminished.

It would appear that as we enter the New Year, despite the loss of their leader, the corporate model on which he built Al Qaeda survives. The irony is that its durability is a testament to the kind of flexible and agile globalised world that Bin Laden so despised.

Perhaps Bin Laden’s lasting legacy is a profound one. Terrorist groups that adopt the Bin Laden franchise model are unlikely to be defeated as quickly as those we have experienced in the past. For western security services this has important implications. Whilst the 1^st of January is usually a point to celebrate the onset of a New Year for the emergency services, it is fact groundhog day. This, it would seem, is a clear case of plus ça change plus c’est la même chose.  

So the Home Secretary has asked ACPO to review police use of stop and search in the wake of the LSE-Guardian analysis of the events of August 2011, ‘Reading the Riots’.

The study interviewed 270 rioters and found that the majority cited poverty and policing as the riots’ principal causes.  As for what aspect of policing caused the greatest resentment, it was something that has seldom been without controversy over the last 35 years – stop and search.

The LSE-Guardian study must be taken seriously, despite its relatively small and one-sided sample-base.  Its authors have impeccable scholastic credentials and its conclusions have been broadly corroborated by the government’s own inquiry ‘5 Days in August’.

It should come as no surprise that stop and search is the focus of such resentment.  It is overwhelmingly targeted on young black men who live in what used to be termed ‘the inner-cities’.  In 2007/8 the England and Wales average were 22 per 1000 population.   If you were black, however, the rate rose to 129 per 1000.  If you were black and in London it rose to 168 per 1000; if you were in the Borough of Westminster the rate was 619. (Commission for Racial Equality, 2010)

Resentment with stop and search is nothing new.  Scarman in his epoch-making report of 1981 identified the disproportionate targeting of stop and search on young black men as one of the causes of the Brixton ‘disorders’, although he emphasised that, properly conducted, it was a legitimate police tactic.

He was, of course, looking at a different legal landscape.  In 1981 stop and search was principally a Metropolitan issue.  The Met had a specific power under section 66 of the Metropolitan Police Act 1839, whereas the rest of the country relied on makeshift and antiquated legislation.  The result was that in the provinces the tactic was rarely used and never encouraged.   

Scarman’s answer, as befits a judge, was to tidy up the law, and section 1 of what became the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 was conceived.  This certainly tidied up the law, but the new power was easier to use (‘reasonable suspicion’ of possessing stolen goods or prohibited articles being sufficient grounds) and applied equally throughout the country.  Small wonder then that its use has increased steadily since 1984.

The new power proved equally controversial, as the disproportional focus on young back men simply then extended across the country.  Despite arguing that it is a legitimate tactic to combat street crime; despite new training and guidance post-Lawrence; despite excessive statistical monitoring, the power has served to come between the police and the communities of Britain’s inner-cities, adding to their sense of isolation and deprivation.

So what is the answer? Hope that politeness and courtesy will ensure that every stop and search is a positive encounter, rather than the embarrassing and intrusive experience it almost certainly will be?  Issue some more ‘guidance’?  In reality, it is unlikely that ACPO-NPIA’s 2006 ‘practice advice’ can be significantly improved upon.

No it must be more fundamental than that.  There must be a culture-shift; a real acceptance that it simply is an antiquated tactic which results in disproportionately few arrests (just 9% in 2009/10) and has a minimal affect on crime.  It is after all the 21st century and surely with ‘intelligence-led’ policing we can do better.  

But what happens if the pressure comes on and a deepening recession sees an increase in street crime?

I expect Mrs May will call for another review. 

In the current climate of austerity and cuts to budgets, police forces are being asked to do more with less and to engage more with the private sector to outsource activities that might otherwise be undertaken in-house. A larger market for the buying and selling of policing services is emerging, but before this is too hastily embraced it may be worth taking a moment to address some questions such as: what can and should be outsourced and how can value for money be ensured while upholding the standards the public expects?

One of the biggest barriers to working in partnership with private enterprise is the culture clash between the public and private sector. Whether perceived or real, essentially it all boils down to notions of ‘public good’ versus ‘private profit’. Research by Professor Martin Gill shows that some officers doubt their private sector counterpart’s ability to do the job or that they are any more likely to provide value for money. For their part, the private sector perceive the police to be ‘customers from hell’ when it comes to procurement or drawing up sound business contracts. There is still clearly much bridge building to be done.

If outsourcing is inevitable, how can one ensure that collaboration is successful and constructive? Firstly, there needs to be greater clarity over what should and what should not be outsourced. This is not as straightforward as it sounds. It will be important to ensure that outsourcing doesn’t compromise public trust and confidence. A division of policing tasks into those needing powers of enforcement (and by default discretion and accountability) and those that do not is probably more helpful than categorisation by function. So, for example, police work that needs a warrant, such as the deployment of officers, emergency response and the gathering of intelligence should probably, on this basis, not be outsourced.

But although trust in the public sector is higher than the commercial sector, the private sector has the edge in terms of customer satisfaction. Simplifying procurement (which is expensive and time-consuming) and getting contracts right could be the next step in improving partnership working. Service contracts need not be restricted to dry business arrangements but could include wider provisions that allow different types of employment practice, such as allowing the force to train contracted employees.

Ultimately wider work is needed to improve collaboration between the police and the private sector. It is needed especially around clarifying the kinds and levels of responsibility the private sector might assume. This would provide a greater understanding of the implications of privatising certain aspects of policing, securing appropriate regulation, relaxing some of the more complicated procurement processes to allow greater flexibility in the provision of services and, perhaps most importantly, finding out what the public wants from the police (and only the police) and why. 

Although money is the driver for outsourcing it should not dictate whether services are surrendered to the private sector. This must be a carefully guided, value-driven process and for this reason Home Office guidance is keenly awaited. 

The appearance in court of self-confessed mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik on the 14th of November was his fourth since he committed the atrocities in Norway on the 22nd of July. For Breivik this is the start of what may be a number of dramatic courtroom appearances.

On that fateful day it would appear that Breivik had meticulously planned the operation in which 77 people in total died. First a huge car bomb had targeted the Government offices in Oslo. Eight people died in the initial blast. The scenes in Oslo reminded many of the attack on the Hoover Building in Oklahoma on the 19th of April 1995. This was two years to the day after the Waco siege was ended by the FBI. Unlike its perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, Breivik had not chosen a specific date to conduct the attack as an act of remembrance.

Despite the obvious visual comparisons, memories of acts of right wing extremists had dimmed. Many observers across the world were quick to make assessments that the bomb had been planted by Muslim extremists. That assessment changed as Breivik was arrested on the island of Utoeya. His killing spree had lasted 95 minutes.

During the attack he had made two phone calls to the Police. In the first call he introduces himself as ‘Commander Anders Breivik of the Norwegian anti-communist resistance movement’ and claims that he wants to give himself up. In the second, about 20 minutes later after he has killed yet more people, he first claims to be a member of the Knights Templar and goes onto state that ‘I have completed my operation….so I want to surrender’. This is important. At no point during the attack did Breivik seem to want to die. Indeed he went out of his way to tell the police that he was ready to surrender when they arrived on the scene.

Such was his desire to live that Breivik has claimed that he tried to call the police ten times but only got through twice. These are not the actions of a madman. They are those of a person who knows precisely what they are doing. The reference in the second phone call to the Knights Templar clearly evokes memories of the Crusades. The images of the members of the Order leading the armies into battle in the Holy Land, was clearly something Breivik wanted to see recalled by those watching the media. The nature of the dialogue that took part in the calls is being used by the defence at his hearings to question his state of mind when he carried out the attack.

Of the 550 people attending the camp on the island 69 were dead. Breivik had simply gunned them down in cold blood. It was a ruthless act of mass murder which catapulted him to the top of the official rankings of spree killers. He was literally in a class of his own.

Unlike many of his fellow spree killers, Breivik was still alive. Many chose to die at their own hands or to force the police to kill them in an exchange of gunfire. For them, their moment of fame is often short lived. Not many people remember the names of the gunmen who killed the teachers and school children in Dunblane or at Hungerford. Those that happen in other parts of the world in Finland and the United States are even more distant. The public’s reaction to such events is to express immediate horror at what has occurred and then simply to move on. As Andy Warhol once suggested ‘everyone can get their 15 minutes of fame’. His implication was clear, for the vast majority fame does not last.

As the police finally arrived on the island he quickly surrendered. They had taken 50 minutes to initially deploy, 20 minutes to drive to the island and a further 20 minutes to find a boat to make the one kilometre crossing to the island. As armed officers raced ashore the gunman meekly surrendered.  He was not about to die in a shoot-out with the Norwegian Police. He had other plans. That was to get the opportunity that many in his peer group in the list of spree shooters never had; to keep coming back to court to remind everyone about his grievance and to have his time in the media spotlight.

Thus far unlike McVeigh who was executed for his crime that strategy has worked for Breivik. His courtroom appearances are dramatic and yet calculated – like the planning he put into the attack. He is clearly determined to work the Norwegian judicial system as much as he can – milking it for every opportunity to state his case and explain his actions.

In court he has thus far shown no remorse. His statements about being a commander of the Norwegian resistance movement echo to the heroics of a very different breed of people in World War Two. Many of them died opposing Fascism. His actions will remind many of the older people in Norway of just how the Nazi’s treated those who opposed their views. Mass slaughter was one of a number of weapons of coercion that they were to use to try and bring a restive population to heel. Breivik’s delusion and disconnection with reality appears total. He is a man who inhabits a very different world with values and beliefs that do not chime with the vast majority of people in Norway.

