Short note on the dangers of a political police force

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The Consequences of a Political Police Force

1.    This note is written by Sarah Phillimore, on behalf of the organisation Fair Cop. In the interests of brevity, I have not provided copious examples of the behaviour complained about. Fair Cop has an ever growing archive of such material which we are happy to share on request.

2.    I will examine the following areas

a.    The duty upon the police to be politically neutral

b.    Examples of the police failing to remain politically neutral

c.     Why does this matter?

d.    What we intend to do about it.

The duty upon the police to be politically neutral.

3.    This is set out in the Code of Ethics. Para 2.1 of the 2014 Code sets out the ‘policing principles’ – Accountability, Fairness, Honesty, Integrity, Leadership, Objectivity, Openness, Respect and Selflessness.

4.    The specific prohibition is set out at para 6.5

Police officers must not take any active part in politics. This is intended to prevent you from placing yourself in a position where your impartiality may be questioned.

5.    Politics is not defined in the Code so we assume its ordinary meaning as the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.

6.    Support for gender identity ideology is therefore clearly a political activity, given that proponents of this ideology wish to see ‘gender identity’ given primacy over biological sex and campaign for the law to be changed to accommodate this. Some object on the basis that this will cause harm to women’s sex based rights; such as single sex female spaces. This debate is clearly one of significant and on going public interest and to dismiss those who question gender identity ideology as ‘bigots’ or ‘hateful’ is unacceptable.

Examples of the police failing to remain politically neutral.

7.    Sadly, the examples of this are legion. Many forces still remain ‘Stonewall Champions’ despite the ever growing concern about public bodies paying a campaigning lobby group to provide them with ‘advice’. Stonewall has variously campaigned for ‘self identification’ – the right for a man to declare he is a woman on his declaration alone – and an end to single sex spaces.

8.    Most obviously and well documented of police failings in this regard, is the unlawful treatment of Harry Miller by Humberside police, which was subject to serious criticism by Knowles J in the first instance decision of Miller v College of Policing. Miller went on to successfully challenge the legality of the Hate Crimes Guidance in the Court of Appeal.

9.    Social media is awash with examples of various police forces posting pictures of officers posing with ‘trans flags’, even riot shields painted in the ‘trans’ colours of pink and blue. Identifiable and senior serving officers publish on social media their support for the notion that the police should ‘love everyone’ and deal harshly with ‘hate’ – which appears often to be nothing more than people expressing scepticism that it is possible to change our biological sex.

10. We are not aware of any other group who are routinely and publicly celebrated by the police in this manner.

Why does this matter?

1.    Police support for gender identity ideology is a political activity which directly conflicts with the Code of Ethics.

2.    Further, political policing is an affront to the Peelian principles and a breach of the Police Officer’s Oath. The Peelian Principles remain valid today; police officers exercise their powers to police their fellow citizens with their implied consent. The legitimacy of policing therefore depends on public support. A police force which openly displays support for a particular political group is therefore damaging public trust and confidence in the ability of the police to remain impartial and treat everyone fairly.

3.    Political policing is further an affront to the police constable’s oath, which reads

“I do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will well and truly serve the Queen in the office of constable, with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality, upholding fundamental human rights and according equal respect to all people; and that I will, to the best of my power, cause the peace to be kept and preserved and prevent all offences against people and property; and that while I continue to hold the said office I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties thereof faithfully according to law.”

4.    The politicisation of the police not only creates a perception of bias and partiality that has serious negative implications for public trust and confidence but leads to actual failures in operational decisions that put citizens at risk of harm.

5.    A clear and recent example of this was the failure of policing by Avon and Somerset at a rally in Bristol on Sunday 19th June 2022 organised by ‘Standing for Women’, a group which asserts the immutability of biological sex as important for the safety and dignity of women and girls.

6.    The police failed to maintain any distance between a group of largely middled aged women who had come to talk about their rights and a group of largely young men, dressed in black with full face coverings, who sought to violently intimidate the women meeting. It was only by luck that a major incident was avoided.

7.    Despite a group of masked men continuing to follow and harass some of the women as they tried to get a drink at a local pub where they had booked a room, the police made no arrests. Rather, the police then issued a self congratulatory press release that they had preserved the rights of two groups of ‘protesters’ to speak. The outrage sparked by this cloth eared assessment of the policing on that day has lead to the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset agreeing to hold a ‘pilot protest scrutiny panel’ led and overseen by an independent chair to address the concerns raised.

8.    A further and very concerning example involves Jennifer Swayne, a disabled woman who was arrested and detained for 10 hours for ‘stickering’ in Newport in support of her ‘gender critical’ belief, while trans identified males who had placed various stickers calling for women to be shot if they did not ‘STFU’ (shut the fuck up) went uninvestigated and unchallenged. The police searched Ms Swayne’s house and confiscated books by respected academic authors and later confirmed no further action would be taken against Ms Swayne.

9.    It is difficult to see what motivated the police to act in the way they did, in these two examples, other than from the starting point that women who object to gender identity ideology are somehow ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ or less deserving of respect than those who seek to intimidate, threaten and harass them.

10. We think the consequences for the continuing legitimacy of the police if this obvious bias and partiality continues are very serious.

What we intend to do about it

11. We note with dismay that despite a Court of Appeal ruling in December 2020 that the Hate Crimes Guidance was unlawful, the College of Policing have yet to issue revised guidance and we have evidence to suggest the police are continuing to implement politically motivated decisions to record ‘non crime hate incidents’, most worrying regarding school children who have ‘misgendered’ a class mate.  Various police forces continue to signal their political allegiances via social media.

12. We do not think this is acceptable and will continue to use the law to restrain those police forces which operate in breach of the Code of Ethics and Equality Act public sector equality duty. Fair Cop are supporters of the recently launched ‘Bad Law Project’, which benefits from its own crowdfunding platform and which raised £37K in a few days for the costs of a criminal defence solicitor for Ms Swayne. The Bad Law Project will consider which legal actions will be most effective to pursue against individual forces. The risk to the police is therefore not merely reputational, but financial.

Concluding remarks

13. It is with great sadness that I write this briefing note. All members of Fair Cop have great respect for the police and the very difficult job they do. An effective police force is a very necessary component of a healthy democracy. We are saddened to see the reputation and effectiveness of the police so damaged by their continuing politicisation. If they will not keep their house in order, we consider that we have little choice but to take further action.

Sarah Phillimore

Fair Cop

29th June 2022