Community engagement to counter terrorism

Report: 9
Date: 26 January 2006
By: Chief Executive and Clerk

Summary

This report summarises the views on terrorism and counter-terrorism expressed by Londoners at the Metropolitan Police Authority’s ‘Together Against Terror?’ event and through its associated online consultation. It makes recommendations for action by both the Metropolitan Police Service and Metropolitan Police Authority based upon these views. It proposes an expanded programme of future community engagement by the police service and the police authority to counter terrorism.

A. Recommendation

That

1. The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) make publicly available as much factual information as possible on the scale and nature of the terrorist threat, on how the police are responding to it and on how the public can help.
2. The MPS increase its outreach work at grassroots level, in particular with students and teachers in schools, universities and colleges, with small businesses, and with women and young people in Muslim and other communities.
3. The Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) commission a report back to its July 2006 meeting on MPS implementation of these recommendations and on MPS progress towards building its capacity and capability to prevent and respond to terrorism.
4. Proposals be brought to the appropriate committee for the MPA to deliver its own distinct, related but independent programme of community engagement in relation to terrorism and counter-terrorism.
5. The MPA continue to use events such as the ‘Together Against Terror?’ conference to facilitate constructive civic debate on policing issues of major public concern.

B. Supporting information

1. On 12 December 2005 the MPA held an event entitled ‘Together Against Terror?’ at Central Hall Westminster to widen the debate on how our society should respond to the terrorist threat.

2. The aims of the event were: to provide an opportunity for the police and partners to explain what they do and why; to disseminate important information to a wide range of stakeholders; to enable the community to inform the police of their issues and considerations; to elicit from community members ideas for new ways of working; to foster a sense of public ownership of the problems and their solutions; to increase the likelihood of generating future community intelligence; and to build social capital – and therefore resilience – in London.

3. The Chair of the MPA, in opening the event, said that ‘such open debate is seriously overdue’. The Commissioner of the MPS added that ‘a few weeks ago I called for an open, transparent, public debate about policing in the aftermath of 7 July 2005...I can’t ask for much more than this’.

4. 171 people took part in the event, 95% of whom live or work in London. The participants were diverse in terms of age, faith, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and disability. Particular care was taken to ensure a wide spectrum of Muslim opinion was represented, from MuslimYouth.Net through the Islamic Cultural Centre and London Central Mosque to Hizb ut-Tahrir. Participants included relevant local bodies such as Community Police Consultative Groups, Stop and Search Community Monitoring Groups, Refugee Forums, and Race Equality Councils. Regional bodies were represented, such as London Civic Forum, the Greater London Authority, the Association of London Government and MPS Independent Advisory Groups. National bodies such as the Association of Chief Police Officers, Association of Police Authorities, Independent Police Complaints Commission, UK Youth Parliament and HM Government were also in attendance. MPS officers and staff of all ranks were present as participants, including not only the Deputy Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations but also PCSOs, first responders, firearms officers and forensic practitioners, many of whom were on duty on 7, 21 and 22 July 2005. Also amongst the participants were five parents and partners of victims killed in the terrorist attacks in London on 7 July 2005.

5. The core of the conference was five themed hour-long sessions on five essential aspects of the current UK terrorism debate. Each session consisted of two 10-minute testimonies from expert witnesses, 20 minutes of questions to these experts from the audience, and 20 minutes of discussion amongst the participants at their tables. At each of the 17 tables there was an MPA facilitator and an MPA, MPS, Greater London Authority (GLA) or London School of Economics (LSE) scribe.

6. At the end of the event participants voted by secret electronic ballot on 10 key closed questions on the subjects of terrorism and counter-terrorism. Between 5 December 2005 and 19 December 2005 the MPA supplemented this ballot with an online poll, asking the public the same 10 key closed questions. 578 responses to these questions were received via the MPA website.

7. Appendix 1 is a report of the broad-ranging dialogue at the conference. It is intended as a comprehensive and balanced presentation of the views expressed. The MPA does not necessarily share or identify with any of the opinions recorded. Annex A to Appendix 1 is the conference schedule. Annex B to Appendix 1 is the results of the voting both at the event and online.

