The Macpherson Report: Twenty-two years on Contents

---

2Confidence in policing among BME communities

I was asked when I was going to come here if I had direct experience and it blew my mind, because living in a community where you know your community is treated differently, there is none of us that do not have direct experience. Because the weight of that, it is harrowing … and it means that we do not feel safe ever. That is the reality.

Source: Witness N33

36.The overall conclusions of the Macpherson report focused in large part on the importance of creating “a new atmosphere of mutual confidence and trust” between the Police Service and the communities it serves.34 Fundamental to its 70 recommendations for reform, the Macpherson report called for a Ministerial Priority for all police services to “increase trust and confidence in policing amongst minority ethnic communities”.35 The report also recommended that:

Seeking to achieve trust and confidence through the demonstration of fairness will not in itself be sufficient. It must be accompanied by a vigorous pursuit of openness and accountability across Police Services.36

37.This chapter focuses on the confidence BME communities have in the police today and how this is currently monitored by police forces, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) and the Home Office. It specifically considers the relations between young BME people and the police, drawn from evidence from a private roundtable held with Black and minority ethnic young people from London who had direct experience of the police, primarily through the use of stop and search procedures.

Confidence in policing among BME communities

38.In an interview with the Guardian in June 2020, Dr Neville Lawrence, the father of Stephen Lawrence, expressed concern that the police service had not delivered on its promises to “reform and enshrine racial justice” in policing twenty one years on from the Macpherson report.37 He argued that improvements made by the police had been insufficient to earn the support of some communities, which impacted negatively on police efforts to fight crime. He added that it was like a “them-and-us situation” and that some communities still did not feel that the police service was there for them.38

39.Evidence shows that adults from Black and Mixed ethnic backgrounds are less likely than White and Asian adults to have confidence in their local police. Data on the confidence of BME communities in policing is monitored nationally by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) as part of its Crime Survey for England and Wales.39 The most recent figures are for the year ending March 2020, before the killing of George Floyd or the Black Lives Matter protests.

40.ONS figures for the year to March 2020 show that, overall, 74% of White adults in England and Wales have confidence in their local police, compared to 77% of Asian/Asian British adults, 64% of Black adults and 54% of Black Caribbean adults. Similarly, 55% of White adults say they think the local police are doing a good job, compared to 57% of Asian and 53% of Black adults. However, only 39% of those from a Black Caribbean background agree.40

41.Survey data for England and Wales indicate that confidence broadly rose across all ethnic groups from 2013/14 to 2017/18 and has fallen again since then. Confidence among Black adults has remained consistently lower than among White adults, with the lowest reported confidence levels found among Black Caribbean and Mixed ethnic groups. Overall confidence in the police rose from 76% at the start of that period to 79% in 2015/16 before falling to 74% in the year ending March 2020.41 Among Black respondents, confidence rose from 71% in 2013/14 to 76% in 2017/18, before falling to 64% in the year ending March 2020. Over the last three years, the confidence gap between White and Black adults in England and Wales has widened from 3 percentage points to 10 percentage points.42

Figure 1: Percentage of the adult population that have confidence in the local police, by ethnicity43

42.The ONS data also shows a wide gap between White and Black adults on the question of whether they believe that the police will treat them with respect or treat them fairly. In the year ending March 2020, 88% of White adults and 87% of Asian adults said they agree that the police will treat them with respect compared to 78% of Black adults. 67% of White adults said that they believe the police will treat them fairly compared to 56% of Black adults.44 When the main ethnic group categories are disaggregated, among Black adults 62% from a Black African background and 44% from a Black Caribbean background believe the police will treat them fairly.45

43.The IPCC conducted a survey which assessed public confidence in the police between 2004–2016 in England and Wales. During that twelve year period, the percentage of respondents who were happy with the way police treated them during contact fluctuated between a low of 51% and a high of 67% among Black respondents, compared to a low of 65% and a high of 77% among White respondents.46 The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) highlighted to us that, over this period, the confidence gap between BAME and White participants in the survey ranged between 3% and 17%.47 The IOPC, which replaced the IPCC in 2018, has not conducted any equivalent survey.48

