Stop and search

Department/Division

Local Policing Service Improvement & Engagement Department

Meeting Title

Police Stop and Search External Scrutiny Board

Location

MS Teams

Date

20/08/2024

Time

Chair

Supt. Michelle Palmer- Harris

Attendees

Jay Mendis- Gunasekera (JMG), Mark Rendall (MR), Michelle Palmer-Harris (MP), Angela Blackwell (AB), Anusree Biswas (AS), Lim Loader (JL) Adam McCaig (AM)

Apologies

2

Discussion around the charter

Nothing has been officially written down with regards to The Charter yet for Sussex Police. Jim has reached out to The Met with regards to their results from the questions which were asked to specific community groups. Also having spoken with the National Lead for Stop and Search to also request those questions.

Clarity across the board – to the subject, and as an officer to be clear and accountable with your actions.

3

Action - Jim to speak with Angela with regards to link in through focus groups. Asylum seeking young person’s group.

Action –To have questions ready to be consulted on for the next board.

Suggested – wide public consultation/social media channels.

JL






JL

4

Suggestion on further training to our call handlers with regards to unconscious bias.

JMG

5

Body Worn Video viewed

Member of the public called in that a male dressed in black had entered her drive and attempted to enter her car. Officer attends and conducts an area search and found a male in the area matching the description. Male was stop/searched due to Section 1. Male was not local; subject was found to have a bank card in another person’s name. Male then arrested. 

MR

6

Discussion around video

Angela – First time watching a body warn video. Very calm atmosphere and felt the subject was kept well informed throughout. Excellent experience to watch that.

Anusree – Human and kind approach.

Jim – Nice that he wasn’t handcuffed.

Jay – Positive nice natured stop search, professional, no attitude. How it should be done properly.

Michelle – very pleased, great to see. The officers who attended as back up, did not introduce themselves to the subject. This would have been nice to see.

Action - Will contact the officer to recognise very good practise.

Mark – Discussion around use of handcuffs with officers with a dog unit.

MPH

7

Body worn Video viewed

Group of 3 adult males in a public area, drug paraphernalia surrounding them, detained under Section 23. 2 male officers and 1 female. 1 subject accepted being searched by the female officer. Body worn camera worn by female officer. Subject placed under arrest, placed in cuffs (at the front)

8

Discussion around video

Angela – Brilliant search conducted, good communication.

Anusree – Didn’t introduce herself, abrupt, no rapport with the subject. Contrast to previous video. Quite a loaded feeling when watching the video.

Jay – Feels like the officers may have had bias towards them. Didn’t need to be escalated to this level.

Jim – Didn’t hear the question asked about age.

Michelle - Officers originally thought they were youths; however, they were adults. Circumstance was pushing the limit for the arrest; however, I understand the thought process. They also didn’t search around the area the subjects were sitting/found.

Action – Jim to feedback to staff safety, with regards to emerging trends we are seeing within stop and search. Dealing with adrenaline, recognising rising anxiety, dealing with how to manage your own emotions.

AM – Had previous discussion with Jim with regards to training in different environments, different levels of exposure, levels of pressure. Supervisors being able to witness their staff. Providing feedback and learning to staff. In the pipeline

JL

9

Section 60

No Section 60s in the last quarter, 2 stop/ search complaints. Both were reviewed and deemed acceptable. Nothing with regards to bias or disproportionality.

EIP (Exposed intimate parts) Searches

April – 15

May – 10

June – 6

None of these searches were under 18 years of age.

Action – A body worn video to be found for the next meeting, which starts as a stop/search and results in a strip search.

Action – EIP Data to be collected and compared against out statistics, context, and narratives.

MR

10

AOB

None

11

Focus for next meeting

Adam to present in next meeting.

To make sure the next meetings are scheduled in advance.

