January 2025: Too much of not enough
Police complaints over pay undermined by inadequate performances of forces
Happy New Year StopWatchers!
It’s good to see you in 2025, a brand new year that brings with it the opportunity to effect positive change for the many racialised and marginalised communities across England and Wales burdened by overpolicing. One example of this is the first of a series of monthly meetings jointly hosted with the good people at Harehills Action Team and Racial Justice Network, bringing together people from across Leeds to discuss ways of helping each other stay safe from harm and violence.
However, the challenge we – and other racial justice charities face – face is immense. Calls for more funding to improve police operations dominated the headlines, while news of officer assaults and various forms of misconduct surfaced at the same rate as ever.
Too much of not enough
We’ve gotta admit, police forces are having a great start to 2025. All that hard work lobbying policymakers to receive more money has paid off.
However, not content with receiving a 4.75% pay rise from September last year, to add to 7% before that – the highest increase of all public sector workers – all in addition to having average annual earnings 23% higher ‘than in the whole economy’ in 2023, plus a 6% increase in the Home Office annual funding settlement for 2025/26 (+3.5% in real terms), both the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners lamented anticipated losses in funds, estimated to reach £1.3bn over the next two years.
So, to save our police forces from such hardship, you – yes, you – will be expected to pay more in your taxes. That’s right: one by one, local authorities across the nation are announcing sizeable increases in the council tax police precept to make up for the perceived shortfall, so police forces can recruit more officers. By the way, did you know that officer numbers in September 2024 fell to their lowest level since 2022 (Independent, 22 Jan)?* 2022? That’s such a long time ago! Can you even remember 2022? It was the year when His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary (HMICFRS) put Staffordshire, Wiltshire, and the Met police in special measures, apparently. Those halcyon days.
But providing extra funds to forces on the naughty step gives mixed messages, surely? Perhaps this was the dilemma facing HMICFRS chair Len Freeman (formerly Humberside police chief) when he decided to lift the Met from the ‘Engage’ monitoring phase (HMICFRS, 23 Jan).
It’s interesting to see police forces benefitting from HMICFRS’s restorative approach to supervision just as many of their officers refuse to employ the same nuance and tact in their stop and search operations. We’re struggling to see the benefit on the civilian end though… perhaps readers living in London could point us towards the massive improvements in Met police performance over the last two-and-a-half years? Or even the last five months (LBC, 23 Jan)?
In any case, quite why taxpayers have to pay more for this is beyond comprehension, as a recent blogpost puts it (StopWatch, 27 Jan):
Consequently, millions of British taxpayers are being burdened with tax rises despite no evidence of it making a difference to police forces, which is particularly disgraceful when the increased funding is going towards police forces that have fallen far below an acceptable standard.
One might see the opportunity for forces subjected to enhanced monitoring to be held to higher standards over policing operations, such as setting a minimum find rate for stop and searches. But even this is beyond the pale for Police Federation representatives:
We don’t want to see a return to the days where everything was data driven, because what we ended up with – and what we will end up with again if we go down that road – are performance indicators… We saw officers being presented with stop-and-search targets, for instance, and we don’t want that again. Policing is a unique job, and certain elements of it need to be recognised and understood. Performance indicators lead to demoralised officers, and police forces that are functioning under the false pretence of good work, at the expense of not only the organisation but also the community.
- Paul Crowley, Cleveland Police Federation chair
Sadly, police forces ‘functioning under the false pretence of good work’ feels like the default position for many marginalised communities across England and Wales. Paying officers above-inflation salaries simply serves to reinforce this notion, as well as add to the sinking feeling that overpolicing is not something forces aim to eliminate, but in fact how they demonstrate their worth to other members of the public. How else can you make claims of associations between increased police searches and reductions in crime stick (West Bridgford Wire, 22 Jan)?
* ‘lowest’ in this case is still roughly 4,000 officers more in September 2024 (148,886) compared with September 2022 (144,346). It is in fact only 0.5% down (-883) on the all-time high number of 149,769 officers, achieved in March 2024 (view image for full timeseries). This is not worth reporting. Churn happens.
An appeal
In light of police chiefs’ appeals for funding, we realised that we don’t have recourse to public funds in the same way (we can’t pilfer your council tax bill while claiming state funds are insufficient).
If you’ve been following us for the last few years, then you’ll know the things we’ve been doing to hold the police to account: campaigning against suspicionless searches; advocacy against overreach of police powers; outreach work towards visions of community-led safety (see our Leeds-based event above); litigation to induce greater transparency in police mechanisms, to name but a few in the last year or so.
As a predominately volunteer led charity with a mere handful of paid staff members operating in a challenging funding climate, we absolutely cannot continue to do what we do without financial support. So if you like what we do and have the means, then please click on the donate button below and spare us a few quid. Any one-off or regular donations would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading.
Deaths from police contact, cases old and new
Marcus Meade
Marcus Meade, 39, who was a father-of-two with mental health issues was shot by an armed West Mercia police officer in Redditch on Christmas Eve last year.
His parents have accused the force of attending his flat ‘with the intention of doing what they did’ and ‘want answers’ as to why he was killed. The force referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which is currently carrying out an investigation (ITV News Central, 20 Jan).
Kevin Clarke
Two Met police officers, police constables McAleenan and Barnes, were cleared of gross misconduct in relation to the restraint related death of Kevin Clarke in 2018. The misconduct hearings centred on whether the two officers had heard Kevin say “I can’t breathe”, and if so, whether they subsequently took sufficient action as a result of hearing this. They also focused on whether the officers lied under oath during the inquest when they stated that did not hear Kevin say “I can’t breathe”.