That said he will be afforded the opportunity to return to court after the judicial system has determined his right to stand trial. Anyone who has seen the man standing in the dock can have little doubt about his sanity. Whilst many in Norway might wish that Anders Behring Breivik would be certified, limiting his courtroom appearances, that seems unlikely. Sadly for those that died their relatives and the wider population it would seem that Breivik has several more courtroom appearances to make before finally he is consigned to history.

Police sciences expert Dr Colin Rogers looks at how the causes of this summer's riots are all too familar

The recent reports published by the Riots Communities and Victims Panel into the 2011 summer riots in August throughout England coupled with the recent publication by the Guardian newspaper (based on interviews and social network transcripts) on the same subject has once again thrown up some interesting points in the search for discovering the root causes of the disturbances.

Media reports have, of course, focused on the sensational or provocative, in order to increase interest, and dare I say revenue. Yet an important point not overly reinforced by the media, is that both publications believe that ‘there was no single cause of the riots and there is no single solution’.

While the authors of the Riots Communities and Victims Panel report believe that the riots were triggered by one incident, the death of Mark Duggan, it also suggested that there was a history of antipathy between some members of the black community and the police and that underlying tensions in the community had been rising for some time.

This is also promoted by the research conducted by the Guardian newspaper who cite, amongst other grievances, anger over the shooting of Mark Duggan alongside common complaints relating to peoples everyday experience of policing again citing stop and search powers as being problematic.

In addition, both reports suggest that the reason why the riots spread is, in part, because of the lack of police response to initial incidents, thus giving rise to the belief that the police did not have the capacity to deal with them.

These reports are of course far more detailed than the highlights portrayed by the media and are well worth a read. Despite the fact that one could criticise the Guardians report for methodological issues (after all, individuals tend to rationalise their seemingly irrational behaviour when spoken to after events), there are clear similarities in both reports that should raise cause for concern.

Further, what strikes anyone who remembers the Brixton Riots of 1981 are the similarities in these reports to the report on those disorders by the Rt. Hon. The Lord Scarman, OBE in November 1981.

Allegations of initial inactivity by the police were levelled on this occasion also, but Scarman, having heard the evidence believed that, "Any fault lay in an inability to muster adequate numbers of officers, properly trained and equipped, sufficiently quickly, rather than in a failure of either police will or of operational judgement". It may well be that the police response in the summer can be summed up in the same vein.

Like the summer riots, one incident seems to have been suggested as being the spark that led to the riots in 1981. Operation Swamp, the mass stop and search operation in the Brixton area which apparently led to the disorders, again coupled with a background of alleged deteriorating relationships between police and community was highlighted as being a major cause.

Clearly there are many similarities in both reports that suggest reasons for the riots. The question is this. Why, after all the years of increased work in the field of diversity training, partnership working, community initiatives and ‘lessons learned’ from such incidents as the Stephen Lawrence murder are incidents such as these being blamed on basically the same reasons? Why does stop and search feature in all the reports as being particularly problematic? Why do deteriorating community relationships feature so prominently?

Can it be a drift has occurred whereby a more ‘hard line’, ‘total policing’ approach is prevalent , encouraged by a political philosophy that rarely seriously talks about community safety partnerships but revels in the rhetoric of pure enforcement policing, coupled with a lack of funding for these activities, has influenced this? One would hope not.

The answers to these questions are complex and need much more consideration than there is space for here. Clearly, if fault is the word then maybe there are faults on both sides of the discussion. What appears clear, however, is that ‘lessons learned’ from historical incidents do not necessarily translate into action and that ghosts from the past can and sometimes do revisit us and make life uncomfortable for everyone.

You might think whether or not swearing at a police officer is a criminal offence would be a simple enough question to answer.

However, it has given rise to quite a lot of case law over the years - including a ruling from the High Court on 17th November, which has sparked fury in the newspapers.

Last week’s case is Harvey v Director of Public Prosecutions, AC, 17 November 2011, and the facts are as follows:

Harvey was part of a group standing in the public area of a block of flats. The police wished to search Harvey and he objected in these terms: "F*ck this, I haven't been smoking anything."

He was warned as to his behaviour and threatened with an arrest under s5 Public Order Act 1996. Following the search, which revealed nothing, Harvey said: "I told you you wouldn't find f*ck-all." He was further warned, and in response to a question to give his full name he replied: "I have already f*cking told you." He was then arrested for a section 5 offence, and subsequently convicted before the Magistrates’ Court.

There has been a certain amount of fuss over this, due to the fact that the High Court overturned that conviction. But why? Is it the case that swearing at police officers (and others) is now legal? Or something else?

The first thing to point out is that however unattractive the language might be, swearing per se is not a criminal offence. The section 5 offence is concerned with words or behaviour that are said within the hearing of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress.

The conviction was overturned for the following reasons:

• The Crown Prosecution Service adduced no evidence at all from the officers that the words had caused them harassment, alarm or distress. The court noted that police officers in particular regrettably hear this language all too frequently as part of their job and are less likely to be affected by it. The case of Southard v DPP (see below) is on point.
• The same could be said, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, in relation to the group of young people assembled at the time.
• There was no evidence that any other persons (eg neighbours) heard the exchange.

So, this case is not a licence for people to cause police officers harassment, alarm or distress through the use of bad language. It simply reflects the reality that many people - particularly police officers who hear this day in day out - will find it more boorish than alarming.

Everything depends on context however, and the courts have not, despite what the press have reported, given people a free reign to abuse police officers.

Should swearing at a police officer be illegal? Maybe so, but that is a matter for parliament to decide, not the courts.

Southard v DPP AC [2006] EWHC 3449 

The words ‘f*ck you’ and ‘f*ck off’ are themselves potentially abusive. For a person to be caused harassment, they need not experience any sort of emotional disturbance or upset. However the harassment caused needs to be more than trivial for a defendant to be guilty of an offence. A police officer may be caused harassment by the use of abusive words or behaviour, however each case will depend on its individual circumstances. 

Ian Gilmour’s book entitled Riot, Rising and Revolution (which should be required reading for anyone involved in policing public disorder to my mind) reminds us that public demonstrations should be considered as barometers of change within democratic society and should therefore be understood within this wider political and social context.

Notwithstanding that those who commit violent and criminal acts should be dealt with by the criminal justice system, people have a democratic right to peacefully demonstrate and air their grievances.

This is particularly so when those people feel disempowered or marginalized within society, or feel that they are considered insignificant by those who hold power. Young people in particular often believe themselves to be in this latter category.

It should therefore come as no surprise to see students, who in the main are young people but not exclusively so, wishing to demonstrate against student fees in particular and against austerity measures in general. Such was the recent demonstration in London which was handled in a manner referred to as "Total Policing".

So what does this phrase actually mean? One force describes the aim of their total policing policy as: "To build trust and confidence in the community and reduce crime and disorder." It is still not clear what this phrase is really meant to convey, for some it could suggest oppression.

From the demonstrators point of view, total policing appears to include such things as threatening letters encouraging people not to demonstrate, disproportionate numbers of police and the potential use of plastic bullets and other paramilitary tactics such as dispersal orders to send people on their way.

I suspect this terminology is another "catch all" phrase that seems to abound within public services and which the media use as headline grabbers.

The point is this: people have a right to demonstrate peacefully. How much control the police should have over the actual demonstration is open to debate. No one wants violence, and if it occurs it should be dealt with. There is a difference after all.

However, generally speaking, most demonstrations (as opposed to those instances designated riots) do pass off peacefully because of the social interaction and agreements between the police and demonstrators/organisers. These are well worn tactics that tend to pay off. After all, a proud boast of policing in this country is that we police by consent of all, not just those in power.

The problem may be this, should the police choose to invoke whatever is called "total policing" whenever marginalized groups chose to invoke their democratic right to demonstrate, then the chances are that these demonstrations would carry within themselves the seeds of flashpoints which would inevitably lead to violent confrontation.

In turn this may lead to the police being even tougher with demonstrations in the future, more legislation passed to support this, and a fundamental right of any democratic society, that of peaceful demonstration, being undermined.

Comment on this blog by emailing crogers@glam.ac.uk 

The stage is being set for an attack on Iran. The accusations of its involvement in a plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, and the publication of a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have created an inevitable backlash. The debate on attacking Iran and destroying its nuclear capabilities before it can join the relatively exclusive club of nuclear power nations has moved to a new level. Whilst some urge a new round of sanctions at the United Nations, others inevitably see that having no impact. For them the clock is ticking.

The Iranians also seem to have moved to counter the rumoured impact of the Stuxnet virus that apparently had a major impact on its nuclear enrichment activities. This was an act of cyber sabotage, not cyber warfare as some in the media have opined. If the media coverage emerging in open sources is to be believed, the Stuxnet virus had a significant impact on the Iranian programme. However such attacks can be a spur to those not prepared to lie down. The Arab Spring has provided one important insight for anyone paying attention. Some regimes do not fold once the protestors hit the streets.

For the Iranian regime in Tehran, seeing what happened in Libya was a stimulus to press on. The American softly-softly approach towards Pyongyang provides a clear alternative. The calculus of the Iranian regime must be that if they wish to avoid being displaced they need a nuclear capability. Once they have detonated one device they will be free of any threat from the United States and Israel. No one would dare attack a nuclear armed state. The question of when to attack Iran to try and prevent them gaining a nuclear capability is one that is not about to go away.

For Israel the dilemma is acute. Little more than two years ago they sent their fighters into Syria to destroy what appeared to be a nuclear facility that had been given to the Assad regime by the North Koreans. Their attack on the nascent Iraqi nuclear facility 17km to the south east of Baghdad in June 1981 had shown the steps the Israeli’s would take. A repeat performance is on the cards. In many analysts minds it is only a question of time.

Any school child doing physics knows that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In international political language this is often referred to as blowback. This often involves unintended consequences, where the full implications of an action are not appreciated at the time.

