Complaints against officers

[Fedster + 1,307]

Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner, Sir Stephen House, said the force was looking into broadcasting officers' Body Worn Video footage of high-profile incidents to give a more balanced account and highlighted the problematic nature of short social media clips.
 

Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner, Sir Stephen House 

Date - 15th July 2020
By - Chloe Livadeas

Sir Stephen House said that social media footage of apparent police brutality get high levels of publicity, whereas the full sequence of events and cases where officers are afterwards exonerated from any wrongdoing receive none at all.

His comments were made as London Assembly Police & Crime Committee virtually met with to discuss stop and search and disproportionality against BAME individuals,a longisde Sophie Linden, Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime.

It is reported that the Met carried out 43,000 stop and searches in May 2020, compared to 21,000 in May 2019, and 30,608 in April 2020 compared to 20,981 in April 2019.

Sir Stephen said he agreed there is a disproportionality problem.

He told the committee: “We know black young men are four times more likely to be stopped and searched than the white population, between four and five times more likely to be a victim of homicide and eight times more likely to be a suspect of homicides. In the last year we’ve had 20 under 25s murdered. 15 have been from BAME backgrounds, 12 of them from black communities and three from Asian communities. So 75 per cent of young Londoners murdered in the last year were ethnic minorities.

“The black community is disproportionately represented in other areas of society, not just policing issues.”

A member of the committee raised the of topic of British athlete Bianca Williams’ and asked Sir Stephen whether all other black Londoners who had been “handcuffed and disrespected” would receive an apology as well, or if it was just because of their status.

Ms Williams and her partner were stopped and searched by Met officers on 4 July. Footage taken by Ms Williams was circulated widely on Twitter and triggered an apology from Commissioner Cressida Dick.

Sir Stephen stressed that the Commissioner’s apology was for the distress caused by the incident, not the stop and search itself and that it was referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) because Ms Williams tagged her name and the Met in a tweet which counts as a public complaint.

Sir Stephen told the committee the Met was looking into ways to broadcast their own BWV footage in order to give the full picture of incidents which come under the public eye.

“The shortest clip I’ve seen is 23 seconds of an incident that lasted over 15 minutes,” he said.

“I’d rather see the full picture so if we have done something wrong it’s dealt with properly or if it is a feature of policing that sometimes we deal with people who don’t want to be dealt with. We are working on the edge of conflict all the time.

“I have to remind people regularly that officers are effectively licensed by the state to use force against another citizen. They are supposed to do it lawfully and when it’s necessary and only use reasonable force. But that is effectively their job.”

He said: “With social media what we see is the clips get huge publicity and what actually happened gets less publicity.”

He referred to the case of Millard Scott, whose son Jermain Scott, known as Wretch 32, posted a 36-second video on social media of his 62-year-old father being Tasered by Met officers and then falling down the stairs in his home in April.

After the video was posted online last month, London Mayor Sadiq Khan called for an urgent IOPC investigation. The IOPC yesterday wrote to the force to inform them they were handing the matter back to them and no investigation would be launched at this stage.

An IOPC spokesperson said: “We contacted the MPS about whether a referral to the IOPC was required and the force confirmed that the man had not sustained any serious injury or lodged a complaint.

“We were aware of news reports that the man may have lost consciousness and sustained a life changing leg injury. We used our powers to require the MPS to send any relevant information to us so we could decide whether the matter required investigation and if so, who should do that. The MPS referred the incident as a serious injury matter having decided that there was no identifiable conduct on the part of any officer.

“Since the incident took place, and after approaching the individual’s solicitors, we have not received a public complaint or confirmation the man involved sustained a serious injury. As a result we have returned the matter to the MPS to decide what, if any, further steps to take."

Sir Stephen said: “That judgement will not get the same publicity as the calling in would. Now those officers will not get apologies from anyone there for simply doing their job. That’s what I object to. Scrutiny is vital and I have no problem with social media. I have an issue with 21 second clips.”