8. Media coverage of the event included BBC News and Evening Standard on 12 December 2005 and Metro, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, Daily Mail and the front page of The Guardian on 13 December 2005. Two pages of Police Review on 16 December 2005 were also dedicated to the conference. This level of press exposure demonstrates that the conference content was of significant national interest. In each article the MPA was credited with delivering the event. The debate was therefore taken to a much wider UK audience and the national profile of the MPA as a guarantor of police openness and accountability was enhanced.

9. The immediate driver for the debate was of course the bombings of 7 and 21 July 2005. In this context it is important to record the overwhelming support voiced for the way in which the police and other emergency services responded. Participants were advised that, given the ongoing independent inquiry into the shooting at Stockwell tube station on 22 July 2005 and subsequent events, no detailed discussion of these matters could take place.

10. MPA officers’ analysis of the information shared and views expressed at the ‘Together Against Terror?’ conference has given rise to the recommendations in Section A of this report. The rationale for each recommendation follows.

11. Recommendation 1: By sharing more information with the public on the nature of the terrorist threat, the police response, and the roles community members can play, the MPS would be better positioned to: challenge those who remain complacent or in denial about the scale or severity of the threat; detail signs of terrorist activity for people to look out for and report; advise the public on how to respond in the event of a terrorist attack; clarify that racial profiling is not used by the MPS in stop and search; heighten public understanding of MPS firearms policy; explain how the concerns of disabled people around Operation Kratos have been addressed; dispel misconceptions about police policy and practice; and inform the wider social and political debate. The MPS is already moving in this direction, and its active participation in ‘Together Against Terror?’ is testimony to this. It is not possible, because of legal constraints on impending or ongoing prosecutions, for it always to be as open as it might wish. Nevertheless, the resounding message from the conference was that maximum information should be made publicly available.

12. Recommendation 2: Effective community engagement is a necessary condition for counter-terrorist policing. Largely unavoidable problems of legitimacy, mandate, representation and democratic deficiency mean that engaging communities solely through their supposed ‘leaders’ is insufficient. Direct contact must be established with members of all communities at all levels in their social structures. This community engagement needs, in part at least, to happen outside municipal buildings and police stations; it must take place in the locations and amongst the members of those communities. The police must take the initiative and reach out into those communities and subsections of communities with which their engagement to date has been underdeveloped. Colleges and universities are potentially fertile recruiting grounds for terrorists. Many Muslim women are at the centre of home and family life within their communities and yet their voice has largely so far not been heard. Small business owners and workers can provide valuable eyes and ears on every one of London’s high streets. Some young men are disaffected and, if ignored, are prone to seditious radicalisation. Their views, however challenging, must be given non-violent expression and listened to by the police.

13. Recommendation 3: Having heard from the public and itself recognised that MPS information provision and community engagement could be improved in order to reduce the likelihood of future terrorist attack, the MPA must satisfy itself that the necessary steps are being taken in these two areas by the MPS. Furthermore, the MPA should bring to public attention other progress made by the MPS in the counter-terrorism field, which might, for instance, include identifying less lethal ways to incapacitate a suspected suicide bomber, improving its ability to monitor terrorist activity on the internet, or recruiting a more diverse staff-base. A further report in six months’ time should reflect that progress.

14. Recommendation 4: The MPA should use its own position to conduct an independent programme of community engagement on terrorism and counter-terrorism issues with Londoners. This would inform the governance, scrutiny and strategic direction that it provides the MPS. This would also enable the MPA to take a lead within the Association of Police Authorities (APA) on police authorities’ work nationally to counter terrorism, paralleling the MPS’s lead amongst police forces.

15. Recommendation 5: The success of the event on 12 December 2005 endorsed the joint ambition of the Authority and the Commissioner for wider public involvement in the development of major policing policies. As the MPA develops its approach to delivering its responsibilities more effectively it should review the scope to hold further events along these lines, taking into account lessons learnt from ‘Together Against Terror?’.