For the United Kingdom Government, the recent rumours that contingency plans have been drawn up in case the American’s decide to act against Iran, provide a backdrop to a very serious decision. Iran is not a Libya. Attack Iran and one of the inevitable consequences will be an increase in terrorism in the United Kingdom. An attack on Iran would enable some communities riven by the Shia-Sunni sectarian divide to momentarily combine to face down what will be seen by those in Tehran as a threat to their religion. Islam will yet again be portrayed as being under attack, creating a unifying effect allowing Al Qaeda to come to the aid of its traditional enemy, the Shia.

As the British government considers its position on Iran it is no doubt weighing up the possibility of blowback. At a time when the Olympic Games is now less than one year away, doing anything that might impact the security landscape against which the Games will be held is a difficult decision. Threats from Irish Republican Extremists and Islamic Fundamentalists already pre-occupy the law enforcement agencies. Adding in an additional factor created by a blowback from an attack on Iran needs to be weighed very carefully. The unintended consequences might be quite dramatic.   

I was fortunate to be invited aboard HMS Bulwark this week as it was anchored in the Solent ahead of a major amphibious exercise. Its 21,500 tonnes is an imposing sight as the helmsman in charge of the landing craft steered us into one of the two bays at the back from which it can launch its various assets ashore.

HMS Bulwark had just taken up the role as flagship of the Royal Navy as her sister ship HMS Albion goes into dock for a refit. During her four years in that role HMS Bulwark will no doubt undertake many interesting deployments.

Given the uncertain nature of the world today who knows where she may end up. Crisis and humanitarian relief operations seem to pose a never-ending set of challenges for the international community. Her role in evacuating 1300 British, Commonwealth and European citizens from the war in the Lebanon in 2006 in what the Ministry of Defence called OPERATION HIGHBROW still remains a definitive example of one of the many missions landing platform docks – to give her the formal name used by the Royal Navy – performs. 

Despite the uncertainty of the international climate, the crew of HMS Bulwark already known one mission for which they have been slated to carry out. That is to provide protection of the yachting events at Portland during the Olympic Games in 2012. Working alongside the command team from Dorset Police, HMS Bulwark will provide a huge presence in the vicinity of the sailing events.

By basing the warship in the area the intent is clear. The aim is to ensure that anyone thinking of using the Olympics as a means of promoting a specific cause or ideology would think twice before engaging with one of the United Kingdom’s most powerful military assets. One of the key aims of deploying HMS Bulwark into the area is to deter any would-be terrorists seeking to use the Olympics to re-create the images of Munich in 1972.

Throughout the Olympic Games, HMS Bulwark will provide an outer security perimeter to ensure that no danger to the sailing events can arise from the sea. This is important as the harbour of Weymouth cannot be simply shut-down for the duration. It is a working harbour and arrangements are in place to ensure that vessels seeking to enter the harbour can do so safely whilst the sailing events are in place. This will require that a significant maritime capability is on hand to carry out inspections and checks on any vessels entering or leaving the immediate vicinity.

HMS Bulwark’s embarked detachment of Royal Marines is well versed in conducting both opposed and unopposed searches of vessels that may require inspection. Fine tuned through numerous deployments into the Indian Ocean to confront pirates and other illegal maritime activities the Royal Marines will be able to respond using their variety of assets to any potential security threats that might emerge from the sea in whatever form they take. The fast boats operated by the Royal Marines, coupled with overwatch from helicopters and HMS Bulwark’s on-board sensor systems will allow a comprehensive maritime picture to be developed.

This will allow any potential threats to be evaluated and when required intercepted and inspected. Coordination with the Dorset police will be ensured through the deployment of Airwave compatible radio systems on board HMS Bulwark. This will provide the Dorset police commander with a unique capability with which to address any unforeseen developments that arise during the Olympic Games.

Like most people who have a deep interest in policing in this country, I was intrigued to hear the Labour Party’s announcement last week at their annual conference that they are to set up a ‘heavyweight’ independent review of policing in England and Wales. The people mentioned for sitting on the board thus far all seem honourable and very capable of performing such a role.

It is no surprise that the Police Federation and other staff associations are broadly supportive of such a move, given the amount of change that the Police Service has undergone in recent times due to the economic austerity programmes that are reducing jobs and cutting back other resources. However, calls for such a review or even a Royal Commission on policing have firmly been rejected by governments of all political persuasions in the past decade or so, despite there being calls from such figures as Sir Ian Blair, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, who asked the simple question ‘tell us what you want us to do’ in articles and at prestigious lectures some years ago.

I broadly support the idea of an independent review or Royal Commission into policing, simply on the fact that society has changed so dramatically since the last one in 1962, which led to the Police Act of 1964 and the setting up of such things as the tripartite system of accountability. Hopefully, the review will consider such issues as the fitness of the current arrangements for policing such a changed, dynamic and diverse society, and how this can be improved, rather than focus on political point scoring.

However, the question I pose is this - can such an ‘independent review’ into policing as proposed - by any political party - be truly politically independent?  Whilst those chosen to sit on the review panel may be honest and trustworthy individuals, presumably they will have to work within the aims and objectives of the review as laid out by the sponsor- namely in this case the Labour Party. It is inconceivable that the aims and objectives of such a review will not be tainted by ideas that would ultimately show the current government’s policies with regard to policing in a bad political light. It will be interesting to see how far its remit will extend. For example, will it include such areas as community safety partnerships. Also, will it be linked to two current ongoing reviews – the Winsor review on pay and conditions, and the Leveson review on police involvement in the phone hacking scandal? Further, whilst proposing full support for the review, it is interesting that the shadow Home Secretary stated that the Labour Party would respond to its findings. Responding does not necessarily mean implementing, and whilst not wishing to be cast as totally cynical, semantics such as these are important to understand when put forward by political parties.

Robert Reiner’s book entitled The Politics of the Police reminds us that policing does not exist in a political and social vacuum. Anyone who suggests otherwise I would suggest is naive. I truly hope that any independent review will be carried out for the benefit of society and policing in general and not for the benefit of any political party in particular.

We all know about that awful social media stuff. It’s what the criminals and opportunists who orchestrated this summer’s riots used to organise themselves, in lockstep with BBM (BlackBerry Messenger). A closed world to the mainstream of society, a way for inscrutable teens to lock the rest of us out – and work out how to smash our stuff up, too.

But social networking also underpinned a massively positive social initiative that happened during the riots - a spontaneous, grass-roots attempt to sort out the mess, all under the ‘hashtag’ of @riotcleanup. 

The images of thousands of citizens on the streets waving brooms seemed to symbolize something positive that counterbalanced all the negativity and destruction the rioters had caused. To quote just one of the many supportive Tweets – in this case from comedian Dave Gorman  - "Went to bed depressed by the news. Now feeling strangely emotional as I read about @riotcleanup. Amazing." In the words of a short-lived website dedicated to the process, “This is not about the riots. This is about the clean up - Londoners who care, coming together to engender a sense of community.”

To quote the organiser, meanwhile:  “The footage of high streets and independent shops burning was terrifying to watch and I wanted to find a way to help that was quick, simple and practical.”  At the height of the campaign, he had 70,000 followers in London alone. The question is, did it mean anything?

The aspect of social networking that enabled this mass mobilisation of people is the same thing that seems to have disturbed the government so much, at least at the time.  Social networking suppliers were summoned by the Home Secretary to a special meeting in Downing St in August to discuss limiting access to their services in the case of another such civil disorder (which would of course have also stymied any attempt at a @riotcleanup 2). As the Prime Minister said at the time: "We are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

Given that people are actually in jail now for inciting violence through Facebook, you can’t blame the government for its concerns. As it happened however, the moment passed and the idea was dropped. The main fruit of the meeting between the political and the social media establishment, as it turned out, were discussions on how the authorities might use social networking to engage and communicate with the population during times of emergency.

If this stance is pursued as it should be, then the broomstick wielders will have won a much more lasting victory than the window-smashers and bottle throwers. The sad fact is we live in extraordinarily dangerous times, and social networking – which can deliver both news and safety advice immediately – is now a vital tool in mitigating that danger.

It is customary for people to observe a minutes silence as an act of remembrance for those who have lost their lives in a major accident, natural disaster or act of terrorism. In New York and across many parts of the world the critical moment when the attack against the United States started ten years ago, a moment of silence was held to commemorate those that died in the world’s single most catastrophic act of terrorism.

The tenth anniversary of that dreadful day was always going to be a difficult day for those who lost loved ones. Despite the passage of time the grief etched on some people’s faces was still raw as they stood in New York remembering the scenes that all of us know so well. The silence spoke volumes.

The respect for the moment of silence was observed by all except a few extremists who gathered outside the United States Embassy in London. Their incoherent rhetoric and behaviour contrasted so dramatically with the dignity of the moment of silence observed by others in the United Kingdom.

It could have all been so different. In the last hours before the act of remembrance in New York a credible terrorist threat emerged from a reliable source in Pakistan. Even though security was already intense it set the New York authorities into another round of increased effort. On the day, President Obama and President Bush were both going to attend the act of remembrance in New York. Together they represented a very attractive target. For many this was a very real threat that had to be treated seriously.

A good friend in the New York Fire Department wrote to me earlier on in the week expressing concern about what might happen. His daughter was taking part in the commemoration service. The collective sigh of relief at the end of the services must have been palpable in the Police, Fire and Ambulance rescue service headquarters. The day passed without incident. The act of commemoration had gone like clockwork.

