Police Misconduct and ACPO

This police company is also to be stripped of its power to run undercover units following recent controversies about its Ratcliffe on Stour operation.  Embarrassed Police Minister Nick Herbert has announced that ACPO is to be stripped of all operational duties following the risible antics of undercover officers. Under cover officers employed to infiltrate activist groups ended up being the main protagonists and perpetrators of the acts of sabotage. This resulted in the police National Public Order Unit becoming an object of hilarity and ridicule. Certainly in January 2011 the press had a field day devoting several pages to the salacious, seedy exploits of the hapless police officer Mark Kennedy, who now says that he lives in fear of his life.

The National Public Order Unit costs five million pounds a year to run. It was set up initially to infiltrate animal rights groups who had sent letter bombs in the 1990`s. The Unit appears to have lost its way. The secretive Unit has now received such a blare of publicity one has to wonder about its future operational success. It seems that all the organisations which are attempting to uphold law and order are currently falling into disrepute.  It is small wonder then that so many powerful crime groups are evading capture or detection and driving Sir Paul Stephenson to despair.

The police have also come under fire for using the controversial kettling technique of crowd control. The premise of kettling is to prevent the crowd running riot and causing mayhem and criminal damage. However the technique has a serious drawback in that it indiscriminately herds up large numbers of innocent passersby. In 1989 bad policing of crowds led to the Hillsborough disaster where many football fans were crushed to death.

 Recently the technique of kettling was used during the student riots and this led to many complaints and threats of lawsuits. Innocent tourists as well as legitimate student protesters were kettled for several hours without food, drink or access to bathrooms. Some people fainted and many were hypothermic as the day turned to night. Some young school children started to burn their school books in an effort to keep warm. This was maliciously interpreted as acts of vandalism. However the poor children interviewed were clearly cold, hungry and frightened. This incident portrays the abuses of those holding the reins of power. These are certainly crimes against humanity. It depicts the abuse of Government State power as well as police powers of unlawful detainment. The angry Home Secretary even spoke of using water cannon against the crowd. Imagine the distress that would have caused to the already freezing cold hypothermic children.

The police have also attacked innocent bystanders without provocation. Recently Ian Tomlinson was killed by an unprovoked blow to his back as he walked passed a row of policemen at the G20 protests in London.

The police have also used pepper spray that has resulted in deaths. The peaceful anti racist protester Blair Peach was bludgeoned to death by a police baton in 1979.

  The weaponry of the police is becoming more suited to Armed Forces personnel. The police now use tasers and other supposedly less lethal weapons. A new long range acoustic device (LRAD) was used in Philadelphia University on peaceful students and lecturers.  This ultrasonic device causes excruciating pain in the ear as well as disorientation and collapse. It may even lead to deafness! Here in England the mosquito device has been used in South Wales and  in  an Oxford shopping precinct to deter young people from loitering (BBC News 2008). The Mosquito emits a painful ultrasound noise that can only be heard by young adults and children. It has been rightly criticised by human rights groups such as Liberty and Amnesty.

The police have also abused the stop and search powers of the anti terrorism Acts to target and harass ethnic minorities. In 1981 the hated SUS Laws gave rise to the Brixton and Toxteth riots. Plainly most of those stopped and searched are not terrorists. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that minority groups have been unfairly discriminated against by police use of Stop and Search Laws (Ministry of Justice, 2008/9). Indeed following the Lawrence inquiry the police were branded as being “institutionally racist”. Institutional racism was a term first coined by Sir William MacPherson following police failures in the investigation of the tragic death of Stephen Lawrence (MacPherson 1999). It referred to a collective failure to provide an appropriate service to people because of their ethnicity (Phillips 2010).The Director General of Prisons Martin Narey  warned that the prison service is institutionally racist in 2001 and proportionately more BME groups have died in custody (Phillips & Bowling 2002). It has also been estimated that BME groups are up to eight times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police using anti terror legislation. Indeed the Archbishop John Sentamu, who is from Uganda, complained that he himself has been stopped and searched several times when wearing secular clothing. Dr. John Sentamu believes that he has been stopped by police purely because of his Ugandan heritage. Under section 44 of the Anti Terrorism Act 2000 the police can stop and search anyone in a designated place on the merest hint of a suspicion. Any person the police might not like the look of may be searched under the pretext of national security. This has led to flagrant abuse of the powers by police officers.

 In 2009 there were around 150 thousand searches carried out by over zealous police officers (Ministry of Justice, 2008/09). This unacceptable police behaviour contravenes the Race Relations Act of 1974 which was amended in 2003. Tourists innocently taking photographs of iconic buildings such as the London Eye fell foul of the draconian legislation and many ethnic minorities were harassed (UK PoliceOnline 2010). This led to widespread complaints by civil liberty groups such as Liberty. Following a test case by a complainant in 2010, a judicial precedent was set. Henceforth the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the powers of stop and search were being abused and therefore deemed illegal.