Department / Division:

LPST

Name of Meeting:

Stop and Search External Scrutiny Panel Meeting

Location of Meeting:

Sussex Police Headquarters and MS Teams

Date / Time:

Tuesday 6^th February 2024 1730-1930

Chair:

 Anusree Biswas (CHAIR)

Attendees:

Name

Initials

Position

Stuart Hale

SH

T/Chief Superintendent, Sussex Police

Dan Hiles

DH

Chief Inspector, Sussex Police

Alex Theodoridou

AT

Chief Inspector, Sussex Police

Rebecca Ostach

RO

A/Chief Inspector, Sussex Police

Mark Rendall

MR

Local Policing Project Officer

Andy Dunkling

AD

A/Inspector, Sussex Police

Felix Annan

FA

Maria Kean

MK

Joanne Monck

JM

Georgina English

GE

Apologies:

Name

Initials

Position

Item

Content:

Owner

01

Welcome and Introductions

The chair welcomed everyone to the meeting and introductions completed

Chair

02

Actions from Previous Meeting

Actions from the previous meeting were accepted and completed

Chair

03

Stop and Search CHARTER

This is the Sussex Police Stop and Search Charter 2024. It is born out of the Casey Report and this was following the growing public concern involving a number of incidents within the Metropolitan Police Service (MET). Baroness Louise Casey was commissioned to lead an independent review on their culture and standards of behaviour that began in 2022 and concluded last year. From this it recommends establishing a Charter on how and when we Stop and Search used with an agreed rationale and to provide an annual account of its use by area and by the team undertaking Stop and Searches.

A Charter is a formal statement from Sussex Police, co-authored by members of the public on how Stop and Search should be conducted in Sussex.

There are 4 phases of Charter

Phase 1- Scoping Sussex Wide Engagement

Phase 2- Co-producing the Charter

Phase 3- Delivering and Embedding Charter

Phase 4- On-going Review and Scrutiny of Charter

There is no time frame on this because each stage may deliver new challenges or suggestions.

ACTION: Attendees to think about questions for External Panel and to feedback to Andy/Rebecca or Mark and to bring back to next meeting to update

SH: This is one of the bigger pieces of work over the next 12 months and charter is almost like an agreement with Community and Sussex Police about when to use Stop and Search and how we use this. Spoken several times, around how we speak to others, build form of legitimacy, having fully explained the stop and search and have we contacted the parent/guardian? Then look to publish and most importantly, be held accountable to this.

Other than MET Police, Sussex Police are the only other Force looking at completing this.

CW: It’s the engagement with the public, the public need to see that you are trying to do this as well. There has been some damage from certain individuals within Forces. There needs to be an open and honest discussion with the public.

JM: The age bracket should be across the board. Stop and search can happen to anyone of any age, then the consultation phase should be within any age bracket.

AB: It is essential to reflect on those who are stopped and searched, who are mainly younger generation and men. It doesn’t need to be the same but needs to make sure the consultation phase has these groups and possible those who are 10 and above who are also being stopped and searched.

AD: So to look at all age brackets for the consultation phase but essentially we need to reflect those being stopped and searched which includes young adolescent males.

DH: What would be an appropriate way of facilitating the youth voices involved?

AB:  For this to happen you need to go where they are or have support from someone else to have these conversations and youth voices involved.

AD: We are actively doing this already and approaching youth groups through different organisations such as Brighton, Hove Albion which we are partnering with on an exciting project.

In relation to the age bracket on youth adolescents is to include them in the Charter in terms of what would they like from us as Police Officers.

AB: How should we seek the trust of hard-to-reach members of the Community, least likely to trust us (Police) rather than hard to reach, change to seldom heard members of the Community.

JM: Transgender members of the Community do not trust the Police. There has been a historic lack of trust from the transgender community to Sussex Police for a while. How can we look to break this and get this trust to get them in this consultation phase. This would mainly be through community engagement.

SH: Purpose of bringing this to the meeting is to develop the Charter for Stop and Search, to ask for your guidance and help around how we can get those not heard groups involved. We are looking at how we carry out the engagement as a whole piece.

AB: And around mental health and capturing this because sometimes are present in a particular way. It would be good to see what this means regarding stop search and those with learning disabilities and autism.

AT: We are reviewing the way we are using our advisory groups and the way we engage with the Community. We are reviewing all our engagement plans currently and we are working with external consultancy to do this review. We are waiting for some recommendations, which won’t come in until end of March.

ACTION: Maria to see if there are funds to support this piece of work and to link in with Anusree

AD: This Charter will be as per the Casey review. Currently, stop and search charter is designed specifically around this.

SH: Our proposal is stop and search charter and around the annual report that we place on the website for example. This is about trying to explain to others, when we got the arch and having consulted people, when you think we should use it and how we should conserve. Positive Engagement Group in Crawley is a good example of where we do take stop and search to and discuss. In relation to funding, we have discussed this with DCC in Culture and Standards Board and some of our work in the Race Action Plan.