C. Race and equality impact

The MPA is required by law to engage with all Londoners on policing in the capital. The MPA also has important legal duties to eliminate discrimination and promote equality through its work. The ‘Together Against Terror?’ conference sought to involve a range of perspectives from people, organisations and communities diverse in their identity across all diversity strands. The MPA created an environment where it was possible to explore how diverse communities consider and experience the terrorist threat and the counter-terrorist response. This report highlights those complexities and begins to demonstrate why counter-terrorism policing in the capital, if it is to be effective, must be cognisant of and alert to the diversity of Londoners. Future MPA and MPS community engagement to counter terrorism must continue to place the promotion of equality at its centre by enabling diverse Londoners to work together and identify solutions through ongoing debate.

D. Financial implications

1. The total cost to the MPA of organising and hosting the ‘Together Against Terror?’ event was £21,000.

2. The cost of future MPA community engagement to counter terrorism is yet to be calculated. A fully costed programme of proposed activity will be presented to the MPA’s Senior Management Team for approval in February 2006.

E. Background papers

1. ‘Suicide Terrorism’ – a report by Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, to the Metropolitan Police Authority on 27 October 2005

2. ‘Connecting with Communities to defeat Terrorism’ – a briefing note by Rob Beckley, Assistant Chief Constable of Hertfordshire Constabulary, to the Association of Police Authorities annual conference on 24 November 2005

F. Contact details

Report author: Andy Hull, Community Engagement Unit, MPA.

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

Appendix 1

'Together Against Terror?’ conference report

Introduction

1. The information in this report is derived directly from: the audio recordings of the 14 speeches made at this event; the audio recordings of the six question-and-answer sessions; the scribes’ written records of the five discussion sessions which took place at each of the 17 tables; the 70 evaluation forms completed by participants; the c.150 votes cast in person on 10 key closed questions; the 578 votes cast on these same 10 questions remotely online; and further comments received from the public through the MPA website.

The new terrorist threat

2. The current terrorist threat to the UK differs from previous threats we have faced, in that: high-grade intelligence regarding terrorist activity is now received by the MPS almost daily; the new terrorism is international in its ideology and its activity; it is a ‘franchise’ operation, inspired by Al Qaeda, but it is not thought that there are international masterminds planning attacks across several continents; it is impossible to negotiate, compromise, or reach a solution with the new terrorists as they have no specific local or territorial end in mind, no feasible political objective, no viable aim to pursue, and nothing can be taken from them, as they are willing to kill themselves for their cause; the new terrorists seek deliberately to inflict maximum casualties; their murder is indiscriminate – those who died on 7 July 2005 represented ‘all the world on a train’; and they will use suicide as a weapon. The Commissioner’s assessment of the situation is that ‘the level of the threat is intensifying and continuing to intensify’.

3. Nonetheless, despite the death of 56 people in the terrorist attacks on 7 July 2005, there are still those who doubt or deny the seriousness or reality of the threat we face.

4. There is, however, a danger of slipping into inappropriate exceptionalism. Whilst the particular nature of the current terrorist threat is new, aspects of the threat we face are similar to those the UK has faced and dealt with in the past.

5. The police response to the new threat has been intense: between 11 September 2001 and 7 July 2005 in the UK 130 people were charged with terrorism-related offences; since 7 July 2005 there has been a 75% increase in anti-terrorism operations in the UK; there are 18 people facing charges related to the attacks in London on 7 July and 21 July 2005; and three further terrorist conspiracies have been thwarted by the MPS since 21 July 2005, leading to charges and deportations.

Social cohesion

6. This vigorous police response has not been well received in all quarters. The Leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain observed critically that ‘from 11 September 2001 to 30 September 2005 a total of 895 people were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000, but only 23 have been convicted of terrorist offences’.