44.HMICFRS commissioned surveys into public confidence in policing between 2015 and 2018. The published surveys do not include comprehensive information about ethnicity, however the 2017 survey reported that BAME respondents were more likely to say that crime and antisocial behaviour in their areas were a big problem (40% compared to 30% of all respondents).49 The 2018 survey reported that BAME respondents were more likely to agree that the police were dealing with crime and antisocial behaviour in their area (51% compared to 42% of all respondents). HMICFRS reported that BAME respondents were more likely in 2018 to feel satisfied with the outcome of their contact with the police (62% compared to 54% of all respondents) but were less likely to feel this way in 2016 (40% compared to 49% of all respondents).50

45.Professor Ben Bowling told the Committee that the period 2010–2015 had seen “an increase in the sense of trust that, instead of being policed against, policing involved a higher degree of respect towards communities” owing to the “rolling back of police action that had little effectiveness, if any, and undermined confidence and trust”.51 Professor Bowling described “a very successful period” which was then followed by regression:

We have lost a lot of ground. There was a knee-jerk reaction to the increase in violent crime, rather than looking at thoroughgoing crime reduction strategies that seek to include people, particularly young people within marginalised communities, instead of engaging those people in a conversation about how best to reduce crime.52

46.Other witnesses gave a more negative overall assessment of confidence in the Black community. Sayce Holmes–Lewis, the founder and CEO of Mentivity, a community organisation in Southwark, told the Committee that:

for 24 years I have had a kind of disdain towards the police. Obviously I am a Black male and historically the relations between the Met police and the Black British community have been very disenfranchised and disjointed.53

He concluded that “the Met police haven’t earned the respect of the Black British community”.54

47.Pastor Lorraine Jones, Founder and CEO of Dwaynamics, a community project aimed at young people in Angell Town, reflected on the effect of the killing of George Floyd on the Black community in the UK and their perception of the police. She told the Committee that:

since Black Lives Matter and since George Floyd’s death, hundreds and thousands of those from the Black community have been thinking about historical, past, present and future engagement with the police, which has left them traumatised. We cannot dismiss that.55

48.Bishop Derek Webley told the Committee that “if the police take on board some of the issues that are causing us concern, they will build a future where young people can be more supportive of their work”. However he went on to warn:

But they must understand the pain and the hurt that is happening in communities, which some of them have caused, and they must seek to redress that as a matter of urgency.56

49.Martin Hewitt, speaking to the Guardian in March 2021, identified falling confidence in the Black community as a major concern and emphasised its overall importance in the British model of policing:

Our policing style is based on legitimacy and our legitimacy is based on trust and confidence of all of the communities. It is a fact that the trust and confidence levels within the Black community are 20%, or thereabouts, lower than the White communities, and that [has] impacted on the trust and confidence for us to do what we do as a service […]

It’s only with that trust and confidence and legitimacy that people come forward, people report crimes, people become witnesses, people work with us, and … that trust and confidence leads to young Black men and women saying I’m prepared to go and become a police officer.57

Force-level confidence data

50.Little information is available about BME confidence in policing at the level of individual forces. The former Policing Minister Rt Hon Nick Hurd MP asserted that he could obtain details about “some of the issues underpinning” the relationship between the police and BAME communities from annual HMICFRS inspections.58 However he acknowledged that, currently, HMICFRS PEEL inspections did not measure confidence among BAME communities at a local police force level.59 Following a race disparity roundtable in June 2019, the Policing Minister told us that he had written to all Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and Chief Constables to request “local statements in response to local data of the race disparity audit”.60 He cited disproportionality in the use of stop and search as one likely area for inclusion.61 When pressed by the Committee, he confirmed that local police forces would be asked to collate consistent, comparable data on the confidence of BAME communities in their local force.62 However, in supplementary evidence, the new Policing Minister Kit Malthouse MP told us that there was no published data that broke down levels of confidence by BAME communities by police force because the “sample size for some communities in some forces is too small to make reliable estimates”. He concluded that the Home Office had “no plans to gather additional information on trust in the police from BAME communities at this stage”.63 As a result, beyond information gathered by particular forces, there has been a lack of centrally collected confidence data at police force level and for many forces there is no publicly accessible data available at all.