AB: Around the Seldom Community, is this something to scope and get a sense of cause? Also, how about people who are homeless, or substance misuse might be good to consider their view.

AD: Need to bring this to the panel and to see which groups we are going to engage with.

AT: Meeting with the Home Office to add some of those onto the Intranet. The discussion is not only around stop and search but Domestic Abuse and what should be doing. Also providing the right leaflet for the right person. There is an ongoing piece of work I’m involved with currently. So, if someone gets stopped and searched, there could be a link to our website as well to help them read through. If they don’t understand it, that is something we could add on the single online home page which is our front Intranet pages.

SH: They key is to know what people can expect. What does the Police and Criminal Evidence Act say the Police can stop and search someone for.  This doesn’t always mean that we should still do this and it doesn’t mean it is the right thing to do, but it is also about how we’ve treated them. We want to get into quite a level of detail and then train our staff around what the expectations when you stop and search somebody and around thoroughly explaining in in a language they understand.

How do we know that the quality of stop and search we have done with someone and for example; the Charter could say that every year as part of our practical staff safety training, everyone has to complete a stop and search which is a debrief.

So there could be some tangible things that we could think about including.

FA: Wanted to find out if you already have some standards around these.

AD: Standards around College of Policing, APP Sussex Police Policy and have put out e-learning training within. What this Charter is, is not about what standards we expect if we aren’t going out stop searching someone. This is about finding out what the Community expects from us and getting the standards from the Community. Maybe some of the groups that aren’t quite Boy Scouts, we would then go and visit and might be they have some unrealistic expectations from the Police and are not going to be answering everyone and all the suggestions we receive. This is a fact-finding mission, where we listen to what the Community says and then take this away and developing what we can from this.

DH: One of the primary things we should be getting right is making it clear and a promise to our Communities that we should never be making our decisions to use our stop search powers based on ethnicity alone. This is the minimum standard and should be getting right and feel its cancelled as we don’t necessarily get that right.

FA: Telling a member of the public, me assuring my children that if a Police Officer stopped them for any reason it will be down to some evidence rather than the officers on arbitrary suspicion. A lot of people who get aggrieved with stop searches, especially from an ethnicity point of view, is mostly because of arbitrary reason for the stop search rather than Police Officer having some concrete evidence.

JM: Been liaising to be part of eight training days for frontline and neighbourhood officers, specifically around hate crime. Through this training, if we can get the level of commitment and knowledge of diverse communities that are recipients of hate crime and can then link it in with having similar trust for stop search.

ACTION: Joanne to link in with Andy to give more information of the training taking place and feed this back into the Charter

DH: When our Inspector came to inspect our performance in all areas of Force performance, there were only two areas of business where the Force was rated as performing good and one of them was this area of scrutiny.

It is worth highlighting when it comes to the scrutiny process, we think of nationally leading in terms of we don’t just look at the grounds that were recorded on the ticket inviting at the time but have a whole process for scrutiny that’s built around the person who conducted the stop search and viewing the body worn video and providing feedback. That is an opportunity for training the scrutiny and learning it with the individual and then gets documented and recorded.

AB: Body worn videos may be time consuming, but they are good at illustrating good and bad practice. It is finding the time and who will scrutinize this. May be interesting to look at more details. If have a breakdown of data and really investigate the data, this would be great.

AD: The BWV is scrutinised across the Force daily by supervisors.

MR: We’re introduced two other levels of scrutiny within the Force now. We’ve got the normal scrutiny where District or Division and supervisors would look at the body worn videos for officers. We’ve now introduced another level where there are dip checks by supervisors due to not being able to watch body worn and they’ll make that as part of the officer’s development meeting to watch the body worn footage and give them live feedback. This feedback is then recorded, so its good feedback in need of further training.

In addition to this, there was another recommendation which was that all senior officer’s complete scrutiny of body worn, and this is being implemented.

SH: As an offer, the body worn videos are very useful and we can carry out more of this. We can have ½ day every month, we can’t send out the footage via teams where we can facilitate people looking at it, but if there are volunteers and people who want to watch more body worn video and give us feedback, we are happy to facilitate this.

ACTION: Panel members to email Stuart/Rebecca if they would like to volunteer to view body worn video and provide feedback on this.