7. Asian communities feel threefold victimhood: they are equal victims of the bombings; they are victims of the backlash in terms of racially motivated crime; and they perceive themselves to be victims of racial profiling in terms of counter-terrorist policing. The police ‘did see an increase in race- and faith-hate crime immediately after 7 July… but they have now gone down to the same sort of level this year as we had last year’. Some Muslims now live in fear as an unintended consequence of police policies. Many Muslim children feel alienated in this country. Some consider that ‘terrorism can only now be countered by attending to the grievances of this marginalised minority’. Others feel that the onus to adapt and integrate is firmly on the Muslim community and that radical British Muslims are trying to manipulate the situation to turn it to their own ends. Those who hold these opinions feel unable to speak their minds for fear of being labelled racist.

8. There is, however, a consensus that it is in the field of education that most success will be had in preventing future social divisions. Londoners would wish to enhance the citizenship curriculum in schools to make more of the values of democracy, freedom, rights and the rule of law. It was also suggested that the national history curriculum be revised to pay more attention to the contributions to the British way of life, and to the global community, made by our multiethnic heritage. This may go some way towards addressing some UK citizens’ sense of having been disregarded and excluded from British society. Single faith schools were thought by many to undermine attempts at building a cohesive society.

9. The role of Islam in the context of the terrorist attacks on London in 2005 was debated vigorously. It was repeatedly affirmed that Islam condemns the attacks unreservedly: they are not ‘jihad’; they are un-Islamic; these atrocities must not be seen as acts of faith. Some said a theological challenge has to be posed to those who propose terrorism in the name of Islam. One British Muslim said: ‘Let’s not run away from the fact that it has been Muslims responsible so far’.

Terrorist motives

10. The terrorists who caused such carnage on 7 July 2005 were our compatriots. As Shami Chakrabarti observed: ‘Mohammad Sidique Khan [the Edgware Road bomber]… was as British as I am; he spoke with a broad Yorkshire accent; 30 years old; born and brought up in this society; raised on fish fingers and Blue Peter’.

11. The conference was encouraged to consider ‘What can make a person hate so much that they are prepared to die in order to kill?’. There was agreement on the need to try to understand terrorists – including suicide bombers – and to insist that this is not the same as justifying, excusing or legitimising their crimes. By grappling with these difficult social and psychological questions we enhance our ability to tackle terrorism at its roots.

12. Some of the possible motivations of the terrorists were suggested: the allure of martyrdom and fame; anger at UK foreign policy in the Middle East; perceived double standards in Britain’s international dealings; the war in Iraq; and hatred of the Western way of life. Whatever the motivations, there was unanimity on the need for preventative measures, rather than merely coping mechanisms.

Public confidence in the police

13. There was universal praise for the conduct of the police on 7 July 2005. The police must be applauded when they get it right, as they undoubtedly did that day.

14. At the macro-level, people have respect and admiration for the police in this country. This is not considered to be the case everywhere in the world. Many do not, however, trust the Government, highlighting the practical importance of rigorously distinguishing between Government policy and activity and that of the police. At the micro-level, however, some people have lost faith in the police, and therefore under-report crime, because they witness the police not investigating or proceeding properly with low-level or minor cases. The MPS is seen as poor at staying in contact with victims of crime to keep them informed. Response times are also seen as unacceptably long. There is a train of thought which suggests that if minor cases are not properly investigated and prosecuted, then potential terrorists involved in low-level criminality will not get caught before they move on to commit more serious and more dangerous crime.

15. Not only is a trust-building agenda in London important on the part of the MPS, public confidence in the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and the MPA is also vital, and is not to be taken for granted.

Intelligence

16. The July 7 2005 terrorists were not on the police’s intelligence radar. They evaded the national surveillance network. Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent man, was shot dead by police officers at Stockwell tube station on 22 July 2005 in an intelligence-led deployment of Operation Kratos. Intelligence must be improved.

17. It is the opinion of the Permanent Secretary of the Home Office that the proposed rationalisation of police forces should help forces to work together to collect better intelligence nationally. It is widely thought that an MPS which more closely reflected the demographic make-up of London would garner more community intelligence. To this end, the Director of Liberty said: ‘People like me – minority ethnic Britons of my generation – must in greater numbers in the future join the police service… and do so confidently and wholeheartedly, and know why’.