The simple fact is that the silence that commemorated those that died was only outdone by the silence of Al Qaeda. Despite his urgings in the months before Osama bin Laden, died the day passed with almost no events occurring around the world. The lack of any attack is revealing. But it does not suggest that Al Qaeda is finished. In Afghanistan a suicide bomber caused nearly 80 casualties in a United States military base, of itself nothing out of the ordinary. In Sweden the police arrested four people in Gothenburg they have charged with plotting acts of terrorism. Recent court cases in the United Kingdom have served to illustrate the enduring nature of the threat we face as America’s closest ally. Clearly there are still those who desire to conduct acts of terrorism.

That no major acts of terrorism occurred anywhere in the world provides an insight into the degree to which Al Qaeda is currently unable to transfer its intent into action. The death of Bin Laden and the newly promoted Second-in-Command in recent military operations has clearly had a major impact. The new head of Al Qaeda Dr Ayman Al-Zawahiri is struggling to assert his authority. For Al Qaeda at the moment life is very difficult. But it is too soon to suggest they are finished. They retain a core group of people whose commitment does not appear to have waivered.

It is to be hoped that Al Qaeda struggles to recover from these set-backs and the world can start to move on. It would be a fitting testimony to those that died ten years ago for the anniversary not just to be an act of remembrance but also as a celebration of a new era where a similar devastating act of terrorism can never occur again.  Given Al Qaeda’s history however it would be a very brave person that would bet on such an outcome. Sadly the silence of Al Qaeda on the tenth anniversary is unlikely to be sustained.

Nearly a month has passed since the riots provided such a stern test for British policing's operational capacity and public profile. With the success of the Notting Hill carnival operation suggesting that the peace has now been won, it seems like a good time to take stock and try and make sense of how such a thing could have happened.

Many people have attempted to explain the motivations of those that rampaged through the streets of our major cities during those days in August. Not least of these was the Prime Minister, who famously, in the aftermath of the events described society as being 'sick'. (And prescribed a short-term cure in the form of American 'supercop' Bill Bratton, that from a UK policing perspective, could at best be described as knee-jerk).

I don't pretend to have any greater insight than any other commentator, but it occurs to me that something has been missed - or even made to disappear as too difficult and elusive a question to answer, or possibly even pose. As the Prime Minister has quite rightly stated, to lay the blame in any one place is an inaccurate reading of the situation - in some cases, a deliberately inaccurate reading of the situation designed to score political points. Poverty; gang culture; lack of parental responsibility; hopelessness on the part of the jobless young as the economy continues to stagnate; the lack of moral leadership from banks and politicians - these were all were no doubt contributory factors.

But, it seems to me, the tone of the violence - if it's possible to speak of such a thing - was unique, so therefore, the reason for it must be unique too. These were not the modern equivalent of bread riots during the time of the tsars. Nor were they 'anti-police', or carried out to draw attention to any apparent inequality. (The initial march in Tottenham was, clearly, but not what it eventually grew in to in a head-spinningly short space of time). This was, as I remember tweeting at the time, the first protest in history to be about the right to own a widescreen television. In other words, it was wholly criminal and malicious in a way that other types of civil unrest - very arguably indeed - are not.

David Cameron's use of the word sick to describe society is inaccurate. Not because there isn't something terribly wrong with some aspects of the country in which we live, since there obviously is. Rather, if something is 'sick' in this context, the implication is that it can be made 'well' and I don't think it can, because the cure would involve somehow tearing out one of the central planks that enables contemporary society to function economically - the need to endlessly acquire stuff.

Another unique aspect of the August violence was the use of social networking to coordinate it. Social networking is a wonderful tool to keep in contact with a potentially unlimited number of people, as forces are just starting to discover to the massive benefit of neighbourhood policing. But it is its potential to build communities that also makes it potentially dangerous, whether in terms of the mobilisation of gangs of troublemakers, or helping to nurture a self-sustaining, wholly amoral discourse of entitlement across the communities it creates.

One of the quietest voices heard in the media during the riots was a community worker on BBC Newsnight who suggested that culture is now teaching the young that the world is theirs by right. It's not a massive stretch, surely, to suggest that if you tell people (particularly people with nothing) often enough that they are entitled to everything! now!, sooner or later, you're going to get trouble. And that, I would postulate, is exactly what happened in the week of August the 6th.

So, if society cannot be ‘cured’ of this malaise, what exactly is the solution? The answer is actually pretty obvious – civil responsibility and compassion, which generally speaking are always the answer to everything but which, unfortunately, are difficult to engineer and practically impossible to micro-manage.  

Luckily there are reasons to be hopeful in this regard. One these is the community-led clean-up campaign that helped to reclaim the streets of London and elsewhere, even as the rioters were out causing havoc and wrecking lives. Organised via Twitter and Facebook, these not only showed that community can be a very powerful thing (but in a good way), but also made progress in rehabilitating social networking in the mind of the public at large.  

Another reason for hope, of course, is the police response. The debate will continue over certain strategic aspects of the operation - something that, somewhat inevitably, continues to be used as a political football even now. What was never in doubt however, is the commitment of officers on the ground to put their lives at risk and keep people safe, in the harshest and most high-profile of circumstances.   

The current investigation into the phone hacking allegations has not just opened peoples eyes to the suspected various dubious practices of some journalists in the name of the freedom of the press. It has also thrown up suspicion concerning the activities of senior police officers within the Metropolitan police. The events leading to the resignations of Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates must surely mean that suspicion about police/media relationships need to be thoroughly and impartially investigated.

The police and the media have always had a symbiotic relationship – for example, the police have used the press on many occasions to seek witnesses to criminal acts, while the media has depended upon police for newspaper copy and stories. This has lead to the rise of press relations officers etc in police organisations over the past 20 years or so.

However, there is also another perspective here. In the wider political context, the present government has sought to implement many reforms within the Police Service and there are several major documents out for consultation at the moment. Several of these documents and proposals have been met with strong resistance from within the police organisation and on occasions, by several quite senior police officers.

Those who wish to reform the police organisation may now point to the suspected immoral or even illegal activities of some police officers, as well as others within the organisation who may be implicated in the current investigations, as good reasons for the implementation of change.

Whatever the outcome of this enquiry, public perception of the police, including those at the top as well as the lower ranks, is in danger of being seriously eroded. Until the matter is fully investigated, the events will be subject to conjecture and speculation concerning their activities. They will also allow those who wish drastic change to the accountability and governance of policing in this country much more momentum and general support than hitherto seen, as well as a more robust licence to implement reforms.

In the period following the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, fusion centres were primarily US-based terrorism prevention and response facilities, enabling collaboration between multiple agencies working to deter terrorist acts. In recent years, the concept of fusion centres has spread outside the US and their role has grown, beyond their initial remit, to also encompass an ‘all risks, all hazards’ approach.

Today, there is a growing perception that the principles that underpinned the development of fusion centres in the US should be applied across the UK police sector to help prevent and solve crimes. Initial steps have already been taken in this direction and we are seeing increased data sharing between some UK forces. Much work still needs to be done, however, in integrating these concepts into the working practices of the UK police.   

Forces today face a range of challenges from increasingly complex legislation to severe budget cuts and need to utilise their resources more efficiently. At the same time, they have to tackle the problems of opportunist crime; serious and organised crime and the ever-present threat from domestic and international terrorism while at the same time countering the public perception that UK crime levels are on the increase.

In addressing these issues, they face one key challenge above all – the need to convert data and information into actionable intelligence and to ensure that data is available to those who require it without compromising the security of that intelligence. This, in turn, means that an IT infrastructure needs to be in place that enables data to be collated, converted into intelligence, analysed and then shared out among the key stakeholders in a timely manner.

In the world of criminal investigations, information sharing is increasingly becoming mission-critical. Forces across the UK have come to realise that they need access to more than just their own data.

The consequences of not effectively sharing data between forces are that the intelligence on a particular investigation will often be patchy, with key data points about a suspect or case likely to be missing, resulting in inefficient investigations and potentially dangerous consequences.

Even when relevant data is available, it will be of little benefit to UK forces unless it is utilised effectively. If disparate data - different structures, formats and update rates - are not brought together in a way which makes sense to operatives, investigations will be delayed and decision-making is likely to be slow and inaccurate. It will be difficult for forces to effectively predict and prevent crime.

Technology can, of course, play a key role in addressing these issues. Investigators assigned specific cases need to be working from a single integrated IT platform, which provides excellent visibility into all the critical information. This model can eliminate double-entry and provides a streamlined process workflow, helping save time and drive faster responses to perceived threats.

It is not just about sharing and consolidating the information effectively, however. Forces also need to be able to exploit data effectively using analytic techniques. They need to be able to use technology to reveal patterns, anomalies, key variables and relationships in the data, leading ultimately to new insights and better answers faster. 

In short, they urgently require systems that present their analyst teams with the relevant information ‘all in one place’ and then allow them to use analytics to effectively pinpoint and evaluate the information that is critical to the case. This is where providers, like the public security business unit of SAS, can help in delivering intelligence management and exploitation solutions that allow investigators to identify and share intelligence more effectively, analyse data, uncover hidden patterns and networks and ultimately predict and prevent unwanted behaviour.

The backgrounds, educational qualifications and employment of people passing through the courts in London, Birmingham, Salford and Manchester in the last 24 hours will inevitably surprise some. They are a very diverse lot. Not perhaps the typical people that the wider public may have expected. Why did they get involved?

These were the opportunists, those who were caught up in the melee that had already been started by others who created the conditions for the riots to start. Once they gained momentum many others were drawn into the incidents, overtaken by the adrenalin rush associated with looting. In the immediate aftermath many of those will regret their actions.

Some sections of the media inevitably, fuelled by public anger at what they have witnessed, have started name and shame campaigns against these individuals. They should be wary of just how far they go with this tactic. Those who express real remorse for what they have done should be processed by the courts and then be put on notice that society gives them this one chance. Repeat the behaviour and it’s a custodial sentence.

