Public discourse on Twitter is not a matter for the police, says Chief Constable

Public discourse sometimes involves people knocking lumps out of each other on Twitter, and in a democracy that shouldn't be a matter for the police — back-to-basics Chief Constable Stephen Watson has told the Times that officers need to avoid the "fluff and nonsense" and get on with doing their job: catching criminals while remaining professional, impartial and apolitical.

Stephen Watson, the chief constable of Greater Manchester, was brought in to overhaul the force after it was put into special measures for failing to record 80,100 crimes reported to it between July 1 2019 and June 30 2020, poor responses to vulnerable victims and huge emergency call backlogs (Metro).

Mr Watson quickly brought the force — one of England's biggest — out of special measures, insisting that officers attend every burglary and callout that mattered to the public, such as criminal damage and antisocial behaviour. He has also enforced stricter uniform standards, ordering officers to improve their public image by ironing uniforms, polishing boots, hiding tattoos and shaving and tying up long hair (Times).

Since the Chief Constable took over, the time taken to answer 999 calls has fallen sharply (from an average of one minute 22 seconds to seven seconds), the number of suspects charged is up 42% and the force is having to build more custody suites to cope with 28,000 more arrests this year.

There have been several recent incidents in which police have been criticised for their conduct online.

Sussex police was condemned by Home Secretary Suella Braverman in September after the force leapt to the defence of a female identifying paedophile who had been misgendered on social media (Spiked). Several chief constables have also defended their officers’ right to “take the knee” for the political organisation Black Lives Matter (Mail), and officers have been criticised for being seen to attend LGBTQ pride events but not crime scenes (BBC, NewsLetter, Spiked).

Watson, who attributes his success to a “back-to-basics approach” and a return to traditional policing, said his approach was not about ignoring complexity but that it was only by tackling the basics properly that police could get “upstream” of difficult issues.

Ministers are reportedly now studying Mr Watson's example and want to see what Greater Manchester have done replicated across other forces (Telegraph). Suella Braverman has also recently described Watson as "a superb leader", urging other chiefs to “pay close attention” to his methods, including how he “rejects woke policing and [has] embraced a back-to-basics approach” (Mail).

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