Police forces - United Kingdom

FREE SUBSCRIBER ACCESS: Policing Insight welcomes officers and staff from Singapore Civil Defence Force, who now have FREE access with the start of new organisation wide subscription. They join a community of officers and staff from many police and security agencies from the UK and around the world with an interest in progressive policing. Read on to find out how to use your FREE subscriber access.

ANALYSIS: Politically motivated crime has been recognised as an issue needing specific attention for more than a century, but with multiple agencies now active in the sector, co-ordinating that response can be difficult; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at the challenges presented by politically motivated crimes, and the importance of differentiating between extremism and terrorism.

FEATURE: Police Now’s first Frontline Leadership Programme (FLP) launched in September, and – with applications already now open for the third cohort – in December the organisation ran an online Women in Leadership event to support the application process; Policing Insight spoke to the three officers on the event panel about the challenges facing women in policing, the work of Police Now, and how the FLP could help to change the culture of policing.

New Year Honours: We are pleased to publish and recognise the policing recipients of the UK and overseas New Year Honours as well as the New Zealand Order of Merit. The team at Policing Insight offer our congratulations and thank all the recipients for their service in another challenging year.

END OF YEAR REVIEW: For many, 2021 – like 2020 before it – was a year to forget, as Covid combined with other challenges to leave policing on the back foot; but behind the headlines there were some real achievements, so let’s take the positives – for policing and Policing Insight – into 2022, and see if we can rewrite some of that negative narrative.

FEATURE: This month a trial began in Belgium of 23 people accused of involvement in the human smuggling ring that led to the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants in a lorry in the UK in 2019; with such high-profile cases making modern slavery an ever-more visible crime – and the subject of significant government funding – Policing Insight’s Chris Allen takes a closer look at how law enforcement is tackling the issue.

FEATURE: December’s London Rape Review highlighted that just 1% of rape cases in the capital are reaching the courts, with significant increases in the number of victims withdrawing within the first 30 days of an investigation; Policing Insight Deputy Editor Sarah Gibbons explores the findings of the Review, the concerns highlighted by London Victims’ Commissioner Claire Waxman, and the recommendations made to improve the service to victims.

ANALYSIS: Despite increasingly sophisticated security measures, vehicle theft in the UK is back on the rise – much of it involving cars stolen by international organised crime groups; West Midlands PC Andrew Lavanchy looks at the scale and changing nature of vehicle theft, and what steps policing could take to combat the car thieves.

INTERVIEW: In the latest in a series of interviews with leading figures involved in the research and investigation of organised crime, Policing Insight’s Chris Allen spoke to Josh Torrance, Lecturer and PhD Researcher at the University of Bristol, about heroin-assisted treatment, NCA technology, and £50bn of missing cash.

ANALYSIS: As the Police Foundation prepares to report next month on Phase Two of the Strategic Review of Policing in England and Wales, Research Director Andy Higgins looks back at the turbulent events of 2021 – from Covid to Clapham Common and accusations of institutional corruption – and considers what impact they may have on policing legitimacy moving forwards.

OPINION: The Government’s recent public consultation on a new National Resilience Strategy sought views and submissions from a wide range of agencies and organisations, with leading international blue-light computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems provider Hexagon among those contributing to the process; Ian Holmes of the company’s Public Safety team picks out some of the key themes from their submission.

ANALYSIS: Disruption methods are vital in combatting child sexual abuse, with the potential to immediately interrupt contact between a suspect and a child, and help stop further abuse in the longer term; now new research by the UK’s Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse has highlighted the steps that can be taken to improve disruption efforts, as the Centre’s Senior Research and Evaluation Officer Dr Diana Parkinson explains.

FEATURE: Thames Valley Police’s Project Vigilant, which combines plain clothes and uniform officers to identify and prevent predatory behaviour in the night-time economy, has seen significant reductions in stranger rapes and sexual offences; now the scheme is set to expand after being one of a number of projects to receive ‘Safety of Women at Night’ funding, as Policing Insight Deputy Editor Sarah Gibbons reports.

