It is all about individuals, not institutions: Get the right gardeners to prune the apple tree, don’t cut it down

I recently had the privilege to be interviewed about my career by Oliver Laurence for his podcast Protect and Serve. Given my service in Scotland I guess it was almost inevitable I was going to be asked about my former colleague Chief Constable Sir Iain Livingstone’s statement that Police Scotland is institutionally discriminatory.

I had been mulling this issue over since the announcement; and for me the wrong question has been asked, so the answer is misplaced.

The better question would be how did the senior officers in the police let it get to a state where it is reasonably perceived to be institutionally discriminatory? At the moment no one is taking any individual responsibility for this situation, which seems a common feature of the times in which we live.

An institution is constituted by the men and women who work within it. When they are no longer part of the institution it no longer exists. As I said to Oliver, the Roman army, once the most powerful professional fighting force in the world, does not exist. Why? Because there are no longer any Romans.

I read recently of an RAF senior officer instructing that courses were not to be commenced if they had too many white male pilots on them, and if necessary courses to be cancelled until more female and minority candidates could be found.

This officer was instructing that the effectiveness of his ‘institution’ be compromised to meet diversity targets. But it isn’t really the effectiveness of the RAF that is affected; ultimately it is the collective ability of those who serve within the RAF to meet demands that is being affected.

We like to think of institutions as being more than their members, but without the members institutions are nothing. Just as the Roman army has ceased to be, if everyone left the RAF tomorrow so it would fade into history.

Sure, bases and jets would still be there but with no one to service them, or take them into the air, they would eventually become monuments like Hadrian Wall.

The RAF’s officer’s motivation, from what I’ve read, appears to be about pleasing senior officers, rather than about doing what is right.

Individual responsibility

Policies and procedures are drafted and implemented by individuals, in this case and all others. I never read a policy or procedure that has been drafted to foster discrimination during my police service.

Such policies and procedures have existed. One might argue that the police’s height policy in respect of recruitment was one. However, that is looking at the past through today’s prism and the drafters and implementers of this policy had good reason, in their opinion, as to what a police officer’s characteristics should be.

These are different now, as society changes, and we should acknowledge this rather than seeing our predecessors as ‘heightist’.

So where then do we find such discriminatory policies and procedures? For me the policy that crystallises all of this is the Final Solution, arrived at in 1942 at by members of the Nazi Regime.

This policy saw procedures developed that led to the extermination of millions of innocent Jews. The policies of the Nazis overtly stated their discrimination towards those of Jewish descent.

But these policies, and the procedures that followed, were drafted and implemented by individuals. That is why we had the paradigm shifting Nuremberg Trials where the architects of these policies were tried and convicted. Mass murder is wrong, we intrinsically know this as part of the human race.

To state the institution of the Nazi regime was responsible is incorrect. It was individuals who constituted the regime and made decisions that resulted in the atrocities that were responsible, evidenced ultimately by their convictions.

Blaming institutions gets away from individual responsibility. This is wrong. People make decisions, not rules, regulations, policies or procedures. People make decisions about the rules, regulations, policies or procedures, not vice versa.

So, how did British policing get to a point where the institution rather than individuals within it are facing pillory from all quarters?

The public

First of all we have the public. For me this actually started in the USA with political correctness, a term you hear far less of today. As a young student in the early ’90s it was creeping into campus life, and fitted well with the concepts of deconstructionism that were at the edges of my philosophy department.

I joined the police after university and to be honest didn’t think much about Jacques Derrida and his ilk (too busy chasing robbers) until I found myself on my supervisory diversity course in 2004.

This didn’t get off to the best start for me with the instructors, who early in the course distributed material informing us that Black history had been suppressed and one of the ultimate examples was the incorrect depiction of Cleopatra in modern times, as she was a Black queen.

When I pointed out their material was in itself incorrect, and as the producers of Netflix have learned, Cleopatra was actually of Macedonian descent, this did not go down well. From there it got worse.

We had sessions where members of the public came in to tell us their stories of discrimination. A black lady from an area where I had worked arrived in the room, and I immediately started to squirm in my seat.

I had been on the periphery of an inquiry concerning her. She preceded to provide an account of evil racism and inaction by the police; I knew her account was completely factually incorrect, but had the good grace to say nothing and wait until she left.

I then approached the instructors and told them what I knew. My jaw dropped when they said this was her fourth session with them and the story had been manifestly different every time. They then told me that it wasn’t important what had happened, but how she perceived things and how she felt.