The panel concluded that while it was ‘possible’ that the words “I can’t breathe” were said by Kevin during the restraint, they could not be confident of this fact. Therefore, it determined that it could not be proven that either officer had heard Kevin say these words. As a consequence of this finding, the panel did not consider whether the officers had lied under oath at the inquest. The panel determined that no misconduct had been committed by either officer.
Tellecia Strachan, Kevin Clarke’s sister, said: ‘We are extremely disappointed. There is something wrong with the system – the system is broken and it’s not fit for purpose. It’s disrespectful to my brother as a human being – I’m extremely angry, disappointed, and I think it’s a waste of time.’ (INQUEST, 22 Jan)
Other news
Invest in young people: Anti-knife violence campaigners and youth workers speak to Bristol Cable about school exclusions, the reasons children are carrying knives, and why the police must stop ‘victim-blaming’ kids (Bristol Cable, 08 Jan).
Officer charged with using excessive force: Met police constable Rajan Solanki, was summoned to appear at Westminster magistrates court on Friday 10 January, charged with assault by beating.
Solanki is alleged to have used excessive force when dealing with a man at Whipps Cross hospital in Leytonstone on 24 June 2024, who had been admitted for a mental health assessment the previous night. It is alleged that excessive force was used by the officer to restrain the man when attempting to reapply handcuffs (IOPC, 09 Jan).
Met officer keeps job despite ‘unlawful’ stop and search on Black colleague: Police constable Shaun Matthew has escaped dismissal after a misconduct panel heard how he carried out an ‘unlawful’ stop-and-search on Black colleague Gary Williams cycling home after a shift. PC Williams was in plain clothes and on a footpath when PC Matthew signalled for him to stop, but says he couldn’t clearly hear what was being said over the sound of his earphones. However, he was shocked when Matthew ran up saying, ‘I told you to stop, why didn’t you stop?’ before searching him and his rucksack without explaining the reasons. Matthew only became aware they were both policemen with the finding of a Met warrant card in the bag.
Matthew claimed he formed the opinion that Williams may be carrying drugs because he had failed to stop for him and stewards. He had ‘no reasonable grounds, intelligence or evidence’ to suspect Williams might be in possession of drugs though. In hindsight, he admitted he should have asked more questions in order to properly establish the reason for stopping and searching the off-duty officer, but he denied allegations he’d breached standards of professional behaviour relating to authority, respect and courtesy, use of force and discreditable conduct to a gross misconduct level justifying dismissal. Chaired by commander Nick John, the misconduct panel found him guilty only of misconduct for the search of PC Williams. He was given a written warning which will remain on his record for 18 months (The Standard, 13 Jan).
Why we must scrap section 60 searches: John Pegram, founder member of police accountability group Bristol Copwatch explains why the Avon and Somerset force must stop running racist and ineffective suspicionless stop-and-search operations (Bristol Cable, 15 Jan).
High discretion stop and search style ‘generates negative outcomes’: A review on the police use of stop and search powers – looking at 206 studies across 21 countries over 22 years – identified key factors that have impact upon stop and search outcomes:
Contexts that were likely to increase negative outcomes included a focus on order maintenance style policing strategies, valuing stop quantity over quality and high levels of police discretion around stop and search. Importantly, the mechanism of surveillance was found to generate negative outcomes. Contexts and mechanisms that lead to better outcomes included a focus on community policing and procedural justice, transparent systems for recording and monitoring stop and search and public inquiries and reviews of stop and search practices.
The authors call for a nuanced understanding of the ‘interactions between context, mechanisms and outcomes in understanding the complex relationship between police stops and intended and unintended outcomes in informing and developing more effective policy and practice on stop and search.’ (European Journal of Criminology, 21 Jan)
More disturbing police WhatsApp group chats surface: 11 British Transport Police officers are facing a tribunal over ‘disturbing’ WhatsApps in which jokes were shared about stabbing a waitress to death and throwing her body in the River Thames during the same year Sarah Everard was raped and murdered, a misconduct tribunal has heard. Some of the police constables have already admitted misconduct, however none of the sergeants have, with some claiming that they never read the ‘offensive’ messages (MyLondon, 21 Jan)
Restrictions on knife purchases tightened: Under new government plans, a stringent 2-step system will be mandated for all retailers selling knives online requiring customers to submit photo ID at point of sale and again on delivery. In addition, delivery companies will only be able to deliver a bladed article to the same person who purchased it, and it will be illegal to leave a package containing a bladed weapon on a doorstep when no one is in to receive it.
The government has an ambitious mission to halve knife crime within a decade as part of the Plan for Change and a core element of this will be addressing problems in the online sales space (Gov.uk, 28 Jan).
Rise in officers rooted out for misconduct: New Home Office data found 1,312 police officers were referred to formal misconduct proceedings (a meeting or a hearing) in the 12 months to 31 March 2024 (+35% on the previous financial year). 1,106 officers (84%) were found guilty of misconduct. The most common outcomes from misconduct proceedings were ‘a written warning’ (320 officers) and ‘would have been dismissed’ (316 officers).
Of the 697 officers referred to a misconduct hearing or accelerated hearing (excluding those where the proceeding was discontinued), 38 (5.5%) appealed, an increase of 22 appeals in the year ending 31 March 2023. Of the 38 appeals, 2 were upheld, 20 were not, and a further 16 appeals were dismissed (Gov.uk, 30 Jan).
Section 60 watch*
West Midlands
Walsall (07/08 Jan)
* This is not a comprehensive list
Stay safe,
StopWatch.