But wider questions remain. How could some parts of society suddenly erupt like this? Political leaders in general have struggled to articulate the causes of this behaviour. Their backgrounds hardly prepare them for the kind of scenes we have all witnessed in the media, after all.  

In the inevitable rush to seek a silver bullet behind the causes of the riots some of them have been too quick to stereotype the behaviour, seeking the kind of swift answers to what caused the spontaneous outbreak of violence across our streets in so many major cities. Others have tried to politicise the events, acting as opportunists themselves, seeking to blame the cuts in the public sector. Rather than reaching out in this way a more reflective approach is required. The analysis of the ways the attacks developed provides important clues.

Once the violence had started in Tottenham on Saturday night it was inevitable that the contagion would spread. The inability of the police to deal with the initial outbreak emboldened those in control of a number of major street gangs that operate in these areas to put their troops onto the streets. They saw an opportunity to make a statement about who controlled the streets of these cities. Technology, such as BlackBerry Messaging (BBM), was used to mobilise the initial groups, helping them manoeuvre and avoid the police. This is how they kept one step ahead. Once these small groups showed that the police could be out-foxed, the second and larger wave of opportunists came onto the streets to help themselves.

So for those looking for answers to this you need go no further than to look at the street gangs and the role they play in some parts of society. They provide the kind of social identity that the so-called nuclear family used to provide. In its absence the street gang provides that sense of identity. It provides the sense of belonging and self esteem that Maslow so accurately classified that is part of human nature.

Those taunting the police on Sunday night across London and rushing forward to throw rocks before retreating were trying to gain some self esteem. Not in front of the wider general public, but in front of their fellow gang members, each one trying to test the limits of what the policemen could tolerate a little more. For some it was their moment to temporarily sit atop Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. To self actualise and achieve notoriety.

The inevitable spiral of violence results until large numbers of police are deployed to re-take the streets. With the media coverage of the violence in London it was never in doubt that another wave would break out in what has been term ‘copy-cat’ rioting across England. Other gang leaders called their groups onto the streets, using the kind of language that whilst inarticulate resonated with many seeking to prove themselves against authority.

Ironically all of this provides the police with a huge opportunity. The street gangs have long blighted our society. With public anger at the events and a fear of further contagion the police must seize this moment to disrupt the street gangs. They have been allowed to create a sore that runs deep into some communities, spreading fear and a sense of being abandoned. By coming to the surface, emerging from the dark world they normally inhabit, the street gang leadership has exposed itself. Its bravado could be its downfall if the police can act, get the evidence chain and bring these people to justice. It is long overdue. Whilst that act alone will not provide the kind of solution to the ‘sick society’ described by the Prime Minister it will go a long way to providing some answers.

With images of the riots in London over the past two days dominating the media, many people have turned to the issue of how crowds are mobilised to riot in this way. The well-established insights from social psychology and the development of Social Movement Theory provide a good start point.

Drawing on the emergence of the Civil Rights movement in the United States in the 1960s, the theory shows that social movements emerge when three things come together. These are - resources; a narrative which motivates collective action and a means by which the movement can be mobilised. In the 21^st century, as was witnessed in the student riots in London, that mobilisation is driven by the availability of social networking technologies.

Some parts of the media have been quick to suggest that Twitter played a key role in the mobilisation of these people. Whilst on the surface that appears plausible, and there will be evidence that proves people involved in the riots were tweeting, the actual impact of Twitter is questionable.

Many of those tweeting where caught up in the riots, innocent bystanders. Moreover, given the initial geographic containment of the riots on Saturday night, in the Tottenham area, it is likely that Twitter had little to do with the initial mobilisation of people on Saturday night. What is more likely is that the tweets appearing on Twitter helped create the contagion that spread the protests to other areas of London on Sunday.

Where social networking played a more important role is in the second phase of the riots, as they spread on Sunday night to other areas of London. This is where it is likely that a slightly more sophisticated form of organisation started to shape the events enabled by BlackBerry Messaging (BBM).

BBM offers people a relatively free and secure means by which groups of people that are happy to share their PIN codes can talk and plan their activities. To tweet is a one-way thing. To chatter is to help people move from an individual position into collective action as interactions occur between those whose anger is being fuelled by the discussion. It is one thing to read a tweet, quite another to post back a reply in what is essentially an open forum.

This suggests a slightly more sinister level of motivation. People do not share their PIN codes readily with strangers. What in effect occurred over the weekend was that people with malign intent used a command and control network established using BBM to spread the contagion to other communities who they believed would be vulnerable to engaging in the protests. What happened in the last two days in London is an example of a social phenomenon that initially started to be researched in the 1960s being stimulated by 21^st century technologies.

It is customary now to take every major tragedy in a country and attach to it the September 11th date. The same applies to the terrible events in Norway on Friday which has resulted in 91 people being killed by what appears to be a single lone gunman.

Inevitably, as the associations with September 11th will always create, a mindset develops that wishes to immediately attribute an attack of this nature to Islamic extremists. In the first few hours after the event a voracious media was questioning those talking heads who always wish to surface at these times to enable them to place their views on the air. However, for those of a more cautious disposition, the legacy of Madrid tempers the speed with which they rush to the microphones.

Those who immediately started to blame Al Qaeda as events in Norway unfolded were quickly shown to have called the attack wrongly. This was not a revenge attack for the Prophet Muhammad cartoons incident or the recent death of Osama Bin Laden. It appears to be the carefully orchestrated work of a member of the Extreme Right Wing in Norway.

Right wing groups across Europe, particularly in Scandinavia, have been increasingly emerging in political circles. In elections in Finland and Sweden they have tapped into the disquiet that exists about levels of immigration. Similar concerns exist in the United Kingdom and often surface in political debates.

The argument that some levels of immigration is necessary is now being matched by those who are willing to offer the counter view highlighting concerns about social integration, a point made in speeches in the last year by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister David Cameron. It is a subject that is firmly on their radar screens.

The rise of the right wing across Northern Europe is being stoked by those who fear that social migration maybe changing their societies dramatically. A backlash by those that fear the change and are prepared to resort to violence adds another dimension to the threats that exist on the societal landscape. Any notion that members of the XRW would not resort to violence to protect what they perceive as a threat to their values has been sunk by events in Norway. A new benchmark in spree killings has also been set.

It is important to also remember that events in Oklahoma City in April 1995 showed how just one member of the XRW could kill 168 people when Timothy McVeigh targeted the FBI Hoover Building. The scenes in Oslo at the site of the bomb attack on Friday were reminiscent of the aftermath of Oklahoma, albeit without the building collapse. The seven people reported to have been killed in the incident in Oslo is low in comparison to Oklahoma. Mercifully many people had left for the weekend. Had the timing been different the outcome could have been much worse.

The reverberations from the attacks are unlikely to dampen down quickly. In the United Kingdom the XRW have often been characterised as disorganised. Recent English Defence League protests have shown a higher degree of coordination than previously associated with their followers. They are not a leaderless rabble or rent-a-mob on hire to cause trouble. However their acolytes do have a history of violence.

The arrests and subsequent prosecution of two members of the XRW in Durham in 2009 lifted a veil on a more troubling development. The discovery of ricin at their house - a substance 6,000 times more lethal than cyanide - moved the threat from the XRW into a new dimension. That members of the XRW are drawn to develop biological weapons is a worrying development. Whilst it may be too dramatic to suggest that events in Norway could be repeated in the United Kingdom the attack will no doubt cause the lights in Thames House to burn a little later than normal. Whilst the Islamist threat has not gone away, the idea of adding a threat from members of the XRW to the already recognised problems re-emerging from Northern Ireland is one that many already feeling stretched might dread.

The resignation of Met Assistant Commissioner and head of counter terrorism John Yates is a very sad day for Counter Terrorism in the United Kingdom. We have lost a dedicated and immensely capable officer who oversaw counter-terrorism operations at a time when the threat from Islamic extremism was arguably at its peak and the warnings signs of an increase in Irish Republican terrorism appearing almost daily.

His personal role in providing the leadership of the Metropolitan Police’s response to the threat from terrorism will, no doubt, one day be given a fuller airing. Until then the Metropolitan Police, with its mind on the security measures that need to be put in place for the Olympic Games, has appointed Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick as his replacement. Let there be no doubt, despite her actions at Stockwell being exonerated, there are some that regard the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes as unfinished business. Her every action in her new role is going to be scrutinised in great detail.

However in the kind of febrile atmosphere created around the phone hacking scandal it would appear that anyone with even the slightest issue to be questioned about - such as acting as a ‘mail ‘box’ for a job application from a loose acquaintance’s daughter - suddenly becomes a reason to be referred to the IPCC. From the position of an outside observer looking in, this all appears to have got out of hand very quickly.

Whilst it is vital for Police Officers to uphold the highest possible levels of integrity, to damn senior police officers whose careers to date have been unblemished at such speed is deeply disturbing.

It almost appears that some old scores are being settled - the speed with which some senior police officers have been judged to be guilty is very concerning. Rights written into the Magna Carta in 1215 seem to have been forgotten as political leaders, fuelled by speculation in the media, have sought to place the label of wrongdoing on people without any detailed scrutiny of the evidence. It would appear people are not being treated as innocent until proven guilty – a point noted today by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons. If that is the case it is a very sad day for the country.

If the next Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has to know everything about their organisation and all the potential links and sub-links that might come back to haunt them in some unforeseen way when another scandal arises, that will be a sad day. Anyone taking on that job would rapidly be driven to distraction just trying to keep their arms around the organisation. Forget any time for strategic thinking or leadership. The legacy of the events of the last few days for a future Commissioner just might make the job almost impossible.