18. The Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland told the conference that: ‘Terrorists need community support: they need places to store things, eyes to watch what is going on, safe houses’. There is a sense that communities need to do more to ‘out’ terrorists in their midst and bring forward intelligence to the police. A particularly grave responsibility rests with the friends and families of suspected terrorists to inform the police of their suspicions. There is a concomitant need for community members to be told what to look out for and how to spot signs of terrorist activity.

19. Discussions also took place regarding the questionable continuing relevance of historical modes of intelligence gathering. Terrorists are now using the internet to meet, learn how to build their bombs, groom co-conspirators, share videos and draw up plans. There is an urgent need for the MPS to expand its specialist skills in this technical field.

Stop and Search

20. Stop and search under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 has been used extensively by the MPS as a tool to disrupt terrorist activity in the capital. The merits and demerits of this power and its use in London were closely examined. In terms of the results of Section 44 stop and searches, people observed that: relatively few arrests result; the majority of searches produce nothing in the way of valuable intelligence; using the power to show the wider community that ‘something is being done’ is alienating sizeable minorities and has little to do with stopping suicide bombers. There was much confusion as to the grounds on which a police officer can search someone under Section 44. That said, there were accounts of experience of community support for the use of the power.

21. There was consensus on the idea that how the police stop and search people matters. The approach of each individual frontline officer in this style of policing was considered crucial. Whilst attitudinal issues and interpersonal skills can and should be addressed in police officers’ training, employing more female officers, it was suggested, might mean stops and searches were conducted ‘in a more measured and mannerly way’.

22. The prospect of using racial profiling in the use of Section 44 stop and search met with hostility. Some said that racial profiling made them feel that there is one law for one group of people and another law for everyone else. Such profiling was thought to be ineffective anyway, since a recent suicide bomber in Baghdad was a white, female Belgian convert to Islam, who did not fit the same profile as those who bombed London in July 2005. Racial profiling was considered to do significantly more harm than good, to amount to racist harassment, to perpetuate stereotypes, and to lead to a sense that police powers are being used against, rather than for the community. Disproportionate treatment by the police of a particular community, even if it is supposedly intelligence-led, is alienating for the law-abiding members of that community. An expert witness spoke of how ‘one of the biggest dangers of counter-terrorism policing must be that it will grow the very terrorism which it seeks to defeat’, and another added ‘We’ve got to be very careful that whatever measures we do take don’t end up backfiring and creating division and strife in the communities whose support we need’.

23. Given the dangers touched upon above, police accountability for their use of Section 44 is of paramount importance to race relations. The MPS says it does not use racial profiling in its use of the powers granted to it under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. However, there was some confusion amongst the public as to whether this was the case, not least because of remarks made by the Chief Constable of British Transport Police (BTP), Ian Johnston, in the summer of 2005, who said: ‘Intelligence-led stop and searches have got to be the way... We should not waste time searching old white ladies. It is going to be disproportionate. It is going to be young men, not exclusively, but it may be disproportionate when it comes to ethnic groups’. In order therefore that the public should be reassured that racial profiling is not being used by the MPS in its use of Section 44, and that its use of the power is proportionate and even-handed, data on MPS use of this power should be opened up more widely to public scrutiny. The release of monthly data on Section 44 stop and searches broken down by borough and by ethnicity would be a step in this direction, as would MPS co-operation with the Stop and Search Independent Advisory Group to bring Section 44 stop and search into the ambit of that IAG.

