Examination of Witness (Question Numbers
140-159)
ASSISTANT CHIEF
CONSTABLE PAUL
CROWTHER
13 JANUARY 2009
Q140 Chairman: Has it made any difference?
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
I would not think it has made any difference at all in respect
of knife crimes. In respect of alcohol-related incidents, we have
had very little in respect of incidents reported since that ban
came in. Largely, people seem to have adopted the advice and guidance
and stuck to the ban that has been put in place, but I do not
think it has had any relevance in relation to knife crime.
Q141 Chairman: But it has had in
relation to other aspects of crime?
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
Yes, we have seen, I think, a general alteration in people's behaviour
on the transport system. People seem to have taken the message,
a bit like when smoking was banned on the transport system. We
did not have to enforce that; people got the message and it has
taken effect. We get individual incidents that happen now and
again and, of course, there was the party on the eve of the ban
coming in, but subsequent to that we have seen a change in people's
behaviour and fewer people openly drinking on the transport system.
Q142 Mr Winnick: Victims of crime
come in all forms, obviously—white, black, Asian; all are
victims of crime, which you are hardly likely to deny or wish
to challenge in any way. Can I ask you about the youths that are
involved. Is there one particular race or colour more commonly
involved in knife crime than any other?
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
Not in my experience. Again, I would put a caveat around that
in terms of emphasising that the type of crime we are dealing
with is predominantly linked to street robberies, and I do not
think there is any predominant race or particular group that is
pre-eminent in those sorts of things.
Q143 Mr Winnick: So those who say
perhaps more blacks than whites, or more blacks than Asians—that
would not be the position. Not that it makes any difference to
the victims one way or the other but, in order that we can clarify,
it may be a misconception.
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
It is certainly not my view. When you look at the full spectrum
of knife crime incidents, whether you are talking about robberies
or whether you are talking about actual assaults and stabbings,
they affect victims from across all races.
Q144 Mr Winnick: Obviously, I said
they affect victims. It would be odd otherwise. I am talking about
the culprits.
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
The culprits, yes, again, I think there is a wide spread amongst
all communities and all groups.
Q145 Mr Winnick: Mention was made
by the Chairman, quoting figures supplied by you or by the British
Transport Police, that some of the culprits are as young as 13.
Would their parents know what they were about in the main? If
they are out in the evening, when one would hope they would be
at home and the rest of it, at least certainly not involved in
criminality, do you have any knowledge, in the main, of children
where parents are not interested?
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
I think, again, speaking from our particular experience, clearly,
where we come across someone of that sort of age group, we take
them back and we speak to the parents and the parents are involved
in how they are dealt with and the disposal particular case, and
you get different circumstances. Unfortunately, with the current
way that sometimes families are constructed, there are less opportunities
for parents to be influential around what their children are doing.
I think that is a fact of society as we see it today.
Q146 Mr Winnick: Single parent households.
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
Sometimes, but not necessarily. That might not be the only driving
factor around that. What we do see in quite a number of cases
where you have got people that young is that actually the parents
are quite shocked to find that that has taken place and are willing
to engage in working with us and with the child to ensure that
it does not happen, but, again, I think you get a broad spectrum
of reactions.
Q147 Mr Winnick: Three years ago
yesterday was the murder mentioned by the Chairman, the horrifying
murder of Thomas Rhys Pryce, and Operation SHIELD came in at the
same time. Was it arising from the murder?
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
We brought Operation SHIELD in as a result of our analysis of
knife-related crimes, which we had seen rising around that area.
Actually, the people responsible for that murder, the two individuals
that were convicted, were part of a larger group of individuals
that were engaged in, if you like, a mini crime spree of their
own at that time in north-west London and who were committing
a high number of robberies on the transport system, across three
lines of the network, working across nine different boroughs and
travelling as far afield as the south coast. So we noticed, as
you would expect, a spike in the crimes relating to knife related
incidents and they were becoming more serious as they progressed,
and that, sadly, culminated in two of the culprits going on to
commit that murder, and it was that analysis that led us to develop
Operation SHIELD.