The Metropolitan Police’s part in The News of the World phone hacking scandal has presented one of the biggest public trust challenges that the Service has seen for a long time. However, there will come a moment (albeit possibly months from now), when the air has cleared sufficiently, and we have the opportunity to step back and survey the landscape.

In terms of public relations, clearly, the situation unfolding around the Met is hardly what you would call a success. Media opinion has not been kind to the four high-ranking officers that appeared before the commons home affairs committee last week. The Met’s employment of former News of the World Deputy Editor Neil Wallis as media adviser, and the subsequent resignations Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates, meanwhile, could legitimately be described as a PR catastrophe. 

Having said all that however, I’m not sure I agree with one contact who referred to the situation as a ‘brand disaster’ - at least not entirely. After all, as we speak, the Service is learning a hard lesson - and learning it very publically – about how it needs to be seen to be conducting itself both in front of the cameras and behind the scenes.  

As the past few weeks have proven, the serious press in this country is in robust health, at least in terms of influence (the muck-raking press, perhaps not so much). Add to this the ongoing challenge of 24-hour media, citizen journalists and online opinion-formers of all shapes and sizes (not to mention the accountability-above-all things requirements of the Big Society), and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that any opportunity to learn how to work smarter in this area is a good opportunity. (For more on social networking, see my previous blog - http://bit.ly/mVpa5B )

One of the most interesting breakout sessions at this year’s ACPO conference in Harrogate was called ‘Media Intrusion – the effect on the day job’. Beginning ostensibly as a discussion on the effects of the media on operations and investigations, it soon became clear that the subtext was the need for cooperation, understanding and above all openness on both sides. Journalists may get further with the police if they respect the privacy of local populations whose lives are already being disrupted by potentially dreadful events happening in real time. Likewise, there may be less resentment on the part of journalists if forces become more understanding of their need for a story. (Without, obviously, employing them if there’s a chance they may be implicated in a major scandal).

From the policing side, this echoes what the Chairman of the ACPO Editorial Board has to say about the Force’s relationship with the media in the latest issue of Policing Today magazine. Pointing to the work that the Met did with Liberty during the TUC March for the Alternative earlier on in the year, he suggests that the only way to maintain fruitful relationship with the media/public is to be transparent right from the start.

Sir Paul Stephenson has said that one of the reasons he is stepping down is because the current firestorm is taking attention away from the good work being done by his organisation in keeping Londoners safe. Likewise, it’s a shame that last week’s massively positive British Crime Survey statistics are currently being buried under a mountain of bad press. Surely, this is the point. UK policing is doing more and better work than ever before with a pool of ever-dwindling resources, both in terms of keeping the public safe and bringing criminals to justice. If through this experience the Force can better learn how to forge closer links with those it serves while avoiding the pitfalls that detract attention away from its core mission, then all of this won’t have been for nothing.

In March, ACPO told the government that forces across England and Wales will lose a total of 28,000 jobs over the next four years due to the level of budget cuts outlined in last November’s Comprehensive Spending Review. If true, that would translate to eight per cent less officers, a loss of one in six civilian staff – a 12 per cent cull of the current national total of 224,000.

The government says that by re-balancing workforces, different approaches to administration and technology, the cuts can be accommodated and at least some jobs saved. Consequently the Home Secretary has used examples from forces such as Suffolk and Norfolk, where a so-called shared services platform for back office support functions is being set up that may lead to annual savings of at least £10m going forward.

What should we make of all this? In the UK public sector at the moment, the police are hardly alone in having to deal with some very difficult challenges. After a decade and a half of expansion in the state, the emergency brakes were applied and UKHMG came to a screaming halt. As a result, everyone is being asked to, if not do more with less, at the least look to cut as much as possible without affecting ‘front-line service delivery’. So leaders in councils, the other emergency services, education, the NHS have all been asked to do much as May suggests: ‘be clever in the back office and you can save the front office’.

The police though, may be a different public service to re-engineer. The highest element of cost in the British public sector is wages. Therefore, the simplest way to save money is to cut jobs. But cut ‘bobbies on the beat’? That does not bode well for public consumption.

But as we saw in March, when the Minister of Justice had to admit to a Parliamentary Committee that nobody in his department had ever really defined what back office means in a police context, it is one thing to suggest de-duplicating your stationery needs with the Town Hall at the next motorway junction and quite another to work out how many SOCOs you can share with the next county along.

Am I saying that literally every back office, non-uniformed, civilian support role is 100 per cent crucial to fighting crime and keeping you and I safe? Patently not, although I am not sure I agree with one speaker from employer’s club ‘CBI’, who airily told a London conference on efficiency and reform in the public sector that British policing was obviously inefficient as ‘43 per cent’ of all headcount worked in the station.    

Though a Platonic example in its own way of IT mystification, all the term really means is using the power of the internet to centralise and rationalise computing processing and applications. This is purely and simply another way of saying instead of having an email system per station, by using networks you can have one across a force. And you could even, within reason, rent that system. You are talking about curbing internal IT resourcing, and to a quite radical extent - certainly as radical as a Francis Maude would like.

That also means you would need less of an internal IT function, which is bad news for police ICT staff. But it could mean more core specialists escape the firing line, and in these times I think that has to be a decision to take by police leadership.

The bottom line is that technology can and should be used to clean up some of the back office. Shared services make sense in some contexts, but Theresa May’s confidence that on its own it means no frontline impact is flawed. It helps trim budget, not deal with decimation.

That is a reality both the Ministry and ourselves need to be equally sure about. The debate as it should, continues.

One of the new realities if you want to work in newspaper or magazine publishing these days is the need to become involved in social networking. Facebook, Twitter and the like are now essential in the creation of any meaningful cross-platform brand identity, particularly if you want to achieve the monetisation holy grail - forming a 'relationship' with your reader. (By the way, if you do want to follow Policing Today on Twitter or Facebook I would urge you to. Everyone's very friendly, and we have cakes on a Friday).

As someone that follows pretty much every force going on Twitter, it's difficult not to conclude that a similar situation confronts the UK Police Service. Getting beyond the Luddite part of my brain that occasionally screams Too much information! at the top of its voice, it's impossible not to be excited by the myriad opportunities that now exist to reach out to communities. As well as giving updates into investigations and launching appeals for witnesses, forces can now communicate directly about the implications of policy, cross agency working, community policing and partnership, and so on. The possibilities, it seems, are endless. (There are any number of examples of forces doing fine work in this field, but I would direct you to ACPO Lead on Digital and Social Media Engagement DCC Gordon Scobbie's Tayside to show what can be achieved - www.Tayside.police.uk).

At a recent conference addressing this exact issue in Chicago, DCC Scobbie urged police forces to embrace social networking for all the reasons given above. However, he also highlighted the need to take this type of media seriously particularly in relation to bigger incidents occurring in real time. As events proceed, he said, forces now need to be seen to be on top of things like never before. If not, they run the risk of losing the agenda to any number of commentators in a potentially hostile, infinitely competitive information marketplace. Or to put it another way, if forces don't do it - and do it properly - everybody else will, or at least try to.

Chief Constable Andy Trotter highlighted a similar theme from a different angle when I interviewed him for the current issue of Policing Today. Pointing out the need for absolute clarity of information, he suggested that in such a savvy, information-rich (and litigious) environment he could foresee a situation where investigations or even careers are put at risk if what is posted online is not completely accurate.

Both scenarios illustrate the dangers of becoming involved in social networking by hinting at the medium’s main strengths – the way it democratises information production, and its capacity to bring literally anything into the public gaze and scrutinise it from every angle. They also pose the questions, how prepared are we for the chaos that will inevitably ensue from that democratisation, and more interestingly, how does UK policing position itself as it gets dragged into that chaos?

By its nature, chaos creeps in around the edges, generally when you’re not looking - something that can be seen happening already, even if so far it’s only in a small way. Looking at the issue purely from a pragmatic, PR perspective, one of the areas that police officers probably need to be careful about for instance, is that they’re not tweeting when they ‘should be doing other things’. And indeed, following West Midlands’ recent ‘tweetahon’, it took all of five minutes for a Guardian commentator - rightly or wrongly - to suggest that she would rather the officers involved were spending their time catching criminals. (http://bit.ly/mQePCz)

A correlation to the above worry is the possible perception that in simply running a Twitter account with a policing identity, individual officers may – even worse – be seen to be not taking their job seriously. Again, this may or may not be reasonable and the debate around to what degree it’s necessary to show the ‘human face’ of policing will continue. (Personally, I reckon it’s very necessary to see policing’s human face, both in relation to community working, and in more informal ways too.) However, it will only take one misstep in the current environment for full media scrutiny to bear down on whatever force is involved.

As ever, UK policing walks a fine line - particularly in the light of the pressures in current economic climate. At the risk of stating the obvious, this is a harsh realm we find ourselves in – both virtually and in reality. 

One thing that I often hear from police officers whenever and talk about the changes that the Service is undergoing - especially when discussing pay and conditions - is that it is a special case and should be treated differently to other public sector organisations.

This is an interesting proposition, but you have to ask why it might be the case. Is it the fact that officers do not have the right to withdraw their labour? Well, in response to this idea, many would argue that others also do not automatically have that right either. The armed forces, for example.

Is it because they have a dangerous occupation? Well others have dangerous occupations, such as fire and rescue services.

Is it because they have the legitimate authority to use coercive force? Well others also have that right, under certain circumstances. Is it that there existed a political consensus once where the police were regarded as the experts in all things crime by political parties that did not interfere with the police? If that is the case then it must surely not apply now, with policing and the police constantly discussed in the media and by politicians.

