Copyright © The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press.
Editorial |
Use of Force
* Chief Executive Officer for the National Policing Improvement Agency
This is the third edition of this new Journal. When we were thinking about the order in which to tackle a subject as vast as policing, we quickly got to three big subjects—terrorism, neighbourhood policing, and the use of force. Terrorism, particularly after the events of July 2007 in London and Glasgow, is very much the issue of the moment. Policing neighbourhoods is not just the priority for the new Brown administration in the UK, but is a key issue in almost every developed policing system. We came to policing and the use of force because, as Bittner () pointed out, it is a defining characteristic of the police officer over the citizen. It is both, controversial, particularly when it goes wrong, and challenging for the police service to get right.
There are a number of dimensions to the use of force, many of which are well covered by the articles, commentaries, and reviews in this volume. These range from the equipment that police use (from batons, to guns, and tasers), the tactics, the training, and the ways on the basis of which police behaviours are monitored and ultimately held to account. This is an incredibly important area for research and one where the broadest disciplines of criminology and science are required. It is not, for example, good enough to proclaim that the taser is suitable for deployment as a ‘less lethal weapon’ without a careful examination of tactics and methods that might be deployed, the medical safety of the weapon, the community reaction and acceptability and, through careful trials, the operational effectiveness.
The issue of the taser illustrates just how much the technology of force has changed in the last 25 years. In the early 1980s the vast majority of police officers in the UK were unarmed and carried a wooden truncheon, for which I remember receiving no training above the rather superfluous instruction ‘don't hit them on the head unless you're desperate’. Having been ‘desperate’ on one occasion on Airborne Forces night in Aldershot, I found that a better reason for not doing this was that the truncheon broke! We were also not supposed to be carrying handcuffs visibly, because it ‘looked aggressive’—a standard clearly imposed by senior officers who had not recently tried to entice a troublesome ‘customer’ into the two-door Mini 850 that served as a beat patrol car. Equally, if we needed to be armed, those of us who were authorised firearms officers returned to the armoury at the police station to be issued with guns and have Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1977, and the exaltation to use ‘reasonable force’ read to us. This was not a professional approach, and it was accompanied by high levels of assaults on police officers, and a corresponding acceptance of relatively high levels of violence towards those who chose to fight when arrested.
The 1980s saw several seminal moments in a transition to a more professional approach in the UK. The Hungerford shootings, in which Michael Ryan's victims included both a local police officer and local public, forced the transformation and professionalisation of the police firearms response in the UK. Armed Response vehicles, Tactical Fireams teams, and a new National Firearms manual of tactics and training saw a substantial change. Ten years or so later, a series of shootings by the police caused a re-examination of police approach: a revised National Firearms Manual (now substantially published on the internet at www.acpo.police.uk), a Code of Practice supporting a new national process of accredited training and the introduction of new ‘less lethal’ options including the baton gun and taser. In the period since then, the number of police firearms deployment has steadily risen (from 13,991 in 2001–02 to 18,891 in 2005–06) as have the number of specialist firearms officers (from 5,776 to 6,584). Despite this, IPCC figures show (as set out in the article by Deborah Glass from the IPCC) that a total of 49 people have been shot by police in the UK since 1985, an average of 2.2 per year, or one of the lowest figures in the developed world.
There is another angle to Police Use of Firearms, which highlights the dilemmas for the police and the expectations of the public in this area. Nearly 20 years on from the Hungerford Shootings, the same force, Thames Valley, found itself responding to another armed man shooting people in a rural location. This time the shootings, which resulted in two deaths and one serious injury, were in a village near Henley, at a barbeque. The offender, the estranged husband of one of the deceased, walked into the barbeque and started shooting and then left as quickly as he had come. However, the story that came to dominate the news was the length of time it took for the police and other emergency services to reach the scene. As the Chief Constable, the force and I were criticised for not protecting the public by not being bold and quick enough at intervening. The review that I published (Thames Valley Police, 2004) showed how police use of firearms had become focused on the safety of the police officers and on avoiding fatal shootings to the apparent detriment of a focus on the safety of the public.
The 1980s also saw the beginnings of the transformation of personal protection for individual officers. The emphasis on what kind of equipment and how it should be deployed has varied from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In the USA, the threat from legally and illegally held firearms is such that the focus has been on protecting officers from firearms and, where possible, providing alternatives to officers deploying their own guns. In the UK, the emphasis has been more on ‘personal protective equipment’ or PPE, including better batons, better handcuffs, the use of CS spray (and now PAVA or pepper spray), and protective vests. The key to their effective use, however, is not the quality of the equipment (although that helps), but the training that goes with it and supports its use. A recent review by the Police Inspectorate in the UK found that in quite a number of forces officers did not feel that the force was giving officer safety training the priority that it deserved (HMIC, 2007). The Inspection was triggered by concerns expressed by frontline staff associations that officers in some forces were being exposed to greater risks by insufficient training.
This is by no means a comprehensive description of the developments in the police use of force in the UK. It is, inevitably, a somewhat personal journey, some of which have been painful on several occasions when I have personally been assaulted and had to use force, physically so. My personal learning across 25 years of policing is that there is a very delicate balance between the police service's use of force and its public acceptability. The importance of international learning in this area was powerfully brought home to me by an invitation to UK Chiefs to take part in a seminar in the USA sponsored by the Police Executive Research Forum. The issue for debate was how Chiefs should handle incidents of ‘deadly force’, following a series of controversial incidents. PERF's subsequent published practice advice (PERF, 2006) reflects the lessons that have been learnt on both sides of the Atlantic and which, from my involvement with CEPOL (European Police College), I am also aware, are directly relevant in Europe as well. As Professor Waddington's editorial rightly concludes, the police need to be aware that, however justifiable, the use of force, particularly deadly force, is always uncomfortable, and often highly controversial.
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