POLICING FRIENDSHIP TOUR: With carbon footprints and sustainability high on the agenda for law enforcement agencies, Jersey Police Chief Officer Robin Smith believes the Crown Dependency force could be the first in the UK to run a fully electric fleet, as he explained to Policing Insight Publisher Bernard Rix on a recent leg of the Policing Friendship Walking Tour.

INTERVIEW: In her recent speech to the NPCC / APCC Partnership Summit, Victims’ Commissioner Dame Vera Baird highlighted the challenges in tackling violence against women and addressing the issue of domestic abusers within police ranks, as well as the opportunity for policing to lead the way on cultural change; this week she spoke to Policing Insight Editor Keith Potter to expand on those concerns, and suggest steps towards restoring confidence among victims.

LONG READ: The death of George Floyd shone the spotlight strongly on police use of force, but many police services and departments had already recognised concerns and were attempting to address the issue; however, the lack of data on the effectiveness of training in areas such as de-escalation have left it difficult to identify what works and why, as Policing Insight Contributing Editor Tina Orr-Munro reports.

INTERVIEW: Police can easily find themselves on the wrong end of a social media storm, either from online trolls or as a result of edited footage; but for recently appointed West Mercia Chief Constable Pippa Mills, Twitter provides an opportunity to engage with the public, praise staff and support colleagues, as she explained to Policing Insight Deputy Editor Sarah Gibbons.

POLICING FRIENDSHIP TOUR: Dorset Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) David Sidwick is the joint lead on addiction and substance misuse for the Association of PCCs; on a recent leg of the Policing Friendship Walking Tour he explained to Policing Insight Publisher Bernard Rix how the death of a close friend’s teenage daughter through an MDMA overdose, as well as his own career in pharmaceuticals, had motivated him to take up the role.

FEATURE: With the latest figures for assaults on police in the UK showing a 20% increase on the previous year, the effects of violence on officers – and how they are supported – are key concerns; Operation Hampshire, the initiative to improve the service’s response to officer assaults, was the subject of a recent @WeCops Twitter Chat, summarised here by the scheme’s National Co-ordinator, Chief Inspector Dave Brewster, one of the hosts of the debate.

ANALYSIS: The introduction of body-worn cameras among US police forces and the subsequent improvement in evidential quality has helped to reduce the racial disparity in the response to complaints about police misconduct, according to new research by Professors Suat Cubukcu, Erdal Tekin, Nusret Sahin and Volkan Topalli.

FEATURE: The police use of Taser has been a topic of much debate, with widening training and deployment, the intense scrutiny, and a lack of understanding about less lethal weapons among both the media and the public some of the key issues; many of those points were raised during a recent #WeCops debate on less lethal weapons, which is summarised in this article by PC Francesca Tamblyn, Taser Lead Instructor for Dorset Police and one of the hosts of the debate.

OPINION: Last week’s joint National Police Chief’s Council and Association of Police and Crime Commissioners summit once again shone the spotlight on trust and confidence in policing, particularly in relation to violence against women and girls; below is a full transcript of the speech by Victims’ Commissioner Dame Vera Baird, one of the key speakers at the event.

OPINION: While policing in the UK has made steps towards improving gender inclusion, the primary carer role often taken on by women means many are forced to sacrifice their careers because of a lack of flexibility in the workplace; Devon and Cornwall Police Chief Superintendent Jim Gale believes a more sensible approach to part-time and hybrid working and increased opportunities for job sharing could help the service improve female inclusion at all ranks.

Round-table: Representatives from UK policing, stakeholders and suppliers praised the “miracle job” done by the service in response to the pandemic, and urged police leaders and the Government to ensure the momentum of transformational IT change continues post-Covid, as they debated the key policing ICT issues at a round-table discussion organised by Policing Insight Events in association with Virgin Media Business.