Copyright © The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press.
Editorial |
Policing Terrorism
* Chief Executive Officer for the National Police Improvement Agency
We have chosen a difficult issue for this first edition of the Oxford Journal because, as General Editors, we have high ambitions to raise the level of debate about policing, and about the way in which practice is developed, debated and disseminated. Our philosophy as Editors is to encourage all three, but in a way that brings together practitioners, commentators and academics. The difference between this journal and the ‘trade press’ for policing is that we want to ensure that the debate is based on a strong debate, which is credibly reviewed. Policing has suffered from too much assertive writing that suggests solutions without supportive evidence. There has also been reluctance for practitioners to engage in the debate in the same publications as academics, leading to curiously split conversations.
Speaking in his Dimbleby lecture last year, Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, challenged the profession, the academic community, the politicians and the public to start a proper debate about policing (Blair, 2006). This Journal is one answer to that challenge—a forum for the debate which we hope will become widely available, not just a library copy for a limited few. We have, therefore, deliberately started at the difficult end of policing—the policing of terrorism. We will be going on to other themes—policing neighbourhoods, policing and the use of force, measuring performance in policing, the use of science and technology and many more—but we have started with terrorism, because, as many of the articles in this edition demonstrate, this area of policing has deep implications for both the contract between the police and the citizen and for all the other areas of policing. It is also, in a very evident way, an aspect of policing that has undergone major change in a very short space of time, following the September 11th attacks in New York.
There are a number of themes which emerge from this first issue: the importance of being able to measure success effectively and learn from it; the need to understand that each aspect of policing has a connected relationship with the others—in this case, it is difficult to understand the policing of terrorism without standing back and looking at areas like the policing of neighbourhoods; the fact that practice developed in one area of policing, in this case, policing terrorism, has a significant impact on ‘everyday’ policing both in creating pressure on resources and in the way that it pushes the development of practice; policing terrorism demands courageous leadership capable of clearly articulating the policing challenges and communicating them to politicians and the public; terrorism, whilst the driving motivation may be different, is basically a criminal activity and, therefore, susceptible to many of the preventive and investigative strategies which have been developed to counter other forms of crime.
Taking the first of the themes, it is difficult to measure success in policing terrorism. Arguably, any attack counts as a failure. Indeed, the consequences of some of the attacks—chemical, biological, even nuclear—are so horrific that security and law enforcement agencies must both work to ensure that they do not happen and prepare for their contingency. There has, however, been relatively little evaluative work done on the success of counter-terrorist strategies. One of the few published pieces of work, a Campbell Collaboration study by Lum et al. (2007), concludes that ‘evidence based counter-terrorism policy should be lawful, rational, effective, and should cause as little harm as possible’(p. 512). They found that it was quite possible to analyse counter-terrorist strategies against their stated objectives, but, despite this, found an ‘almost complete absence of evaluation research on counter-terrorism interventions’ (p. 489). Given the importance of policing terrorism, the consequences for our society and the implications for policing generally, there is a need for a greater focus on research and evaluation. The need for evidence-based practice in policing and crime prevention has become an increasing theme (Welsh and Farrington, 2006). It is difficult to conceive of a major initiative in acute care being taken in medicine without careful, randomized, clinical trials involving the professionals (and in most cases carried out by them, with independentpeer review).
In contrast to the relative shortage of research in the area of policing terrorism in one key area of policing, the UK has much to be proud of in the development of evidence-based practice—neighbourhood policing. Over the past 5 years, building on a number of studies in Chicago and the UK, the Neighbourhood Policing project has, with strong professional leadership, first piloted and then implemented a substantively new approach to local policing in the UK. Based around the National Intelligence Model and the concept of ‘reassurance policing’, new doctrine, new learning programmes and a dramatic shift in the workforce—over 10,000 new Community Support Officers—have been rolled out across England and Wales. The programme has been carefully evaluated from the outset—a programme of research that is ongoing. For good reasons, we have decided to theme our second edition around policing neighbourhoods.
It is quite clear from Bill Bratton's article (pp) and from the Police Executive Research Forum's publication ‘the Gathering Storm’ (Police Executive Research Forum, 2006), that the tide is shifting in the opposite direction in the USA. Pressure for resources for tackling terrorism appears to have caused a retrenchment on the investment in neighbourhood policing. There has been a dramatic rise in recorded violent crime in most major US cities over the last year. Most chiefs are, perhaps naturally, making a link between the two and pointing out the key importance of neighbourhood policing to tackling terrorism. This latter point has also been made strongly by police leaders in the UK. The preventive link is not proven but, with the firm basis of the Home Office's work on the crime reduction model (Ekblom, 2001), it must be a strong hypothesis at least. For, whilst we need a more detailed understanding of the measures that might reduce radicalization or prevent radicalized groups from converting thought into action, there are several reasons from the literature on crime reduction that suggest that neighbourhood policing should be important. Above all, an engaged, local policing approach that is responsive to local communities is likely to be seen as more legitimate by those communities, whether they be minority or majority. Tyler's work (Tyler and Huo, 2002) has identified the importance of perceptions of legitimacy in people keeping within the law. Secondly, a local policing style offers a clearer view of the risks in any local community and Policing neighbourhood based or otherwise, cannot deal with the larger and more long term ‘distil’ factors—relative poverty, religious radicalism, personal and national identity—but it can operate in an informed way. The UK government's investment in neighbourhood policing and the police service's leadership of the initiative now look vital in the fight against terrorism, let alone the local reassurance agenda. Significantly, in the frequent debate about the value of looking across the Atlantic for policing inspiration, the UK appears to a better place to look for lessons.