Shoot to kill

24. The President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Sir Chris Fox, gave a helpful explanation of Operation Kratos. He explained that Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act states that the police can use such force as is ‘reasonable in the circumstances’, by which was meant ‘reasonable in the eye of the beholder looking at the threat they perceive’. He added that whilst ‘the Human Rights Act and International Law surround this legislation, they do not change the fact that our law is based on the use of reasonable force’. He went on to state that ‘shoot to kill is not new. When the trigger is pulled, we must expect that the consequence is lethal’. As Lord Harris added: ‘The reality has always been that when armed police were deployed, they were empowered to shoot when they thought it was the only way to stop someone else being killed… they exercised that power by shooting usually to the chest, usually to kill… what we are talking about is a slight change in the tactics’. Sir Chris Fox stated that ‘reasonable’ and ‘proportionate’ are the watchwords when it comes to police use of force and that ‘“reasonable and proportionate” requires judgement… Judgement requires information, and the time to analyse it... Time is at a premium in these circumstances’. Scenarios involving suspected suicide bombers, he explained, therefore give rise to a high-risk decision: ‘If we act, the result is lethal. If we don’t act, and we get it wrong, the result is lethal. This is the dilemma that faces operational policing, working in real time’.

25. Some philosophical discussion ensued regarding the ethical rationale for the ‘final solution’ which Operation Kratos permits. Notions of ‘reasonableness’ and ‘absolute necessity’, and how they differ, were scrutinised. Various definitions of ‘last resort’ were proffered. The majority of participants felt that there has to come a point where shooting to kill becomes reasonable. Shami Chakrabarti acknowledged: ‘Even the precious right to life is not absolute… the people who lived through the Holocaust and the Blitz and were the drafters of the post-war Human Rights framework at the UN level and the European level were not pacifists… Article 2 of our Human Rights Convention allows that in extremis you can take life to save life… If I saw someone with explosives strapped to their chest getting on a school bus, I would shoot’.

26. Operation Kratos is widely understood by Londoners as a shoot to kill policy for suspected suicide bombers. There is no public aversion to it being called shoot to kill by the police. A substantial majority see the necessity to have such a policy as a last resort, when other options have been exhausted. There is general appreciation that it is the ‘least worst option’. The public understand that the instant nature of the threat posed by a suicide bomber means that he or she must be incapacitated to such an extent that he or she cannot flick a switch or join two wires in his or her pocket.

27. A minority do not agree with the policy. Comments included: ‘We give the power to judge us to judges; we should not give it to police officers’, ‘It is like the death penalty’, ‘the summary execution of an innocent man by the state cannot be permissible’. Discussions were held as to whether the police might choose to step away from a shoot to kill policy in the same way that some forces are moving away from conducting high-speed car chases.

28. There was universal agreement that the MPS should keep looking around the world for less lethal ways to incapacitate. It was also widely agreed that good intelligence is key to the effective use of Operation Kratos, that the intelligence available to the MPS on 22 July 2005 was defective, and that intelligence arrangements must be improved as a matter of urgency. Clearly, a suspected suicide bomber shot dead by the police takes any useful intelligence with him or her when he or she is killed, thereby frustrating the police’s ability to use that person as a source of human intelligence. As well as sound intelligence, effective communication arrangements are critical in potential ‘life or death’ situations. There was surprise and concern at the realisation that MPS radios do not work underground.

29. There is some confusion amongst the public as to the respective roles and responsibilities of the Designated Senior Officer, with all the available intelligence at his or her disposal, who authorises the use of lethal force, and the individual firearms officer who pulls the trigger. There was a strong sense that individual firearms officers should not be ‘hung out to dry’ or ‘left out on their own’ once they have shot someone and are under investigation. There is sympathy for the officers in question, who have to live with what they have done. There is a wariness of creating a ‘blame culture’ and an appreciation of Dr Shahrar Ali’s observation that ‘the police are agents of the state mandated to enforce the law on our behalf’. One perspective voiced was: ‘Why are we arguing about shoot to kill? We give police guns. Guns kill.’

30. Perceived past MPS secrecy about the Operation Kratos policy was considered problematic. There is a feeling that such secrecy represents a missed opportunity to engage communities in this debate and to send out a clear warning to terrorists. The public were not happy to have been presented with the policy ‘after the fact’. The Chair of the MPA confirmed that: ‘People had no knowledge of the tactics the police had been developing to tackle the new breed of terrorism’. Feelings of deliberate exclusion threaten to erode public support. A lack of information also allows fears in the aftermath of a tragic mistake to fester: a number of parents admitted their reticence now to let their children go out in puffa jackets or with rucksacks. Operation Kratos, inadequately explained, scares some people, and this fear is felt disproportionately by black and minority ethnic communities. The disability community is also concerned that firearms officers should be adequately trained to recognise someone who has a hearing impairment, visual impairment or learning difficulty and that officers should be able to issue a range of cues in addition to verbal commands to ensure they are understood and obeyed.