Looking at it from a different point of view, a cynic might say that the argument is a social construction on the part of the police culture to ensure a shield is erected to protect it from interference from political parties. I am not sure on this one either. In any case, if the police in England and Wales are a special case, does this apply to our European counterparts such as Germany or France? Are they a special case in their countries?

As you can see, I have not yet found an answer to satisfy my initial question. Maybe it is a combination of several of these things. However, I sense that, with the current economic framework we now find ourselves in, obtaining massive support from the rest of the public to sustain the police as a special case may be limited.

Those responsible for introducing changes to pay and conditions for example may ask the same questions as I have in order to establish whether the police are indeed, a special case. They may conclude that in fact, there is little evidence to support this claim. In those circumstances, therefore, the evidence used to support the claim that the police are a special case needs to be clearly, objectively and impartially, explained.

The recent decision by the inquest into the death of Ian Tomlinson that he had been unlawfully killed by a police officer at the G20 protests and the subsequent media portrayal of events, reminds us of several underlying propositions that support the democratic style of policing that takes place in this country.

Whilst not commentating on an incident that clearly is an ongoing enquiry, there are several important issues that can be discussed as a result of the case itself. Everyday police officers make multiple, often complex value based decisions that impact on individuals and communities. They make judgements of when, what, and how to exercise their powers to arrest, report and stop and search, discretionary decisions that will have wide-ranging implications. Policing is an increasingly complex job, with officers being expected to fully  understand their role in society, from being involved in neighbourhood policing,  preventing acts of terrorism,  gathering community intelligence and the management of critical incidents, dealing with many things  from the apparent trivial to the overwhelmingly serious. The uniqueness of policing includes the fact that ordinary people in their role as police officers and police staff have to make important decisions every day. So what do we mean when we ask what the police are all about? The normal answer is that they detect crime, prevent breaches of the peace, and dealing with disorder etc. In part this is true, but is a normative definition which relies on the outcomes of policing activities. A more informative definition is that the police are an organisation who have legitimate authority to use lawful coercive force within the boundaries of the state. This more sociological definition helps us to understand the underlying role of policing in society. It also highlights several points. The first is that of legitimate authority which is granted by the state to police officers to use force under the right circumstances and for it to be used proportionately. The second is that of accountability for actions and decisions made, which is part of the contract for allowing the police to use legitimate force. Society needs to be able to question whether or not force used in democratic policing is lawful, proportionate and necessary and despite whatever personal feelings people may have, this approach should be welcomed and supported. It is still a truism that policing in this country is carried out with the consent of the public, and despite the ‘bad publicity’ surrounding this particular event and other similar incidents, enquiries and evidence of true accountability for police actions are paramount if that support is to be maintained.

The title of this blog not only gives a clue to my age and my television viewing habits. It also throws open a question that the public may ask themselves when thinking about the police and the way in which they go about their business. Do the police serve the community as ‘customers’? Or are people seen as encumbrances who get in the way of doing the job? Now, I know that immediately I am going to be faced with a barrage of complaints about not understanding the job and so on. On the contrary I have some understanding having served for 30 years as a police officer and academically studied and researched the force for over 20 years as well.

I know that some people are, well lets call them reluctant, to be known as ‘customers’. In the main though, the public contact the police for some form of service. Which is a concern, given that the number of complaints from the public about ‘incivilities’ from police officers are on the rise. This may indicate a lack of understanding of the police/customer role.

The main reason for this discussion is this - many police forces across the country are attempting to align their products and organisational structures to customers’ needs in order to provide a more economical service. In order to do this, the needs of those who receive the service need to be considered as the first step in this process. Some forces are using the process known as LEAN to achieve this.

The question is will this succeed or will these processes just end in a cull of jobs to save money? I am not totally convinced that the needs and wants of community/customer will always be the primary consideration. Why is this? Well, research suggests that whilst many senior officers are ‘on the programme’ when it comes to police/public relations etc, there are those who do not always support the same view.

The danger is that, far from turning these restructuring exercises into a customer focus activity, they become ‘police centric’. In other words, working from within the police organisation outwards, rather than from the customer ‘in’ towards the organisation and giving it a process focus. The results may be that far from maintaining levels of service and being economical into the bargain, customers may start complaining about the lack of service thus impacting negatively upon the confidence level of measurement. So, if the rhetoric about measuring levels of confidence and community involvement is to be achieved, everyone in the police service - not just senior officers - needs to appreciate this and really start thinking of all people they interact with as customers.

The death of Police Constable Ronan Kerr at the hands of dissident Irish Republicans will inevitably raise the question, why has Irish extremism returned? The simple fact is it never went away. It just changed its focus for a few years, biding its time until members of some communities in Northern Ireland became disaffected by the lack of social and economic progress in the wake of the peace treaty signed in 1998.

Thirteen years ago the collective sigh of relief around the province must have been quite discernable. The Troubles were behind them, it was time to move on. Some, however, did not agree that violence should end. Their view was that the struggle had to be maintained. These were the irreconcilable members of the Irish Republican movement.

The size of groups such as the Real IRA, Continuity IRA and Òglaigh Na hÉireann can be measured in tens of people. They are small but individual groups that are tightly woven with each other, bound by trust and an agreed common purpose - the re-unification of Ireland. The three dissident groups operate largely independently from one another; each following its own chain of command and approach to terrorism.

However in the 13 years since the signing of the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement in April 1998 the groups have tended to follow similar paths. In the wake of the terrorism atrocities in the United States in September 2001 many sources of funding traditionally available to the IRA from supporters in America dried up.  Local fund raising efforts, largely based upon criminality, have been used to provide the funds needed to replenish the weapons and explosives needed for a terrorist campaign.

The discovery of significant arms stores during the investigation of the death of PC Kerr shows that the dissident Irish Republican groups had managed to leach away some of the armaments that the Provisional IRA had declared ‘beyond use’ as part of their negotiations associated with the peace treaty. However, armaments and finances are only two dimensions of a terrorist campaign. Another important element is people willing to become involved in kidnapping, murder and indiscriminate bombings. That is an altogether different issue. This is were the dissidents have a problem.

The depth to which the PIRA had been penetrated by the United Kingdom Security Service has become all too apparent since the signing of the Peace Treaty. The Security Services were well versed in who in the PIRA was active and what planning for attacks were in development. This poses problems for dissident groups seeking to recruit new people. To return to the mainland and mount attacks in the United Kingdom as a whole the dissident groups need recruits. How do they establish that they are trustworthy and not MI5 moles?

One approach used in the last two years has involved social networking sites. Potential recruits are identified and sifted from sites where candidates express a desire to become involved in Irish extremism. Tests are set through the contacts established in the social networking sites that establish a candidate’s level of commitment.

One way in which this recruitment process has manifested itself is in a series of botched or amateurish attacks that have occurred against members of the security forces in Northern Ireland. Over the last two years several attempts have been made on people’s lives. Some have succeeded, such as the attack that resulted in the death of Stephen Carroll, a 48 year old police officer in March 2009. This was claimed by Continuity IRA. Others have been less successful. It is apparent that some of the failures arose because they were undertaken by people seeking to establish a degree of credibility with the established groups, in effect trying to pass an entry examination.

The recent increase in attacks and attempted bombings however show that this initial stage of building capacity may be coming to an end. The statistics bear this out. In the whole of 2009 only 22 attempted attacks occurred. In the period from January 2010 to August 2010 this doubled to 49.

It is not by chance that the threat level associated with the dissident groups in Northern Ireland was raised from Moderate to Substantial on the 24^th of September 2010. A re-rating of that to Severe is on the cards placing Irish Republican terrorism alongside the threat posed by Muslim extremists. This is a spectacular rise in the threat that many had hoped had died in the wake of the peace process. Ending terrorism, it turns out, is not that easy.

Policing is undergoing a radical transformation, as evidenced by the publication of a large number of far-reaching and influential reports, including Hutton, Winsor and others. In the light of the volume of such documents it can be easy to miss publications that do not smack of the ‘here and now.’

I sincerely hope therefore that Peter Neyroud’s Review of Police Leadership and Training is not one of those that are consigned to the ‘not important at the moment’ basket!

As it happens, this report should be required reading for any police manager, and in particular those with responsibility for education of police staff - as well as outside providers of the same throughout the country. The report considers the future of police education in the light the economic situation, as well as the ideas of ‘transferring power back to the people’ and the creation of the National Crime Agency (NCA).

As an advocate of the shift of policing from a ‘craft based occupation’ to a ‘true profession’, I support any move that increases knowledge, skills, abilities and understanding of all police employees within the Service. The proposals within this document include the creation of a police professional body which will oversee such items as the National Standards for Policing and will ‘reposition’ ACPO by merging its functions. Pre-entry qualifications are also discussed along with different routes for entry.

What is really being discussed in this report is the future of policing in England and Wales. That may sound dramatic, and slightly out of kilter with current concerns regarding structure and delivery in a very difficult economic framework. However, police officers and staff deserve to be educationally equipped to deal with the myriad of problems and incidents that they face now and in the future, and educational and leadership must be the cornerstone of any future service delivery based on efficiency and effectiveness. This report steps up to the plate and bravely starts the process of seriously rethinking the way in which staff are educated. To avoid this report and its implications is, in my opinion, to avoid planning for the future of policing.

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/consultations/rev-police-leadership-training/ 

As someone who had a previous life working for a disability charity, I don't think I could have been more pleased when I read the recent comments by DPP Kier Starmer on disability hate crime. (http://www.policingtoday.co.uk/Content/Doc.aspx?id=449 ).

For the benefit of the link-averse, the crux of his statement went something like this: that the prosecution of those who attack disabled people is the 'next frontier' for the criminal justice system - not just in terms of the nuts and bolts process of bringing these people to justice, but also in order to better reflect a society where disabled people don't expect to be victims.