51.The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) regularly publishes comprehensive, up-to-date information on confidence and other measures by ethnicity. This enables much closer scrutiny of the Metropolitan Police’s performance than is possible in other forces, where confidence across different communities is not being published or monitored.64

52.MOPAC figures for the year ending March 2021 show that the proportion of Londoners who think that the police do a good job in the local area stands at 57% among White British residents, 53% among Asian residents, 46% among Black residents and 49% among Mixed ethnicity residents.65 Among victims of crime, there is less of a gap with satisfaction levels, which stand at 72% for White British people and 68% for Black people. Satisfaction among crime victims of Mixed ethnicity is lower, at 61%. The most concerning gap relates to perceptions of fairness in the police: 71% of White British residents and 78% of Asian residents agree that the police treat everyone fairly regardless of who they are; that compares to 52% of Black people and 50% of people of Mixed ethnicity.66 The figures also show the perception of fairness among Black Londoners fell from 70% to 52% in the year to the end of March 2021.67

53.The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick, acknowledged in 2019 that the gap as to whether “the police treat everyone fairly regardless of who they are” had widened, particularly between Black Londoners and White Londoners, but asserted that the gap in the “overall confidence model”, of which perceptions of fairness is only one element, had slightly narrowed over the last two years.68 When asked why the gap in perceptions of fairness had widened the Commissioner attributed it to “the outrage there has been, quite properly” that police and other efforts had not prevented an increase in knife crime in London’s Black, African and Caribbean communities which particularly affected young people.69 In written evidence, the Metropolitan Police Service told us that more work needed to be done to reduce the satisfaction gap between BME and White respondents and that overall satisfaction continued to be a challenge, “with satisfaction down across all communities since 2005/6”.70

54.In May 2021, Dame Cressida Dick provided us with an update of new projects her force was undertaking to increase community confidence in the police, including requiring new recruits to learn about the cultural history of the local area and working with the community.71

55.The Metropolitan Police Association of Muslim Police recommended that police forces undertake more targeted satisfaction surveys to establish perceptions within BAME communities, including recording those who do not wish to take part in the surveys.72 It also suggested that forces “utilise BAME colleagues to assist with carrying out such surveys”.73

56.West Yorkshire Police told us that it routinely conducted victim satisfaction surveys, which found that BAME victims were less likely to say they were satisfied with “the whole experience” than White victims. It reported that the satisfaction gap between BAME and White victims had narrowed to 6.4% in 2017–18, compared to 8.2% the year before. However, it noted that satisfaction for both groups had fallen over time: BAME victims satisfaction with the police was down 4.1% since April 2008 and White victims satisfaction with the police was also down 5.9% over the same period.74 The Committee did not receive sufficient data from other forces to draw a conclusion about the reasons for the narrowing of the satisfaction gap.

Relations between young BME people and the police

57.Data for England and Wales suggests that the confidence gap between Black people and White people in the local police is even greater among young people. ONS analysis based on combined data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales for 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17 shows that, over the three year period, 77% of White and Asian 16–24 year olds had confidence in their local police compared to 68% of those with Mixed ethnicity and 61% of Black 16–24 year olds. This 16 percentage point gap between White and Black young people contrasts with the figure as people get older—among 65–74 year olds there was no gap at all and 78% of both White and Black people said they had confidence in the local police.75

58.In May 2019 we held a private roundtable with a group of young BME people from London on their experiences and views of their relationship with the police, the use of stop and search and the Metropolitan Police Service’s Gangs Violence Matrix (GVM).76 While not universal, the majority of participants told us that their experiences with the police had been negative and that they did not feel confident in approaching the police for protection.77 Many participants expressed frustration about the disproportionate targeting of the BME community in the use of police tactics, particularly stop and search and the Gangs Violence Matrix.78 We explore the police use of technology and tools further in chapter seven.