31. A note of caution was sounded: we must not become fixated on suicide bombing – the terrorists will always find new ways of carrying out their murderous acts. With this in mind, a question was asked about the emerging ACPO guidelines on enforced containment within a cordoned perimeter set up around the site of a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack. The President of ACPO replied: ‘The Civil Contingencies Act does not include powers to contain using force. The Common Law, does, however, permit this… The ACPO guidelines are being developed around Common Law: if a perimeter has to be set up, people will be detained until decontaminated and medically examined’.

Provision of information to the public by the police

32. Some participants still felt terrified by the events of 7 July 2005. A number have not travelled on London Underground since. Others did not feel threatened, and argued that statistically the likelihood of dying at the hands of terrorists is very low. The passage of time was thought to dim people’s concerns.

33. Many felt the information provided to the public by the police on terrorism is lacking and wanted more information to be put into the public domain. Comments passed included: ‘We are part of this debate too’, ‘If you’re going to hide behind the cloak of “it’s sensitive information” then we may as well all go home’, ‘treat us like grown-ups’, and ‘I have been increasingly infuriated when we are told that “we have a massive terrorist threat, but we can’t tell you anything about it”’.

34. The Chair of the MPA highlighted the pertinent dilemma when he said: ‘To discuss publicly some of the intelligence possessed by the police and security services would confound their ability to thwart future potential attacks’. The public appreciate the need not to compromise live operations, endanger lives or break the law, but believe that more information could productively be shared with them without crossing these lines.

35. An MPA member’s public assertion, at the Commissioner’s invitation, that ‘If you knew what we know, you would be really scared’ was not at all well received. Some thought it was not the place of the MPA to act as apologist or mouthpiece for the MPS. Some said that, in the wake of the scandal over the ‘dodgy dossier’ and ‘weapons of mass destruction’ with regard to the invasion of Iraq, it was not good enough for politicians simply to ask people to take their word for it. Some said that ‘if we did know what you know, we might react differently’. Some argued that if we did all have the information that frightened MPA members we would all be more realistic about what we needed to do to stop the terrorists. Some said that information is power, and that the more information communities have, the more power they have to defeat terrorism. Some asked for the sort of private briefing given to MPA members to be given to community representatives as well. A firearms officer commented that he knows less about the intelligence picture than MPA members, and that worries him, as he will be the one who may be asked to pull the trigger. There is a negative response to perceived paternalism on the part of the police in terms of the information they withhold from the public in order not to scare them.

36. Conversely, it was felt that some of the information which was released in summer 2005 was counter-productive. The poor-quality photographs put up in every tube station following 21 July 2005 meant anyone who was black or Asian was suspected: ‘if you were not white, you could be any of those pictured’. Delegates reiterated the importance of the police pitching their response to terrorist attacks in a way that does not alienate any community.

Community engagement

37. DAC Fitzpatrick’s views that ‘community engagement is mission-critical to defeating terrorism’ and that ‘working quickly is only possible when working with relationships on which we have worked and invested previously: the time of crisis is the wrong time to be speaking to someone for the first time’ were widely shared. There is a strong sense that this community engagement must take place at grassroots level, and not just through supposed community leaders.

38. Communities where it was felt community-police engagement was weak included: students and teachers at schools, colleges and universities; small businesses; and women and young people in Muslim and other communities.

39. Some advice offered to the MPS included: reducing the frequency of turnover of Borough Commanders, recognising that community engagement happens at the local level and relies on personal relationships which take time to build; adopting an approach similar to that of Operation Trident to tackle terrorism; consulting communities routinely and not only when it suits the police to do so; seeking out ‘new blood’ and building community members’ capacity to participate, so it is not always the same people taking part in these activities; engaging local Councillors as democratically elected representatives of the people of London; not engaging the Muslim community exclusively.