In his Sussex Law School speech, he made two rather disturbing claims. Firstly that there is evidence to suggest that a great many cases of harassment and violence go unreported each year, primarily because this behaviour is not 'recognised' as a crime when it happens - either by the authorities or the victims of it themselves. (Or to put it another way, it is so widespread and seemingly so unremarkable it is merely a matter of routine for all concerned.) And secondly, that even when reported, prosecutors were less than willing to rely on evidence given by disabled victims or witnesses when cases were brought to court. This, you assume, is either due to a lack of faith in the voracity of the evidence given in the first place or, as he identifies, in the 'acceptability' of those giving it.

One of the things that we saw most often working out of our little office in Bognor Regis was evidence of a pervading - for want of a better word - violence against people with disabilities at the level of discourse itself. That is, the tendency on the part of society to conceive of disability according to what is known as the 'medical’ model. In other words, to imagine the person's illness represents the very core of their being, thereby reducing them to the level of merely something that needs help and tacitly excluding them from any decision-making in relation to their own life.

(The medical model stands in stark contrast to the 'social' model, which conceives of disabled people as integrated members of society, and that the notion of disability itself is in fact ideological and imposed externally).

Violence against the disabled, it seems to me, is the logical, and actually blindingly obvious, extension of the effects of the medical model. There exists a personality type that will both hate anything it perceives as different and abuse anything that it regards as 'helpless'. There also exists - still -, at least if DPP Starmer is to be believed, an unwillingness at an official level to accept that disabled people can be allowed to speak for themselves. Society, as so often, creates its own victims.

DPP Starmer's speech was a real encouragement - just like Chief Constable David Whatton's presentation on victim-centred investigation of rape at last year's ACPO conference. Rest assured that if there is anything Policing Today can do to help break this most vicious of cycles, we will.

Tom Winsor has said that the police service needs “modern management tools to operate with the greatest efficiency and economy.” Policing Minister Nick Herbert meanwhile, has echoed that by calling for a closer focus on procurement functions.

This is not just rhetoric. The potential savings that can be derived by drilling down into the fine details of financial data should not be underestimated. At a time when budgets are under pressure, it’s crucial to look closely at how money is being spent, where it is being spent and where savings can be made with measures such as the consolidation of supply contracts.

Thankfully, there were encouraging signs last month that this is being addressed. It was reported that the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) had identified £58m of savings to made by reviewing deals on vehicles and fleet, IT, mobile phones, forensics, consultancy and temporary staff.

Moving forward, a new national police procurement hub is aiming to secure further savings by combining the finance and ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems of all forces into a single online platform.

With the right anaylsis expertise and technology, an organisation can compare its relationship with a supplier against its relationships with other suppliers, track a supplier’s performance over time, and assess the supplier’s performance against the performance agreed to in contract. This type of analysis highlights opportunities for consolidating large volumes of invoices or switching to EDI (electronic data interchange), or making other changes to lower the cost of doing business with the supplier.

What’s required is a thorough investigative process – not unlike policing itself – to comb through the available data and identify hidden savings. It might not be enough to save all the frontline jobs that appear to be under threat, but it would go a long way to demonstrating that every possible avenue has been explored first.

PRGX is a spend analytics and recovery audit specialist working with government departments and large retail groups www.prgx.com 

Technology often can appear to some to be the answer to a maiden’s prayers. Where would the Police Service be today without radios, telecommunications, and new innovations like Automated Number Plate Reading (ANPR) systems and mobile fingerprinting systems? Technology is pervasive, invading all parts of the daily lives of policemen and women. But is it always a force for good?

I recently attended and participated as a panellist in a series of briefings on some new technologies that have been developed with the help of the Home Office through their INSTINCT (Innovative Science and Technology in Counter Terrorism) programme. This was established in 2009 to allow government to engage widely with both the private and public sectors to provide some coordination of new ideas and potential solutions to the perennial problem of terrorism and its evolving characteristics.

The technology on show concerned the subject of augmented reality. Based upon smart phones, the technology uses the ubiquitous Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite system to locate the phone. Utilising the 3G technologies data is then downloaded onto the user’s screen so as they hold up the device and scan around important buildings and facilities in the local area are highlighted. For many of us, this is already an established tool that people use to find out all sorts of information to help us in our daily lives. From a policing perspective it also offers some insights as they go about their daily lives. This kind of information can be really helpful for those on the beat.   

The event I attended involved an impressive series of demonstrations by both large companies and small to medium sized enterprises that have been involved in the project. The counter terrorism application of the technology was illustrated using a set of scenarios where teams following a particular group could use the overlaid information to help contextualise where the material was being collected, such as from a helicopter shadowing a potential target. For teams operating out of their normal areas of operation, these overlays of street names and other important landmarks can be hugely important. After all, terrorists rarely respect the administrative boundaries established by the Home Office between police forces.

However there is another angle to this story. Terrorists continue to show a high degree of agility in using technologies in the west for their own purposes, such as the Internet. While their ideology might despise the benefits gained from the technology, they show a huge willingness to use it to further their ideology. This could also apply to augmented reality.

Imagine a terrorist group that is conducting reconnaissance of a shopping mall, a crowded area like a sports stadium or a built up area with high density buildings. Augmented reality immediately provides that group with additional insights, sometimes providing cues to nearby buildings and offices that might be impacted by the blast from an attack. Glass can be a major cause of secondary injuries in the aftermath of the initial impact of the detonation. For terrorists that sometimes struggle to have a major impact access to augmented reality might just provide the additional cues that would help them conduct more effective attacks.

Technology, like most things in life, is not a panacea. It needs to be used wisely. While augmented reality offers police officers involved in counter-terrorism a great deal, we need to be aware of the unintended consequences of suddenly providing a step change in capability to those that would harm our society.

When the new Crime Mapping service - www.police.uk - was launched earlier this month, there was so much public interest that it was instantly overloaded with traffic.  With so much publicity in the days following the launch it’s not surprising that everyone wants to see just how much crime has happened near to them. But after the buzz has died down, realistically how many people are going to look at it frequently enough for it to make a difference to their lives?

This is exactly the problem with websites like www.police.uk. They are very much a reactive information resource. Human nature combined with our very busy lives, means that unless this type of resource is kept in the public eye, it is soon forgotten. That is until it hits the headlines again or a local crime motivates us to revisit the site.

It’s also not very useful in bridging the ‘digital divide’. Those most at risk of becoming victims of crime don't necessarily have easy access to the Internet. While it works on smartphones as well, until we get more transparent pricing and widespread 3G/4G bandwidth it is unlikely to get many mobile visitors.
Unless people can access or be alerted to local crime information before it affects them in their daily lives, it’s unlikely we'll see a big change in behaviour.  The information on the site is relevant because it's about their street or the local neighbourhood; but it is not timely enough to make it really engaging or actionable as a preventative measure.
Having said that, www.police.uk is a good step in the right direction. Using 'Open Data' (re-purposing of government information) provides a very transparent and potentially useful service to the public.
All it would take is to couple this tool with a proactive notification service that advises people of local crimes - perhaps using email, SMS texting or Twitter, along with other comms channels that might better suit the elderly and other groups.
In the police-public interface projects I've worked on at HTK over the past 10 years or so (the original www.police.uk website, and services like Police Direct with Suffolk and Norfolk police), I've seen that timely delivery of relevant information really can change people and their perceptions of the police.
So, www.police.uk is good as far as it goes. Let's build on it to make sure it doesn't become a victim of human nature!

In these days of adaptive social networks supporting criminality and trans-national terrorism, the Internet can become a catalyst that can have a dramatic effect upon people’s lives. Individuals, like Roshonara Choudhry - the lady that tried to kill the Member of Parliament Steven Timms - can find themselves drawn into a web of explicit and often highly graphic material that persuades them of the need to act and become involved in terrorist activities.

Ms Choudhry is not alone in the United Kingdom in becoming radicalised in this way. Andrew Ibrahim in Bristol followed a similar journey planning to place bombs in a major shopping centre in Bristol until the Police were told of his activities by anxious members of the local community. Detecting and preventing the actions of the lone wolf are extremely hard. They can operate below the radar horizon, not even alerting family and friends of their intent.

As events in Cumbria last year highlighted, policing a random act of violence is very difficult. With Al Qaeda calling for more acts of what they term individual jihadists the potential for more of these apparently random acts to occur is significant. Al Qaeda’s on-line magazine Inspire calls for people to make bombs ‘in the kitchen of your mum’ or to select a knife from the kitchen draw and go out and ‘kill people until you are killed’. Their aim is to maintain the drum-beat of violence on our television screens by combining the mainline attacks planned and conducted by groups with a regular set of events that make society as a whole fearful. That is the nature of terrorism. The failed attack in Stockholm just before Christmas had all the hallmarks of an act of individual Jihadism.

Such random acts of violence may well involve responses that include those that need hostage negotiation skills. These situations will be noticeably different from the mainstream activities that hostage negotiators have to address and may involve members of the public being at risk. The motivations for the attack may vary considerably. In Russia the so-called Black Widows, those who have lost loved ones in the conflict in Chechnya, are motivated by a simple desire for revenge. They are unlikely to succumb to a logical argument about the need to reflect upon the impact their act may have on their family and friends. When confronted by a suicide bomber threatening to detonate a device, a hostage negotiator may have to choose their first words wisely.

As the terrorist threat mutates it is important that we equip those in the Police Service that have volunteered to be involved in hostage negotiation situations with the tools to try and manage an event involving an individual jihadist whose fervour for the cause may not be as deeply routed as others. Situations will vary considerably. There is a need for an initiative on such matters to create awareness and develop ideas that will provide a national set of best practice from which individual forces can draw. Given the nature of the threat this is an urgent issue.