59.Participants in our roundtable were particularly critical of inaction where, even though they had shared their experiences at other youth fora, including via independent advisory groups, they had not experienced any improvement in police handling of race matters.79 One person told us that the police were “desensitised to emotions of young people”, particularly with regard to stop and search which they said should be conducted in a more “orderly” fashion.80

60.The Commissioner told us that, in London, following police encounters with young people, she often saw officers sending the young person off with a smile on their face.81 She said that it was the police’s responsibility to ensure that “each interaction” with a young person was as positive as possible and that officers were trained to do so.82 By contrast, another young person (Participant B) told us that the Metropolitan Police’s stop and search procedure was “more hostile than professional”.83 He said that it was difficult for young people to trust the police due to their stereotyping of BME communities as likely criminals.84

61.These concerns are not exclusive to the MPS area. Witness K related a harrowing account of being stopped and searched by an officer from a regional police force at the age of 16. He told us that he was walking in town with some college friends who had a history with the police officers who then proceeded to stop them. He emphasised that he was compliant and polite until one of the officers unnecessarily targeted one of his friends. He explained:

[…] at that point, my friend has not defended himself, but he said, “Can you please stop?” and then the police officer dragged us all to the floor—there was about three or four of us

[…] I was completely shocked. I had my face on the floor and the policeman had his knee on my neck. How are we meant to react as young people? As young people we have our own minds. We are still evolving, so it really depends on what mindset you have, because some people can take that as, “I do not know why this person is trying to hurt me. What do I do? Do I rebel or do I—?” because at the end of the day, it all comes down to who do we report it to? We can’t report police to police, so where do we go from there?85

62.The Youth Violence Commission surveyed young people and found that there was a “damaging lack of trust between the police and some communities”. It said there was a “wall of silence” when crimes were committed and communities did not share information with the police.86 It reported that one witness said that “For some young people, reporting something to the police is like ‘signing their own death warrant’”.87 Its survey also found that 46% of young people would not “ask police for advice if they were worried about being a victim of crime”.88

63.Many of the young BME participants the Committee heard from in a private roundtable felt they were unjustly targeted by the police from a very young age which led to mistrust. One such participant, (Witness M) who reported that he was first arrested at the age of 13, said that he was “nearly stabbed” in 2018 but did not want to speak to the police when they asked if he was involved, due to his negative experiences with the police from a young age.89 Another participant (Witness J) expressed concern about the way the police treated young people who may be on the Metropolitan Police Service Gangs Violence Matrix intelligence database. He argued that:

[…] when it comes to the police, the fact that they look through a criminal lens when they see some young people that might be on the gangs matrix or a group of young people that might be just chilling on a corner or might be just together, they automatically categorise in the head that that group of young people are criminals.90

64.Other participants told us that there should be more focus on the root causes of crime and greater efforts made by the police to develop relationships and trust with young people in order to understand the multiple factors that may be influencing behaviour, such as, family and socio-economic backgrounds and mental health.91

Witness K: We come from very poor areas. They [police] do not know what background we come from. Every day they do not know what we go through and when we come out, we just want to come out and do our thing.92

Participant A: It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing a police uniform or an ambulance uniform, or if you’re wearing plain clothes or whatever; you’re still a human being. When you are talking to someone, if they are being rude or aggressive to you, you should show them the same respect. But a lot of local police, where we are from, don’t do that; they like to throw their weight around, looking like they’re in a position of trust and stuff like that. They use the fact that they are police as an advantage. So to trust the police is hard, but it could happen.93

65.Some participants at the Committee’s private roundtable told us that they had had positive experiences with the police.94 For example, Witness H spoke about a boxing club where the police trained alongside the young people. He said he had heard some of the young people there say: “That guy is a police officer, but he’s cool. I was just chatting to him for an hour”.95 Another participant, Witness A, who was a police cadet told us that he had had “a phenomenal experience with the police”, and that they were doing “a lot of work to encourage unity between the police and the BAME community”.96