And that is where the rot set in. Feelings over facts. In the two decades that have followed we have become hostage to feelings, and those who express theirs (often very loudly).

Racism and hate is real, but we have allowed our judgement to be clouded by an ever more persistent, agenda-driven minority who want to create divisions in society through polarisation, rather than report genuine hate crime.

An individual who feels they have been slighted by a computer addressing them by the wrong pronouns does not warrant the physical attendance of a police officer to take their account of this, and thereafter make a record of same.

This is the realm of the ‘hate incident’, a term meaningless to almost all as it is based on the perception of the individual and agitators. But we do it. Because senior officers have acquiesced and allowed this ridiculous situation to develop rather than taking a stand.

This is an extreme, but real, example of where we have got to, which has fed the situation on supposed discrimination. So, we have questionable discrimination out there, which we are accepting at face value with senior officers insisting we respect perception over fact and woe betide those who question this approach.

There is real hate crime out there – and far, far too much of it – but we are lumping in errant nonsense, which is wholly diluting the picture, draining resource and preventing honesty.

This is how we are dealing with the public, but our own house has been very different, in fact, almost a mirror image.

Senior officers

I investigated an allegation of racist discrimination by senior officers. I was thorough, fair and forthright. I found plenty of incompetence, and reported on this, but no racism.

For me this is the problem writ large. We have a significant degree of incompetence in the service, which is reasonably being interpreted as discrimination by those who experience it. I was prepared to accurately report what I found. No fear, no favour.

Time and again I’ve read how allegations of discrimination have not been handled properly by senior officers. These senior officers’ actions have compounded the actions of the discriminator (the racist, the sexist, the misogynist cop). It is not unreasonable at all for the complainer in this case to see racism, sexism and misogyny. It goes far deeper than this.

In my observation what we have is a cadre of individuals in the service who are seeking to preserve the ‘sanctity’ of the rank structure, the hierarchy and their own positions. The irony is that many of them have little practical policing experience, particularly of high-risk operational activity, and their rank was not achieved through ability.

They have taken non-frontline roles to achieve promotion and, once promoted, avoid on-call and events policing – or when involved, take roles and positions where they minimise the possibility of exposing their shortcomings.

When we had the ‘Campaign Against Violence’ in Scotland senior officers were expected to attend a police station once a month and undertake a front line role.

I absolutely loved it, getting to walk the streets of Maryhill, Govan and Drumchapel despite being an ex-Edinburgh officer. I even got to patrol the area around my old school in Govanhill, despite having left decades before.

There were ‘tasty’ moments, like rolling about with a coke-fuelled body builder that reminded me I was now in my mid 40’s, but more a stark reminder of what life as a front line cop involves.

Many senior officers avoided these days, and when they did parade made it clear they had no intention of carrying out the role assigned preferring to do station-based work in respect of their ‘day jobs’, leaving sergeants in a very difficult position.

These same individuals, who can’t or don’t want to ‘police’, are those who are making very questionable decisions in respect of allegations of discrimination.

I wrote recently on the implications of command in the police as a result of this situation. The same issues apply here. In an ill-informed, inexperienced senior officer you have an individual who doesn’t want to rock the boat and seeks to preserve the ‘integrity of the service’, yet actually torpedoes it through not doing the right thing by finding in favour of those discriminated against.

Their actions, whether directed from the top or not (I’ll let you decide) to maintain the reputation of the service have done the very opposite.

Outcome

My real fear is that as a backlash to the statement from Sir Iain, cops who are not bad apples find a gross over-reaction to behaviours – or lack of actual evidence against them – resulting in severe sanctions, as inexperienced senior officers seek a new form of appeasement and establishment of their position within the ‘new normal’.

Let me be very clear, there are racists, sexists and misogynists in the police. There are bullies. But in my opinion they are few and far between, and generally despised by their peers.

In positions of rank they can be a poison, and create cultures that need rooted out. But these cultures rise from their behaviours as mis-promoted individuals, not that of an institution.

I’ve challenged, and paid for it. I didn’t spend 12 years in CID, and Deputy SIO a multitude of murders, then leave for uniform on promotion to inspector never to return to wearing a suit because I wanted to.

I’ve stood up for what was right. Doing do so used to be the norm in the police. It needs to be again.

What we need is senior officers who will deal with the bad apples based on evidence, in a culture where individuals have faith in the system that will handle their complaint. Otherwise they are just watering the apple tree that produces bad fruit.

For me it is about individuals not institutions, and individuals who hold rank taking responsibility for what happens on their watch. Policy doesn’t discriminate, it’s those who control policy that do.