CW: Observer shifts are good at getting an idea of what frontline policing is about and be able to see stop search and how they deal with individuals.

JM: I’ve completed three of these including Gatwick which gave an insight into policing, and should we undertake scrutiny differently? Got to remember is there is a huge difference between external panels and what to discuss internally but you are selecting cases at random of stop and search of body worn video that as non-police members of the panel we off positive or negative feedback and that is what is important and must not change.

ACTION: Andy to get a project plan together by the next meeting, to give the next steps/timeline on the plan.

A/Inspector Andy Dunkling

04

Body Worn Video Reviews

First body worn video, the grounds recorded were male was stopped after being seen walking in centre of the road. Male was spoken to and admitted to smoking cannabis earlier in the day. Males eyes were bloodshot and was slurring words and appeared under the influence of either drugs or alcohol.

First Body Worn Video shown to all.

JM: Thought this was brilliant. Person was being searched and very compliant. The conversation between officer and who was searching was 100% accurate. Grounds were correctly identified.

AD: Totally agree with you. The tone of voice of the officer was fantastic and showed the male respect. Does go to show the level of compliance was gained immediately from the tone of voice and they met on a level and maintained.

SH: Will pass these onto the officer. Usually, we bring ones that aren’t very good, but it is useful to show ones that are good as well. What struck me was the human nature of the officer and the good rapport with the person and seemed genuinely to care.

Second Body Worn Video shown to all.

JM: From this body worn video, the person had no trust in Sussex Police in investigating and supporting him for something that happened a week ago. Seemed the conversation was heated backwards and forwards.

SH: Question is, did we have a report from the previous week and can understand from tone of voice, if we didn’t respond. Also, the officer was chewing gum when talking, but could have stopped chewing the gum when talking to the person.

AD: Did look into this and two separate officers had gone back for that location. They researched our command and call system which means we can identify a shop or area and narrow this down into codes and search this back over two weeks and there was only a report of a disturbance at the shop.

SH: There is an argument that it may well have happened and he didn’t have the trust and confidence to call us, but pleased that other officers looked back because he had told us something had happened and we checked if we did have a report or not.

JM: The officers could have shown a little more compassionate as they would not have known about whether anything happened a couple of weeks ago.

SH: Different times where the officer was responding to the male was up and down. What we’d ideally like is, when we have completed the search and whether we found a knife or not, we’ll more than likely get an update at the end of what we dealt with the individual. If we didn’t find a knife that is our opportunity to scale right back because if the threat is gone and ideally we would then be having a conversation with the individual about what did happen a week ago.

MR: The outcome was no further action with the knife but I believe he was taken and believe he was arrested but not relating to the stop search.

ACTION: Andy to look through the investigation and speak to the officer concerned to see if he did report anymore about the incident previously and provide recent update at the next meeting

Mark Rendall

05

S60 Updates

No section 60 updates

Mark Rendall

06

Updates on Complaints

Had some complaints come through but nothing about ethnicity. We had some complaints this quarter regarding asked to give name and address.

Looked through the complaints and everything was found to be satisfactory. The conduct was found to be satisfactory

Mark Rendall

07

Stop and Search Grounds

ACTION: Mark to send out the form relating to Stop and Search Grounds to fill out before the next meeting

Mark Rendall

08

Strip Search Update

Mark Rendall

09

Focus of Next Meeting

SH: I believe Rebecca was going to have the disproportionality of the different districts. If there is a particular district, because we used to talk about a particular area in a geographical area.

RO: I have been approached by a colleague in Horsham that has been completing some work around disproportionality and could consider this.

SH: Horsham is the second highest, proportion wise of disproportionality relations to stop and search. We could ask the District Commander from Horsham to bring some data and talk through some of the work in that particular area and some of the work with the community.

CW: It would be quite interesting to hear what has been going on.

JM: What has been good to see is some more engagement from the PCSO around the district. March 31st is Transgender day of visibility and Pride months coming up as well. We need to be aware of that and how we look at potential stop and search to members of the LGBT Community and the key is pronouns and respect.

FA: Anything around the West Sussex. That should be fine.

AB: If we could look at Horsham for the next meeting and then after Bognor Regis as an area, we are familiar with.

SH: For the next meeting we could look at Body Worn from Horsham area and Bognor Regis and focus on the areas we are talking about.

Chair