66.We were encouraged to discover that, despite their current lack of trust, the young people we met had clear suggestions for ways in which relations between the police and their communities could be improved. A number of the young people suggested that there should be more focus on the assessment and training of police officers. Witness C said that the current police training programme in his view was a “dehumanisation programme”. He added that there was a lack of “real human emotion” in police officers’ interactions with young people: relationships would be better if they were to ask ““How has your day been”? How are you doing at school? Are you guys struggling anywhere? How can I support you?””97

67.Evidence to our inquiry shows that there is a significant problem with confidence in the police within Black communities. We were very concerned to see that confidence in the police among Black people has fallen in recent years and the gap in confidence in policing between White and Asian people on the one hand, and Black and Mixed ethnicity people on the other hand, has grown.

68.Fairness, respect and impartiality are core values that should be fundamental to policing. So the fact that Black people, and especially Black Caribbean people, have much lower expectations than White people that they will be treated fairly and with respect by the police is a matter of deep and serious concern. The problem is particularly acute for young people. Those we heard from in London expressed strong sentiments of anger and frustration towards the police, particularly about the way in which they felt police officers did not treat them fairly or with respect, and also expressed the lack of confidence they had that the police would keep them safe.

69.Overall the majority of people from all communities still report confidence in their local police. However, there is no getting away from the significant confidence and fairness gap for Black communities. The fact that this persists twenty-two years after the Macpherson report is deeply troubling. It undermines the principle that all victims of crime should feel confident in turning to the police for help and puts in jeopardy the principle of policing by consent that lies at the heart of British policing. It should be cause for serious concern and urgent action among police forces and policing leaders.

70.Given the seriousness of the issue we are particularly alarmed by the failure of police forces and the Home Office to have proper plans in place to address the confidence gap, or even to be gathering the basic evidence and data they need at local force level to understand and tackle the problem.98, 99 Lack of confidence data by ethnicity at a local force level also makes it much harder to hold local forces to account for concerns about BME communities’ confidence in the police. The Metropolitan Police provides up-to-date, clear information on public perceptions by ethnicity but few other forces provide similar or comparable information. This is not good enough.

71.The Macpherson report in its first recommendation called for a Ministerial Priority for all police services to “increase trust and confidence in policing amongst minority ethnic communities”. For the Macpherson report, the setting of a “Ministerial Priority” had a particular meaning as part of the formal relationship between the Home Office and the police, as well as indicating the importance and value that Ministers and the police should attach to the issue. Those formal arrangements changed in the early noughties, but the broader spirit of that first recommendation is as important today as it was then and in 2021 currently it is not being met. The significant decrease in confidence among some Black and minority ethnic populations in the past year, the consistent reporting of lower levels of Black and Mixed ethnicity confidence in the police compared to White individuals and the widening of the gap, combined with the failure of successive governments to require data on confidence to be collected at a local force level by ethnicity, shows that increasing trust and confidence in policing in the Black community is not being treated as a policing priority or as a Ministerial priority today.

72.Practical action is needed. The Home Office and National Police Chiefs’ Council must ensure that confidence data is gathered and regularly published for all forces so that their communities and Police and Crime Commissioners can hold them to account, with further targeted qualitative work by forces to assess confidence levels in areas with smaller BME communities. Following the example set by MOPAC and the Metropolitan Police, survey results should be made publicly available on force websites in an easily accessible format.

73.Police forces in England and Wales should set out clear local plans to improve confidence informed by local confidence data. They should state what measurable actions they are taking a) to increase the confidence of BME communities and b) to narrow the gap between these communities and the White population; they should be inspected on how they address confidence and trust in their forces among Black and minority ethnic communities. We recommend that as part of its regular legitimacy inspections HMICFRS monitors how police forces are recording and measuring BME confidence in their forces.

74.The Home Office and the National Policing Board should monitor the confidence gap in each force and should set out each year what action is being taken nationally to ensure that confidence among BME communities increases in order to restore legitimacy.

75.The remaining chapters of this report examine in more detail the issues that lie behind the lack of confidence described above, alongside the progress made against other Macpherson recommendations, and set out further steps that the Government and the police service in England and Wales should take to address these problems.