OPINION: Three years after the death of George Floyd, the latest report by the US Justice Department in to policing in Minneapolis features a raft of worrying findings, including discrimination against Black people and Native Americans, and routine use of excessive force; but Arizona State University Associate Professor Rashad Shabazz believes the report also demonstrates that rather than being an aberration, such misconduct is part of how policing was historically intended to be in the US.

INNOVATION: In a new three-part series exploring how technology will shape policing over the coming decades, Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports on Police Futures, a new publication from the UK’s Police Chief Scientific Adviser, which tries to move beyond science fiction and look towards what policing might really become.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Oliver Ledgard, Government and Public Safety Strategy Director, EMEA at Zebra Technologies shares his thoughts on some of the trends shaping critical comms today as well as discussing his predictions for the public safety sector in the coming years.

LATEST RESEARCH: This summary curates the key policing-related research that's been published online in the last week, with links to the original journal articles, and selected abstracts.

FEATURE: Police officers and staff who have been assaulted or abused can struggle to talk about the impact of their experiences; now a new online training package – the first time wellbeing training has been made available digitally on a national scale – is providing support material that can be viewed in confidence, reinforcing the wider work of Operation Hampshire and Oscar Kilo, the National Police Wellbeing Service for England and Wales, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

INTERVIEW: In the latest in a series of interviews with leading figures involved in the research and investigation of organised crime, Policing Insight’s Dr Chris Allen spoke to Walter Kemp, Senior Fellow at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC), about the illicit economies that profit from war and instability, the creation of a global strategy to fight organised crime, and why concerted global action is needed now.

INNOVATION: Effective communications systems are crucial in ensuring timely and reliable service delivery for the police and others in the public sector; Richard Evans, Chief Technology Officer at Cinos, believes modern unified communications solutions such as cloud-based voice platforms can offer secure and efficient communications across multiple devices, as well as enhancing agency collaboration and co-ordination, improving contact with the public, and strengthening resilience.

OPINION: PTSD can have a devastating impact on police officers’ wellbeing, and lead to problematic behaviours including risk-taking and poor decision-making; former paramedic and New Zealand Police officer Allister Rose, Managing Director of the Hatikvah Blue Hope Foundation, believes NZ Police should learn from the experiences of policing in other countries including the UK, and take steps to prioritise the mental health of its officers through early identification, intervention and support.

ANALYSIS: The requirement for a degree qualification as part of the professionalisation of UK policing is opposed by the Home Secretary and several chief constables, who argue that academic work is too far removed from operational policing; a study by the University of Portsmouth with student officers has found that problem-based learning has the potential to make academic policing more relevant to student police officers by linking theory with practice, as Lecturer in Policing David Knowles explains.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Join us for this years Disability in Policing Conference supported by Policing Insight as media partner and taking place 20th – 21st September 2023 at the Leonardo Hotel at Hinckley Island in the UK.

OPINION: The Independent Centre for Harassment Resolution (ICHR) was set up in 2021 to investigate workplace violence and related misconduct in the RCMP, following a landmark lawsuit that led to a payout of more than $125 million; but University Canada West Associate Professor Dr Jason Walker believes the ICHR is failing in that mission – and that action is needed urgently to rectify the shortcomings, both for the sake of the organisation and the communities it serves.

INTERVIEW: With the Uplift recruitment programme creating a “dramatically changing workforce”, Cambridgeshire Constabulary set about engaging both the workforce and the community in drawing up a force culture statement; one result was the launch of a force-wide Leadership and Culture Programme which is already proving to be a “game changer”, as Ch Supt Becky Tipping explained to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons.

INTERVIEW: In 2021, the UK Government announced Project ADDER – a new pilot programme combining disruption of criminal gangs selling drugs with a renewed focus on recovery; two years on, Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner Steve Turner believes it’s made a real difference to communities in his area, as he told Policing Insight’s James Sweetland.

LATEST RESEARCH: This summary curates the key policing-related research that's been published online in the last week, with links to the original journal articles, and selected abstracts.

OPINION: Recruitment and retention continue to be challenging for policing in the UK and internationally, including for London’s Metropolitan Police Service; Vernon White, former Chief of Police for Ottawa Police Service, and Joe Carlebach, former Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Health at Hammersmith and Fulham Council, argue that addressing low morale is essential to overcome those challenges – both for the performance of the force, and for the communities that it polices.

FEATURE: With mental health policing under increased focus for forces across the UK, Thames Valley Police has established dedicated mental health officer posts to improve data gathering and monitoring, share best practice, and help to embed the Right Care, Right Person approach; Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons spoke to Insp Penny Jones about the aims of the initiative.

FEATURE: With the UK’s continuing participation in the Horizon Europe EU research programme still unresolved, the signing of a new agreement between the European Commission and New Zealand last week means that NZ police innovators and researchers will now have access to an innovation programme with a budget of more than €95 billion until 2027, as Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth reports.

ANALYSIS: A series of high-profile instances of police misconduct in recent years (including in the US, the UK, Germany and most recently France) are believed to have damaged trust in policing – but to what extent? Post-doctoral researcher Christof Nägel and Associate Professor Amy Nivette used the latest research techniques to examine how police misconduct impacted public trust, and whether the effect was the same across different communities.

INNOVATION: While technology advances have driven efficiencies in many areas of policing, frontline officers often still find themselves manually inputting licence plates, driving licence numbers, and a range of other identification checks; Oliver Ledgard of Zebra Technologies believes the public safety sector is missing an opportunity to further increase efficiency and connectivity through the use of modern optical character recognition (OCR) technology.

FEATURE: As the expansion of the metaverse and the rapid development of AI create the potential for significant increases in the grooming and online sexual abuse of children, Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant is leading efforts to force tech giants and social media platforms to take much more effective measures to prevent the online sexual exploitation of youngsters, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: In a follow-up to an earlier 2019 study highlighting disproportionate police stops of Black, Indigenous and Arab people in Montreal, a report published in June suggests a new non-discriminatory policy has had little impact; Concordia University Associate Professor Ted Rutland believes the city is abdicating its role of overseeing the police on behalf of the population.

ANALYSIS: As the Police Federation of England and Wales prepares to ballot its members on whether it should pursue industrial rights, Policing Insight’s Graham Wettone looks back at the history of police strikes and working to rule in the UK, the failure of successive governments to honour the independent pay award process, and why the current debate about whether police should take industrial action should be taken seriously by the Government.

OPINION: The public contact report that arose from Cityforum’s round table on the subject earlier this year highlighted the importance of collaboration between policing and private industry on introducing of new technology into the sector; Martin Taylor of cloud communications specialists Content Guru believes such partnerships are crucial if policing is to maximise the benefits of tech advances in an area that’s a top priority for the public.

FEATURE: Last year saw the publication in the UK of the national Police Race Action Plan, published jointly by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing, to address racial inequality and injustice in policing; Criminology Lecturer Finley MacDonald explores the plan itself, the challenges arising from the efforts to tackle disproportionality and inequality, and what more needs to be done.