Q148 Mr Winnick: The same month as
the murder took place.
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
We had been working on the analysis running up to it.
Q149 Mr Winnick: Operation SHIELD,
as I understand it, came in in the same month.
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
Yes.
Q150 Mr Winnick: After the murder.
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
I could not tell you at this point whether it came in just before
or just after.
Q151 Mr Winnick: I think we can work
on the assumption it was after. Figures show that there was a
reduction at some stage following that in knife offences, but
from what I understand, the number of stabbings has actually increased
in the last year. Is that the position?
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
I think, Chairman, the data that we provided to you has included
knife recoveries within those figures, and actually the most recent
data that I have indicates that since 2006 to the present day
we have actually seen a 39% reduction in the number of crimes
where knives are involved and, at the same time as crime has been
reducing, the number of weapons that we have recovered as a result
of Operation SHIELD has gone the other way, in the other direction.
So we see some limited success in that, that we have been managing
to reduce crime incidents whilst increasing the number of weapons
that are recovered.
Q152 Mr Streeter: You raise some
practical issues in your submissions about the use of knife arches
and whether or not a person gives consent or otherwise. I assume
in stations, I suppose, is your main concern. Can you elaborate
to the Committee what your concerns are and what the solution
is?
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
Yes. Again, if I can put some context around it. We use knife
arch operations for a number of objectives. Clearly, one of them
is to recover knives and deter people from carrying knives. We
also use knife arches as part of our overall anti-crime operations,
because they have the added benefit of increased visibility, increased
activity and, as a result, increase people's perceptions of safety
because they can see that some measures are being taken and it
is part of a broad approach to controlling public space, which
includes CCTV, et cetera. Mr Hitchcock mentioned earlier the use
of section 60 powers. We are very conscious that we should use
those proportionately, and you would expect us to justify that
with intelligence. So there are some circumstances where a section
60 order is not appropriate or justified by the intelligence but,
nonetheless, we seek to use a knife arch in the operation, and
that may well be the case in the operation you are going to see
later on today. The circumstances that we find ourselves in there
is that the current codes indicate that, although a consensual
search is allowed, the officers have to formulate reasonable suspicion
before they can carry out that search. The practical implications
of that are we invite people through the arches and the indication
from the arch then begins to form that suspicion with the officer,
together with the person's behaviour, demeanour and how they engage
with the officer, so that they can make an objective assessment
on each case. I guess what we are saying from a practical point
of view is that that is a requirement that we have to place on
the individual officer and has, therefore, led to us introducing
additional training, together with our broad security approach,
around behaviours to help people to formulate their grounds and
their suspicion based on that principle. I think we raise it in
the context of a broader debate, which has already started, in
terms of the overall security of public transport.
Chairman: We will be coming on to the
overall debate in a moment. Is that the answer? Mr Streeter has
no other questions.
Q153 Patrick Mercer: My question
is exactly the same as that which I put to Mr Hitchcock earlier
on about the current level of anti-knife activity. Do you believe
it is actually sustainable?
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
Certainly in our case, I think it is, because this is our day
job; these are the tactics that we use to tackle crime across
the transport system per se. We have been doing this since
2006 and, as we roll out Neighbourhood Policing Teams, it is a
tactic that they take with them and they deploy wherever they
operate. So whilst we have stepped up our operations and worked
far more closely with the ten forces within the Tackling Knife
Programme, this is activity that we will continue to do after
31 March and it will make little impact on our day-to-day operations.
So it will continue and it is sustainable.
Q154 Patrick Mercer: You have no
concern about the resources?
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
No, these types of operations, we do routinely. We have done 200
of them in the last nine months and it is a day-to-day activity
that we carry out in any case.
Q155 David Davies: BTP's submission
suggests that more people are arrested as a result of behavioural
assessment and stop and search. Should this in any way suggest
that stop and search is ineffective?
