“The chief wants us to arrest”: the Baird inquiry into Greater Manchester Police

Does everyone detained in police custody need to be there??

After arrest, the police custody officer must charge the person if there is evidence, and can only authorise their detention if it’s necessary?to “secure or preserve evidence relating to an offence for which he has been arrested ” or “to obtain such evidence by questioning the person”. Over 750,000 people are detained in custody by the police each year, and it is usually a very distressing experience.

A few years ago, Transform Justice concluded that detention in police custody was overused. A key stat we cited was that police custody officers only refused 1% of detention requests. Custody officers are supposed to be the gatekeepers of the custody suite, scrutinising detention requests from arresting officers and making sure people are only detained when necessary. The fact that they hardly ever refused any requests – and that this process was referred to as “booking in” – indicated this gatekeeping role was seldom fulfilled.

Senior police justified the low refusal rate as indicating that officers were only arresting and asking to detain the right people.?

That argument doesn’t hold up in some of the cases of the report of Dame Vera Baird’s inquiry into Greater Manchester Police, in which Dame Vera concludes: “this sample of arrests shows officers using their power unwisely, unnecessarily, and sometimes unlawfully,” and goes on to criticise the decisions to detain which followed. The inquiry was triggered by a Sky News investigation revealing inappropriate treatment of three women by the Greater Manchester Police, but was widened as more people came forward with similar complaints. It looked in detail at the cases of 15 people who’d been arrested and detained since that investigation. Dame Vera spoke to those arrested, read the statements of officers, reviewed custody records and watched body worn camera and custody suite video footage.??

Like us, Dame Vera concluded that custody officers were “nodding through arrests”, “reluctant to decline to authorise custody” and were often “complicit in agreeing grounds for arrest”.?

We’d suspected that police were quick to arrest and detain people because it made their investigation more convenient – you can search someone’s house and question them more easily when they’re in custody. This isn’t a good enough basis for depriving someone of their liberty. But that reason is positively benign compared to some of the rationale emerging in Dame Vera’s report:

• “The Chief wants us to arrest”. Dame Vera concludes that the GMP Chief Constable’s “strategic priority to increase arrests may be driving unwise and unlawful arrests”. Perhaps this explains what happened to Sophie, who at 03:17 “was woken by hammering on her front door…It was the police. They arrested her for criminal damage to the wing mirror on her ex-partner’s vehicle, which happened 14-15 months before, and for assaulting him by bruising his arms on the day he tried to strangle her.” Sophie’s detention was deemed necessary “to protect a vulnerable person” and “for the prompt and effective investigation of the offence”. But the offence happened months previously, the ex-partner was not vulnerable and was known by the police to have been abusive towards Sophie, and a voluntary interview could have been conducted at a mutually convenient time. Sophie was later offered a caution, which she (thankfully) refused because it might have meant she lost her job as a teacher due to the criminal record implications. The case was eventually dropped.?
• Refusing police entry into their home. Evelyn ended up detained in custody after the police received an alert of an upset woman on the road where she was staying with her in-laws. On reaching the street, the police knocked on Evelyn’s door. Dame Vera described the house as “tranquil and amiable until the police arrived”: “It may have been reasonable for PC II to knock on the door of the only house with lights on to ask if they knew anything about the woman on the street. However, as the police body-worn video shows, PC II immediately flared into anger when Evelyn’s partner’s father aggressively refused him entry. PC II should have withdrawn and perhaps knocked again after a few minutes, to repeat the inquiry, or just left, since everything was quiet.” Instead, police pushed their way in and, in the fracas, Evelyn was arrested and detained for assault of an emergency worker. She was eventually released under investigation and CPS then dropped all charges “after two years of dragging me through court”, as Evelyn put it. Dame Vera concludes that the police had no legal basis on which to enter the house and the arrest was unlawful.
• Poorly trained police officers causing situations to escalate. Our research into assaults on police officers found that many such incidents arise because the police are not trained to calm things down. Dame Vera’s report includes the story of Leah, who kicked off at a party after losing her phone. The police were eventually called and escorted her outside. Unfortunately, they then manhandled her as she became distressed (despite her telling them she was a previous victim of sexual abuse). Leah lashed out and as a result was charged with assaulting a police officer. She pleaded guilty in court and was given a conditional discharge. The magistrates acknowledged that Leah might have been the victim in the situation, due to the officers not being trained to deal with people with experience of sexual abuse.?
• “Why are you arresting me when I’ve come to ask for help?”. A worrying number of women were arrested after contacting the police for support; what Dame Vera refers to as “a reversal of reality”. Maria called the police 14 times after being throttled by her husband in a hotel room and left without any means to get home. “She explained it all and was passed to someone else, explained it again – each time revisiting the abuse she had just suffered. She was repeatedly told that someone would contact her, but nobody did. The pattern didn’t change, hour after hour, until eventually she rang, sobbing and angry. Things she said in that call include: ‘The police are the only people, in this fucking country, to speak to and yet they are failing people on a monumental scale’ and ‘I am fucking sick of the fucking police they’re shit, shit, shit’…Maria later faced a charge of malicious communications for these calls.” Maria was detained in custody, strip searched, and the police eventually released her in the early hours of the morning knowing that she (still) had no way to get home. Dame Vera deemed the arrest unlawful: ‘To be lawful an arrest must be necessary, and Maria’s was said to be ‘for the prompt and effective investigation of the offence’. However, the calls are recorded, they came from the phone Maria was rung back on, and somebody has just listened to them. What more is there to investigate?”?

The participants in the inquiry had terrible experiences in custody. Treatment should improve but just as big a question is why they were there in the first place.

There’s little pressure on police forces to limit their use of detention. The complaints system for people who feel they are unfairly detained is flawed because it usually amounts to police “marking their own homework”: “Charlotte later made a complaint, through an online form, and the same custody sergeant called her back and said he would investigate it for her. He rang her, a couple of weeks later, to say that, although she was upset, she had been treated fairly.” You can sue the police under civil law for wrongful imprisonment but few people know this is an option or how to go about it.?

Custody officers need to be reminded via training of their independent role, and to direct to “alternative, less intrusive ways” of obtaining evidence. They need the backing of senior officers when they refuse inappropriate detentions. Dame Vera also calls for a scrutiny panel for arrests and dip sampling of detentions by the deputy mayor’s office.?

Detention in police custody is distressing, costly, and reduces trust and confidence in the police. It’s also often pointless in terms of progressing the investigation of a crime. Time to reduce its use.?

The Baird inquiry looked into the experience of people who are arrested and taken into custody by Greater Manchester Police, with a focus on women and girls. Read the report here.

NB this article was written by my colleague Fionnuala Ratcliffe