The third theme is the way in which policing terrorism has changed practice in policing. There are a number of dimensions to this, many of which are alluded to in the contributions to these pages. The sheer scale of the investigations involved in terrorist cases is pushing the techniques involved in crime investigations, whether it is forensic management, the use of CCTVs and electronic evidence, or the need to work cross-jurisdictionally. In the UK, in particular, the scale of the investigations has forced far closer cooperation between the UK's police forces and has re-emphasized the importance of common standards of accreditation for investigators because of the imperative need to share resources. As an example of this, the Metropolitan Police had not sought ‘mutual aid’ from other forces prior to 2005. The need to supplement the Metropolitan Police's centre of expertise means that officers from across the country must have corresponding skills and an understanding of the national approach.
Not only must individual officers be skilled in a different way, but so also must their leaders. The stretch on police leadership is a key challenge. The Police are not the only law enforcement or security agency charged with preventing and detecting terrorism, but they are the most publicly present and accountable. The police also have to cope with the fallout of terrorist cases on the local communities that they protect. The recent Independent Police Complaints Commission report (IPCC, 2007) into arrests in Forest Gate, London, in 2006, amply demonstrated both the pressure of the decisions that have to be taken and the challenge of handling the aftermath. Police leaders need the ability to learn very quickly from every event, including those happening in other jurisdictions: examples of the US Police Executive Research Forum seeking UK involvement in lessons learnt events have now become common.
Finally, it would be remiss not to touch on comments of Archbishop Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, who has described the UK as moving towards a ‘police state’ because of new measures to tackle terrorism and, in particular, the proposals to extend detention beyond 28 days in the case of terrorist investigations. ‘Police state’ is an alarming and emotional term that should be used with precision and care. By the standards of Hitler's Third Reich or Saddam's Iraq, the modern UK has a long way to travel. Parliamentary democracy in the UK, for all its faults, is still very much a representational democracy and has already shown itself cautious about extending police detention powers last year. The Police and every other public authority are subject to the rule of law and the Human Rights Act 1998. The Independent Police Complaints Commission—has shown no reluctance to hold to account Police Commanders, including the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Police Officers in the UK are strictly controlled in their use of force and must meet the same test—reasonable force that is proportionate and, where fatal, absolutely necessary—as any citizen. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 is widely regarded as an international gold standard for the police in the treatment of detained persons and investigation.
As several of the articles in this volume argue, the police role in tackling terrorism does tread the delicate boundaries of the state's relationship with the citizen. Intrusive methods of investigation, the use of covert human intelligence sources and the linkage of the police to security services, are all on this line. They are regulated in the UK by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), but are also exposed to scrutiny by the criminal trial process. Indeed, the principle reason argued for the extension of the detention times is not an inclination towards a ‘police state’ but a strong, professional impetus towards bringing as many as possible of those suspected of involvement in terrorist activities to justice. Such is the complexity of the criminal investigation and trial process for such cases now, involving, as they do, multiple jurisdictions and usually multiple defendants, that 28 days is fast becoming insufficient to ensure that enough evidence can be gathered and examined so as to ensure that a charge can be made whilst the defendant is in custody. This balance between securing convictions, protecting the public and the rights of individuals deserves a proper debate rather than emotive slogans—not a ‘police state’, but a state where the police are trying very hard to protect the public within the rule of law.
References
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Blair I. The Dimbleby Lecture 2006. (2006).
Ekblom P. The Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity: a Framework for Crime Reduction Toolkits. (2001) http://crimereduction.gov.uk/learningzone/cco.htm.
IPCC. Report into the Forest Gate raid, IPCC website. (2007).
Lum C., Kennedy L.W., Sherley A. Are Counter-Terrorist Strategies Effective? The Results of the Campbell Systematic Review on Counter-Terrorism Evaluation Research. Journal of Experimental Criminology (2006) 2(4):489–516.[CrossRef]
Police Executive Research Forum. A Gathering Storm–Violent Crime in America (2006) Washington, DC: PERF.
Tyler T.R., Huo Y.J. Trust in the law: Encouraging Public Cooperation with the Police and the Courts (2002) New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Welsh B.C., Farrington D.P., eds. Preventing Crime: What works for Children, Offenders, Victims and Places (2006) Dordrecht: Springer.
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