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
No, I think our behaviour assessment techniques complement or
help us develop the grounds upon which we would then conduct a
formal search using our powers. I think what we were highlighting
in the submission is that we have developed this particular type
of training as a result of the overall terrorist threat, which
helps our officers to understand and recognise unusual behaviour
that might draw their attention to people and help them to make
an assessment about whether that person is there for a good reason
or not. We use those skills in the use of the search arches and
our statistics tell us that we get a significant number of weapons
recoveries, not through people going through the arch and the
alarm going off, but actually by officers standing back and observing
people's reaction to the arch being in place as they step off
the train or before they step onto the escalator, and they are
the people that we perhaps target and talk to and formulate our
suspicion and then move into a formal search mode thereafter.
Q156 David Davies: At the risk of
being a bit repetitive on this, would you agree with Mr Hitchcock
that there might be a case for looking at a minor change to PACE
to allow a person's criminal record to be used as part of the
evidence that an officer could look at before carrying out a search
or without committing yourself in one way or another to it?
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
I think the part of Mr Hitchcock's evidence that I definitely
agree with is that, if we are to use stop and search, it has to
be with the support of communities, and we have to be able to
engender trust and confidence in the way that we operate. My experience
is that the existing codes are largely adequate for us to be able
to develop our suspicion, or reduce our level of suspicion when
we talk to people and engage with people, and that has worked
pretty successfully for a number of years.
Q157 Gwyn Prosser: Mr Crowther, your
Chief Constable, Ian Johnson, has signed a memorandum of understanding
with the Director of Public Prosecutions which commits the Force
to exercise a positive arrest policy when people are found with
knives or bladed instruments without lawful excuse. Can you tell
us what evidence you have as to the effectiveness of that and
how has that changed your operational strategy?
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
We have looked at some data to try to see whether that was actually
effective. What that seems to indicate to us is that it is actually
quite hard to get into the detail of an officer's decision-making
on a particular occasion, but what the data suggests is that immediately
after that policy was introduced you saw a notable change in the
number of people that were arrested and charged in relation to
knives. Inevitably, with these things, it tails off after the
first rush of enthusiasm and drive for a policy, and then it has
been supplemented by the ACPO guidance, which came out more recently,
and that has helped to invigorate that, and what we are currently
seeing is that a significantly higher number of people are arrested
and charged now than prior to those policies being in place. Has
it had an impact? Yes, it has. Has it had a massive impact? Perhaps
not as discernible as some of the data you have seen in the graphs
with the reductions in crime—not as stark as that—but
it certainly has made some difference.
Q158 Gwyn Prosser: Has the memorandum,
effectively, changed the way you do your policing on knives, as
opposed to the Met or any other force in the country?
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
No, I do not think so. Mr Hitchcock described it very well in
his evidence, that the guidance that we have issued to officers
really says that, if a person does not have lawful authority or
reasonable excuse, there is a presumption of arrest, and that
is the course that you will take and we adopt some tracking mechanisms
make sure that that is happening. So actually if we see that people
have been dealt with in another manner, then we ask appropriate
questions about how that came to pass. What that has required
us to do is to provide even better briefing to our officers around
their powers and also the fact of discretion, which was brought
up earlier, because we do not want that to be an entirely blanket
approach. There will be times, for example, when someone comes
through the Eurostar terminal and has a small blade concealed
in their wash bag within their bag, when actually there is a case
there for judgment to be exercised around whether it is actually
there for an unlawful purpose or not. So we do allow some discretion
within the policy.
Q159 Tom Brake: Can I look at this
from an international perspective? According to the figures that
the BTP supplied, in 2007/2008, across both Waterloo International
and St Pancras, there were 109 offences of possession of offensive
weapons. The previous year, when just Waterloo International was
operating, there were 261. Can you explain why? That is a very
substantial, positive result. The numbers have been more than
halved. Do you know why?
Assistant Chief Constable Crowther:
Yes, I think at that stage we put in some interventions and engaged
much more closely with the operator and started some education
and information programmes to try to draw people's attention to
the fact that, although in some cases it may not be illegal in
their country, it clearly is here, and to try to make people aware
of those issues before they arrive in the country, and some of
those initiatives have started to take effect.
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