“If there's some way that we could have an equality of arms going forward around the release of body worn video, I think that would be very helpful.”

He said broadcasting body worn footage to the public would be difficult under GDPR but the Met was working with the Mayor’s office to get round that problem.

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[skydiver + 1,099]

NSS so why has it taken so long for the police to contemplate releasing BWV to counteract the short mobile phone clips the victims or witnesses release.

[Radman + 2,163]

9 hours ago, skydiver said:

NSS so why has it taken so long for the police to contemplate releasing BWV to counteract the short mobile phone clips the victims or witnesses release.

Because its all sub judice in the UK, very different style of justice system to the US where vital police evidence is flying around on social media, all over the place for highly publicised incidents. 

A job of mine recently where I locked up a bloke D&D, really obnoxious kind of bloke refused to pay his ticket, wrote in asking for the BWV which had been uploaded. Force refused to release it to him as until he either paid his ticket or decided to challenge it requesting his day in court as the case may very well have gone to court, the footage being used as evidence in any subsequent hearing. 

He paid his ticket in the end. 

[skydiver + 1,099]

55 minutes ago, Radman said:

Because its all sub judice in the UK, very different style of justice system to the US where vital police evidence is flying around on social media, all over the place for highly publicised incidents. 

 

Doh!  Good point well made, however the police could still say that in public but at the moment we are very poor at defending the actions of our officers. 

[Zulu 22 + 4,569]

It will not be long before someone is accusing us of Social Profiling when, as the Ass. Com infers it is just from Criminal Intelligence. He also mentioned the Bianca Williams case with a very short video social media clip wen the BWV showed that the incident took place over a long period of time.

Although they would not be able to post the BWV on line I do not believe that they would be stopped by publishing that the BWV lasted for 15/20/30 minutes and gave a completely different, and full, version. 

This ,of course, will be too hard for some people to comprehend.

Edited July 16, 2020 by Zulu 22

[Jacob212 17]

12 hours ago, Zulu 22 said:

It will not be long before someone is accusing us of Social Profiling when, as the Ass. Com infers it is just from Criminal Intelligence. He also mentioned the Bianca Williams case with a very short video social media clip wen the BWV showed that the incident took place over a long period of time.

Although they would not be able to post the BWV on line I do not believe that they would be stopped by publishing that the BWV lasted for 15/20/30 minutes and gave a completely different, and full, version. 

This ,of course, will be too hard for some people to comprehend.

Maybe they didn't publish that for a reason maybe it's the same reason they apologised. From the start they said they were driving on the wrong side of the road, well now it's come to light that there was only enough room on the road for one car at a time, i think they were right to apologise as they were privy to all the facts unlike yourself who would have everyone think you were there and witnessed the whole incident 

[Zulu 22 + 4,569]

9 hours ago, PcJacob said:

Maybe they didn't publish that for a reason maybe it's the same reason they apologised. From the start they said they were driving on the wrong side of the road, well now it's come to light that there was only enough room on the road for one car at a time, i think they were right to apologise as they were privy to all the facts unlike yourself who would have everyone think you were there and witnessed the whole incident 

You do not appear to have read the article. the apology was not for the stop search which the Met reviewed and said that the officers had acted correctly. I did not say that the Met Commissioner did. It was also quoted "Sir Stephen stressed that the Commissioner’s apology was for the distress caused by the incident, not the stop and search itself and that it was referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) because Ms Williams tagged her name and the Met in a tweet which counts as a public complaint."  No my words.  The reason for the stop was given and recorded that they were driving on the wrong side of the road and failed to stop. The area where they did stop was outside the house where there was only one carriageway to use. 

Like you, I was not there, obviously, but neither were you. I am however prepared to accept what the Commissioner and Sir Stephen has said. After all they have viewed the Police tapes of the incident and said that the officers did nothing wrong.

