Police must avoid wading into social or political issues, says standards chief

Police must stop wading into social or political issues that are not criminal and focus on the basics of solving crimes, says the police chief responsible for setting standards.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Chief Constable Andy Marsh, chief executive of the College of Policing, warned that there was a risk of de-legitimizing the police if they took sides in contested social issues, whether it was Twitter spats or wearing badges supporting specific causes.

“Our new guidance on managing non-crime hate incidents, for example, is very clear: The police should not be involving themselves in spats on Twitter,” said Mr Marsh, who was chief constable of two forces: Avon and Somerset and Hampshire.

“It is not where the public want the police to be. It is not their role. We cannot pick sides on contested social issues, we have a job to do: to police without fear or favour, to prevent and detect crime.

“Foremostly, we are police officers and our appearance, behaviour and standards of dress has to say everything about our role and function. Badges risk distracting from that.”

Mr Marsh said that what the public wanted was for police to get the basics right, which meant reversing “unacceptably low” clear-up rates for crimes like burglary and theft, where forces’ performance was “simply not good enough.”

“The fundamental purpose of the police is to keep our community safe, catch criminals and bring offenders to justice,” he said. “What we need to improve on are the basic components of that mission. We need to answer the phone when there are emergencies. We need to dispatch officers promptly and consistently to the right incidents and crimes.

“And then we need to be relentless in our follow through that brings those offenders to justice for the crimes that matter most to our communities. For example, burglary but also the most serious and invasive like rape and serious sexual offences.”

Solving burglaries

The Telegraph revealed this summer that police had not solved a single burglary in neighbourhoods covering nearly half the country in the past three years. It follows complaints that police “screen out” or deprioritise “volume” crimes where there is scant evidence or the stolen items are of low value.

Speaking in advance of his John Harris Memorial Lecture at the Police Foundation this week, Mr Marsh said police would lose public trust if they deprioritised crimes like burglary and car theft. Instead, they needed to investigate “consistently and appropriately” both such volume offences and high vulnerability crimes, like rape.

That meant officers attending the scene of every burglary. “My simple equation is: Performance plus trust equals confidence. So it's not enough simply for the police to deliver good performance because we can't do that unless we're trusted.

“People trust us to report crime, trust us to pass on information, trust us to come forward as witnesses. If we're not taking their crime seriously on an offence as personally threatening as burglary, then we will lose trust, we’ll lose confidence and we certainly won't be detecting that crime

“I've attended thousands of burglaries in my time as a police officer and a detective. There are always lines of inquiry to be followed up at burglaries and that's not to mention the impact of taking the crime seriously by speaking to the victim.”

Mr Marsh said how police engaged with communities was also critical to maintaining trust, and “frivolous” attempts at “inclusion” were counterproductive.

“What so irritates the public when they see videos of officers on duty dancing is that they don’t see an expression of inclusion, they see an officer who has closed their burglary case with no further action - without even visiting the scene - stepping over the line from respectful and polite policing of an event, into frivolity.

Showing empathy

“Policing is a serious business. We're there for people at the worst times in their life when they're victims of crimes, or we're there for them when they don't want to see us because we're squeezing their elbow or feeling their collar. Where our conduct or behaviour becomes a distraction from that mission, it's unhelpful.”

Mr Marsh said there were events where police could legitimately demonstrate their empathy with a community such as when LGBT officers were allowed to march in uniform in pride, a “clear demonstration” of how far police had come in reversing mistrust of them by the gay community.

“However, that community like any other wants us to take their crimes seriously and investigate them and to bring offenders to justice. So I go back to one of the basic components of public confidence is that we're good at our jobs,” said Mr Marsh.