Question – Was the shooting of Chris Kaba a collective failure of society to make growing up that bit easier? In my opinion this is the difficult conversation that us a country the United Kingdom requires to have. If not it will happen again and again.
In recent days emotions have been running high. The acquittal of a firearms officer with the Metropolitan police of the murder of Chris Kaba led to an outpouring of relief from within policing. On social media, many posts from retired officers as well as from anonymous police supporting accounts simply played a game of ‘Cops 1 Bad Guys 0’. Even the contenders for the new Tory leader got involved with citing the Gospel of Matthew “Live by the sword, die by the sword”. Bob Jenrick called the firearms officer a hero.
At a time when trust in UK policing is low these comments, opinions and responses will create further tensions between police, the black community and indeed wider society.
The hero v’s villain conversation isn’t a helpful one and its one that takes good people off the responsibility hook. They are freed from even considering, sustaining, perpetuating or conceding to the conditions that contribute to violence and wider crime. Basically it allows individuals to say “Thats the world for you, and there’s not much that can be done to change it, certainly not by me”. The binary approach is simply a source of comfort for a society who is in denial about the wider issues at play. As i say above, unless we have courage to self-inspect we will continue to see more people amass length criminal convictions posing a threat to us all, not just police firearms officers.
To make it clear, now knowing all the facts of the event I’m satisfied that the jury made the correct decision. We must now move to a place where we create discussions on how we reduce the issues that lead to our dedicated firearms officers from having to make life and death decisions. How do we create a common purpose that we can all get behind and support.
For me that common purpose will require us all to look at the criminal history of men like Chis Kaba and ask where we can intervene earlier to stop the progression of harm. Let’s not forget he is someone’s son and I bet when he was 5 or 6 being a career criminal was not on his wish list for the future. Kaba’s school teacher simply said he was a lovely boy who got drawn into gangs.
The comments I discuss above mean we dismiss this reality and focus more on the person rather than the situation that created the person. Personally I don’t think we can ignore the likes of past austerity policies driven by our government. We also can’t ignore the removal of many youth services that in many ways acted as a buffer to the challenges many young people face across the UK. We can’t ignore the cuts to police numbers that are clear. Have recent years and the divisive rhetoric of Brexit forced us to take sides and lose our collective empathy towards to those we consider the other.
To many in politics and policing, prevention is often seen as the soft option or it is misunderstood. This opinion is then shared across society. The tough on crime narrative is one that politicians use to get votes. Its a narrative that many in policing still measure their success. It’s wrong to see prevention as soft. It’s more a smart option and one that will keep us all safe including the officers who commit to serving our diverse and often troubled communities.
We must move from a out of date criminal justice model which simply asks “whats wrong with you?” to a public health one where we ask “what happened to you?” That last question isn’t a ‘get of jail card’ for anyone. It’s more following the science of prevention.
As someone who spent the last 10 years of a policing career looking at violence prevention, I must concede that initially I struggled to take my police hat off. I’d been a cop for 20 years and my mindset was quite fixed. More robust policing = less violence surely?. Looking back, I was partly correct however when my boss at the time said to me it was time to stop thinking as a police officer my whole lens changed. I often refer to my last decade with the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) as my hero’s journey.
Writer Joseph Campbell wrote about this journey in his books. It’s a journey that you will have seen many times in such films as The Wizard of Oz or Harry Potter. Where an ordinary person is taken from their mundane life to go on a journey of discovery. On this journey they meet both heroes and villains. For me the arresting of the same people, even in later years their children and grandchildren was becoming frustrating. I remember a few times asking, “Am I making a difference here?”. I left the CID in the late 1990’s because of this.
When I joined the VRU I went on this journey. Let me start with the villains. My family thought I was mad when I talked about second chances. As said above many of my colleagues saw the prevention lens as soft and cuddly, “That’s not real policing” was a common response or I could see it in their eyes that they dismissed the approach. My heroes were plentiful and all helped me on my journey, giving me knowledge and skills to better speak to the villains.
When I retired in 2017, I looked back and it’s clear many of the dismissive colleagues now get it. A few have started to talk to others in ways I had talked to them. Have they been on their hero’s journey? My youngest daughter is Criminal Justice Social Worker in Scotland and was inspired by the work of the VRU to help those within the criminal justice system.
So, what does violence prevention look like. For me it starts with looking at the issue through a lens of public health. It involves not just looking at the individual but at the situation they find themselves in. We must focus on their relationships with others (parents, friends etc). We must focus on the communities they live in, addressing the fear and lack of hope. We must lastly look at wider society, the extent of early years trauma, why is violence tolerated? notions of masculinity and our relationships with alcohol.
What about the police you may be asking. What’s your role? Well an effective violence prevention strategy requires two main parts.
- Swift and visible justice – This aspect helps us to contain and manage current levels of violence. It’s a bit like keeping sick people in a hospital. This is a core policing role that can be supported by likes of those working in the nighttime economy.
However, at the same time we must
- Ensure a long-term commitment from all partners and communities to develop policies that will bring about attitudinal change and deliver a permanent and sustainable reduction in violence.
Many still see likes of stop and search as harmful. If it’s the only tool in the box it will be harmful. That’s why we need a wider response from everyone, including the general public. I learned many things in my time as a police officer. My main learning in violence prevention was (i) the power of community to prevent, and (ii) Relationships are the currency of change.
Policing has a role in both of these parts. There’s lots of talk about how officer’s fear complaint when they use their powers of search. I cannot remove this fear from officers, and we need leaders to support officers. They will make mistakes. If they do, leaders must support officers and seek to use the moment as a teaching one. We need officers to look out for colleagues when they see mistakes being made. We must all permit colleagues to act when we make a mistake. Human beings make mistakes. We just seem bad at responding to mistakes.
With regards to the second point, policing has a role to work with partners. Policing can learn from likes of early years practitioners on topics such as adverse childhood experiences and the impact of domestic abuse on children. A lot of the violence we see on the streets comes from early years experiences. In my view there will never be peace on the streets until we have peace in the home.
Policing must take domestic abuse and sexual abuse seriously and not just because of the pressure coming from politicians and victims’ groups. In my opinion when we do, we will help reduce the early years trauma far too many children experience in their most important years.
Preventing violence isn’t something the likes of policing can do on it’s own. We can’t police our way out of the challenges we face from violence. More is needed to engage wider society to see their role. More empathy is needed from across society. More empathy will not only reduce violence but it will also motivate people to do more to help others.
To end less violence equals safer communities for police officers to work within. We will see individuals not amassing criminal convictions where violence escalates. By doing so we reduce the chances of our firearms officers having to make the ultimate decision.
So I ask again what’s the goal here? For me we need to come together to make our communities safe for everyone.
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