[skydiver + 1,099]

At the risk of going slightly off topic the public are largely unaware of the exact wording of the apology and only remember that an apology was made so in many minds that will show that the MPS was wrong and that Williams was right.  Police in general need to be more media savvy to better manage situations like this.

[Jacob212 17]

15 hours ago, Zulu 22 said:

You do not appear to have read the article. the apology was not for the stop search which the Met reviewed and said that the officers had acted correctly. I did not say that the Met Commissioner did. It was also quoted "Sir Stephen stressed that the Commissioner’s apology was for the distress caused by the incident, not the stop and search itself and that it was referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) because Ms Williams tagged her name and the Met in a tweet which counts as a public complaint."  No my words.  The reason for the stop was given and recorded that they were driving on the wrong side of the road and failed to stop. The area where they did stop was outside the house where there was only one carriageway to use. 

Like you, I was not there, obviously, but neither were you. I am however prepared to accept what the Commissioner and Sir Stephen has said. After all they have viewed the Police tapes of the incident and said that the officers did nothing wrong.

Wrong, the apology was basically because they were handcuffed and it exposed the fact that the MET are doing this as more of a matter of course than when they have the grounds to do so, that and the fact that it would be quite hard to justify in this case.

you say   "The reason for the stop was given and recorded that they were driving on the wrong side of the road and failed to stop. The area where they did stop was outside the house where there was only one carriageway to use "

they was pulled over on THEIR street but continued to drive 20 metres to their house were they felt safe.

there is no evidence to suggest they were driving on the wrong side of the road,and no they were not given the reason of driving on the wrong side of the rd as you state, as the first they heard that excuse was when it was published on twitter.

Also this will all come out as they are eager to sue, 

 

Edited July 17, 2020 by PcJacob

[SD + 683]

Just so there is no confusion over whether the police were deemed at fault"

"But House said: “What the commissioner apologised for was the distress caused to Bianca Williams … she was not apologising for the stop and search. That has to be very clearly stated. We have reviewed that stop and search twice by two separate teams of officers from professional standards. Neither team saw anything wrong with it.”

[Jacob212 17]

59 minutes ago, SD said:

Just so there is no confusion over whether the police were deemed at fault"

"But House said: “What the commissioner apologised for was the distress caused to Bianca Williams … she was not apologising for the stop and search. That has to be very clearly stated. We have reviewed that stop and search twice by two separate teams of officers from professional standards. Neither team saw anything wrong with it.”

the distress caused by the unnecessary handcuffing maybe 🙄

[Chief Cheetah 6,902]

14 minutes ago, PcJacob said:

the distress caused by the unnecessary handcuffing maybe 🙄

Have you been on this forum previously? I only ask because your posting style reminds me of someone but I can't recall who.

[SD + 683]

35 minutes ago, PcJacob said:

the distress caused by the unnecessary handcuffing maybe 🙄

You can draw whatever conclusions you want, but that's not what was said or implied. But you would only suggest that if you had a point to prove but no evidence to support it.

Edited July 18, 2020 by SD

[Jacob212 17]

11 minutes ago, SD said:

You can draw whatever conclusions you want, but that's not what was said or implied. But you would only suggest that if you had a point to prove but no evidence to support it.

Erm no if you go back an look at previous posts you will clearly see that is in fact what I said and implied.

[Father Jack 253]

38 minutes ago, PcJacob said:

the distress caused by the unnecessary handcuffing maybe 🙄

Clutching at straws, are we?

If you were a current or former Police Officer, you'd know how a stop and search works. If I have reasonable grounds to conduct a stop and search, then it is happening, wether the subject likes it or not. Regardless of how much they may beg, plead, threaten etc. I will explain my reasonable grounds for carrying out the stop and search, identify myself etc, when I go through GOWISELY (look it up). 

How the remainder of the encounter goes is down to the subject. If they are uncooperative or physically resisting, then they will be cuffed while I carry out a search, for my safety as well as theirs.