Agenda item

Report of the Commissioner of the City of London Police.

The Committee received a Report of the Commissioner of the City of London Police concerning stop and search data for Q1 2021-22.

Reflecting on the current 60% effectiveness rate of Servitor trained successful stop and searches, a Member noted that this represented a slight drop off from previous years, where the figure had hovered around 69%. The Assistant Commissioner explained that given the recent increased number of servitor trained officers, the downward trend was expected as it does take some time for these officers to gain practical experience; he anticipated that this rate would increase to previous levels as these newly trained officers became more skilled.

The Assistant Commissioner added that the benefit of Servitor is that it gives officers more time to embed themselves in an area and gain local knowledge, meaning that stop and searches are usually built firmer grounds, which then raises the likelihood of a successful outcome; in contrast “BAU” stop and searches are by necessity more reactive, providing officers with shorter time frames to prepare and carry out searches (with the likelihood that negative outcomes are more frequent). The national average for positive outcomes from “BAU” (i.e. non-servitor) stops equated to an average of between 12 – 18%.

In response to a query, the Assistant Commissioner confirmed that the City of London Police still carried out the training of servitor for other UK wide Forces. Most of these Forces had a lower success outcome rate than in the City, again this was primarily due to newly trained servitor officers having less experience and it was anticipated that numbers would increase over time to similar rate to that which is seen in the City.

In response to a query concerning the handcuffing of children, officers reviewed in detail each case. The operational view was that is was often difficult to distinguish between a 17 year old and a 19/20 year old, but, clearly cases where the individual was significantly younger (in one case a 14 year old) would need to be closely examined. It was noticeable, at least anecdotally from front line officers, that the demographic composition of those coming in to the City during the evenings had, post-lockdown, shifted to a younger average age cohort, with potential knock-on implications for the frequency of those aged under 18 being handcuffed.

Officers would return with a Deep-Dive on this issue to the next meeting of the Committee in November. It was important to stress that, operationally, handcuffing a minor was not necessarily wrong if that individual was posing a serious physical threat to officers and members of the public; however, it should be noted that front-line officers do not operate a handcuff-by-default policy, it is up to each officer to justify the operational need for use of force and/or restraint.

Officers informed Members that, as the Force did not have access to the relevant data sets of other national forces, it was unable to track the frequency that individuals were repeatedly stopped and searched in total. In terms of the frequency of stops in the City, unfortunately, an automated method to check this was not available and a manual check was not something that the Force could progress at this current time due to the resource implications.

Officers confirmed that an individual’s stop and search history was not something that asked as a standard question during a stop, and, based on anecdotal experience, it was difficult to glean a pattern from the range of responses from individuals (some would be very forthcoming about previous experiences, whereas others wouldn’t engage verbally at all with officers.

Officers confirmed that, whilst information sharing existed with other Forces, there was no data shared on this specific area. It was also pointed out that negative outcomes from stop and searches meant that it could well be viewed as disproportionate to then record that person’s personal information, given they had done nothing wrong.

Ultimately, the significant determining factors and challenges would be that all Forces would be required to work together on this, and that the scale of the data resources required for a shared database was met. Officers, would, however, will pose the question about shared information to colleagues in other Forces and include an update in the Q2 Report

RESOLVED – that the Committee noted the Report.