40. Whilst a variety of ways in which the MPS could improve its community engagement were suggested, it was also recognised that there is an onus on communities too to make the effort to participate. As one frustrated delegate put it: ‘harbouring terrorists is hardly community engagement’. Londoners in this regard are encouraged to sign up to the Diamond Support Group established under the ‘Communities Together’ initiative, at www.police.uk, and to make use of the ‘Communities Together’ 24-hour Helpline on telephone 0800 028 2390. For the MPA’s part, the Deputy Chair insisted that ‘the MPA is committed to ensuring Londoners’ voices are heard’.

41. The terrorists pose a threat not only to London. Many of those killed on 7 July 2005 were visitors to London. The Government must include other parts of the country in this dialogue.

Allied matters

42. Against the backdrop of the new terrorist threat, in the light of which police intervention at an earlier stage is now necessary, other aspects of policing were also discussed. The need to return to community policing was considered to be very important both by community members and by the Commissioner: ‘It won’t be a Special Branch officer from Scotland Yard that first comes across a terrorist; it will be a local officer being given some information by a local person’. A highly visible police presence around London’s travel infrastructure and iconic sites was thought to be desirable. There was no desire whatsoever to arm all police officers. There was an identified need to improve communication from the top of the MPS to the bottom. The idea was mooted of compensation for the innocent who are detained in police custody; such an approach was proposed as self-correcting.

The law

43. Lord Harris posed the question: ‘What is the proportionate change that needs to happen in response to the elevated threat?’. Recent attempts at legislation were roundly criticised, despite Sir John Gieve’s statement that ‘In extending powers to deal with terrorism… we have been very aware of the need to strike the right balance [between liberty and protection]’. The majority opinion seemed to be that identity cards will not help fight terrorism and are an unreasonable infringement of civil liberties. Whilst some lawmaking was criticised on grounds of principle, other laws were criticised on grounds of inefficacy. The opinion was voiced that the law has failed to prevent radical Islamic clergy working the system and preaching hatred. The Commissioner argued that he had ‘sent 24 files to the Crown Prosecution Service for incitement to murder by some of these preachers, of which only one case was regarded as mountable’. Other laws were criticised for their misapplication, such as the use of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to stop Walter Wolfgang once he had been ejected from Labour Party Annual Conference in Brighton and the use of anti-terror legislation to prosecute Maya Anne Evans for reciting the names of British soldiers killed in Iraq outside the gates of Downing Street. The public did not seem to support ACPO in their perceived lobbying of politicians on the proposed introduction of 90 days detention without charge. It was felt to be important that the distinction between the Government and the police remain clear, and that the politicisation of the police was unwanted and unwarranted. The Racial and Religious Hatred Bill was seen by many as needless and in danger of driving difficult speech underground, where it could not be challenged. Others contended that the legal status quo, which recognises Christianity but not other faiths, is unjustifiable.

The media

44. There was considerable animosity displayed towards the media for their coverage of the events of summer 2005. Allegations made against them included: a lack of proportionality in exaggerating the importance of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes and the subsequent IPCC investigations compared to the importance of the terrorist attacks themselves and their effects; use of divisive and unfair terminology such as ‘Islamic Terrorism’ and unhelpfully under-specific blanket terms such as ‘Asian’ or ‘these people hate our way of life’; a lack of caution exhibited in their printing of eye-witness testimonies; obsession with criminals’ parents’ countries of origin, serving no purpose but to vilify and endanger whole sections of the community; caricaturing and dehumanising radical clerics, thereby rendering them absurd; providing terrorists with the oxygen of publicity they crave; and use of the misguided ‘War on Terror’ metaphor, which allows a murderer to call himself a soldier. Some comfort was taken from the attendant journalists acknowledging the responsibility that must go with the attention they command.

Annex A

Together Against Terror? conference schedule

Annex B

Together Against Terror? poll results

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