Operational policing

FEATURE: Speaking at the Canterbury Centre for Policing Research’s annual conference, Dr Emma Williams – Director of the Open University’s the Centre for Policing Research and an academic with years of experience exploring the police approach to rape cases – gave her overview of why reform in this area is so difficult to get right, and her hopes that Operation Soteria could provide the path to progress, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports.

OPINION: A recent Policing Insight article highlighted significant differences in the response to domestic violence disclosure applications in England and Wales; but Allan Dorans MP, the Scottish National Party’s spokesperson on policing at Westminster and a former Detective Inspector with the Metropolitan Police, believes a similar disclosure scheme in Scotland has been much more successful, as have wider efforts to reduce violent crime north of the border.

INTERVIEW: In an exclusive two-part interview with Policing Insight’s James Sweetland, City of London Police Temporary Assistant Commissioner Nik Adams explains how artificial intelligence will transform fraud and cybercrime, what Action Fraud’s new replacement will do to improve the response to victims, and why calls for a single national force to tackle fraud are a major mistake.

NEW REPORT: Information management is a crucial part of policing, yet too often it is regarded as a low priority by forces; now a new report from Policing Insight highlights the risks of underestimating the vital role the function plays, the challenges in changing culture and technology, and the opportunities of leveraging significant policing outcomes from well-managed data, as James Sweetland explains.

INTERVIEW: After 41 years in policing – the past four as Commissioner of the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force – Trevor Botting retired recently, although admits he may have not hung up his uniform altogether; he spoke to Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons about the challenges leading an island force in the West Indies, the need to nurture local recruits, and why the force’s firearms officers are among the bravest he has worked with.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: The all-too-common challenge of working within a modern policing environment: mountains of data from databases are disconnected and siloed. Users have to search through dozens of systems and conduct disconnected crime analysis, manually uncovering key linkages between entities. At the vanguard of policing technology, a growing graph-structured data model called a knowledge graph is proving invaluable.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: North Wales Police (NWP) embarked on a three year pioneering journey with Chorus Intelligence, to develop the industry’s most cutting-edge digital intelligence and investigation platform. Scott Orton, Head of UK for Chorus Intelligence, sits down with Owen Preece, Head of Crime, and Intelligence Analysis at NWP, to understand the transformations and successes achieved.

FEATURE: A new Home Office-funded project from the Canterbury Centre for Policing Research (CCPR) explores the experiences of those tackling violence against women and girls in Kent’s night-time economy; it finds that police feel “understaffed and stretched”, with concerns about the safety of ‘single-crewed’ officers at night and mixed relationships with essential local security staff, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports.

FEATURE: Polygraphs – or lie detector tests – are considered by some to be the preserve of fictional cop shows; but at the recent Canterbury Centre for Policing Research’s annual conference, two Northumbria University academics explained how these scientifically unsound tools are becoming more commonplace in British policing, seemingly with little debate or openness about their use, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports.

INNOVATION: With many forces around the world looking to enhance their intelligence analysis systems as part of the fight against crime, Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons spoke to New Zealand Police Director of National Intelligence Dan Wildy about the force’s success in adapting and improving their existing systems to deliver results, rather than investing too heavily in new and unproven technology.

OPINION: After several years of declining road deaths in pursuit of Vision Zero, road fatalities in Australia in 2023 reached levels not seen in nearly a decade; Senior Lecturer Dr Milad Haghani of UNSW Sydney believes that more focused and tailored safety campaigns together with closer monitoring of the community road safety climate can help to get Australia back on track.

ANALYSIS: With terrorists increasingly using sophisticated tools and technologies to spread hate via online platforms, the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in countering such activities has become ever more important; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth explores the latest report from researchers at Dublin City University and Swansea University, focusing on AI and machine learning to identify terrorist content online.

OPINION: Retail staff have increasingly been subjected to violence and abuse, partly as a result of the growth in shoplifting, prompting calls from the industry and unions for a new offence of assaulting a shop worker; but Penelope Gibbs, Director of campaign group Transform Justice, warns that the a move would do nothing to reduce the number of attacks, suggesting that a better police response to such assaults and perpetrators dealt with out of court where possible would be much more effective.

ANALYSIS: Police in England and Wales have the power to warn someone when they know their partner poses a real risk of danger under what is known as Clare’s Law, but the level of disclosures varies hugely between forces; research by University of Essex Criminology and Ethics Lecturer Dr Katerina Hadjimatheou suggests that lack of resources, data sharing concerns and cultural resistance within policing all contribute to the problem.

OPINION: The fall in public trust and confidence has become an issue for policing in many jurisdictions, and recent research in Canada suggests the country’s law enforcement agencies have work to do; Vernon White, former Chief of Ottawa Police Service, and Joe Carlebach, former Hammersmith and Fulham councillor, explore the findings from the most recent surveys, and the efforts being made by a number of forces to rebuild public trust.

FEATURE: University of Tasmania Professor of Criminology Rob White has warned that police officers are currently ill-equipped to deal with the demands of climate change and its associated crimes, and will face exhaustion and extended trauma unless operational approaches are significantly overhauled and more extensive collaborations with other agencies are introduced, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

OPINION: The popularity of various illicit drugs changes regularly, with substance preference of users often dictated by the choices of manufacturers, logistical challenges and geopolitical events; Associate Professor Ian Hamilton of the University of York, and Professor Harry Sumnall of Liverpool John Moores University, highlight four street drugs that could pose a significant UK health threat in 2024.

FEATURE: Drowning in the UK accounts for more accidental fatalities annually than fire deaths in the home or cycling deaths on the road, and in many of these incidents the police are the first responders on scene; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at the UK’s Drowning Prevention Strategy, the police response, and the work of the RNLI and others in reducing deaths in and around water.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Fivecast, a global Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) solution provider explores how Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT), is helping the UK policing community identify and mitigate threats and offers best practices applicable to law enforcement globally.

ANALYSIS: One of the arguments put forward for the launch of new non-degree recruitment pathways in the UK is that the public want police officers on the streets rather than in classrooms; but research by former police officer Tom Andrews, now a University of Derby Policing Lecturer, suggests that the public are in favour of post-A Level qualifications for police officers – just don’t call them degrees.

INTERVIEW: In an exclusive interview with Policing Insight, Policing Minister Chris Philp told James Sweetland why he believes that dramatically increasing the use of facial recognition can transform policing and help forces across England and Wales catch wanted criminals.

INTERVIEW: In the second part of his interview with Policing Insight, Det Supt Ian Kirby, the recently appointed CEO of the National Cyber Resilience Centre Group, spoke to James Sweetland about the benefits of the Cyber PATH programme, and the importance of all officers having enough understanding of cybercrime to be able to offer basic advice and support to victims.

ANALYSIS: Shoplifting has become a focus for policing in the UK and around the world, amid claims that the retail sector is experiencing a theft epidemic fuelled by organised gangs, social media and a poor police response; Professor Graham Farrell of the University of Leeds and Professor Rachel Armitage of the University of Huddersfield explore the veracity of some of the key recent assertions made about shoplifting.

INTERVIEW: After his first six months leading the National Cyber Resilience Centre Group – a not-for-profit partnership that enhances the cyber resilience of small businesses – Detective Superintendent Ian Kirby has ambitious plans for growth and a call to arms for police officers around cyber prevention, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports.