Diversity issues within the Traffic Operational Command Unit (CO15)

Report: 11
Date: 24 May 2007
By: Assistant Commissioner Central Operations on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

This report outlines the work of the Traffic Operational Command Unit (OCU), provides details of its community engagement activities, examples of monitoring of enforcement activity with regard to disproportionality together with a breakdown of the OCU staff gender and ethnicity and work undertaken to increase under representation.

A. Recommendations

1. Members to note the contents of this updated report.

B. Supporting information

Role of the Traffic OCU

1. The Traffic OCU sits within the Roads Policing Branch (headed by its own commander and comprises of the Traffic OCU, Transport OCU and the Traffic Criminal Justice OCU) and is the strategic and policy lead for roads policing issues. It is a Pan-London OCU with a BWT of 673.5 police officers and 108 police staff based at 7 sites across London.

2. The Branch’s strategic aim is ‘Making London’s roads safer through the engagement of intelligence-led policing, denying criminals the use of the roads, reducing road casualties and maximising available space for lawful road users’.

3. The Traffic OCU’s priorities reflect those of the Association of Chief Police Officers’ (ACPO) Roads Policing strategy, namely:

• denying criminals the use of the road by enforcing the law;
• reducing road casualties;
• tackling the threat of terrorism;
• reducing anti-social use of roads; and
• enhancing public confidence and reassurance by patrolling the roads.

4. The OCU has the sole responsibility for investigating road related death and for the enforcement of regulations in respect of Large Goods Vehicles.

Progress on work to promote Equality and Diversity & progress on Key challenges.

5. The most recent Traffic OCU open day was a success with around 160 people attending. From this 2 additional female members of staff have joined the OCU and a third is due to join. This takes the total number to 50 and increase from 6.2% of police officer strength to 7.4%. In the same period the number of BME police officers has increased by 1 officer.

6. What is more significant is the work these additional staff are employed in. This OCU has changed the way it does business in order to improve the quality of service it delivers to the people of London and enable those who might not traditionally join the OCU to do so.

7. Detective Sergeant Julie Morrow is one of the recent recruits. She now heads up the “payback” (asset confiscation) team. This represents a groundbreaking departure from the traditional approach to traffic policing and she will be a dynamic role model for other female investigators who might not have considered joining the OCU.

8. Others have joined the investigative side of the OCU and this has been the area with the largest growth of female staff.

9. The Diversity Working Group continues to meet. There is no evidence of disproportionality in discipline, police collision appeal decisions or OCU fairness at work cases. Accommodation issues have been addressed to improve the working environment for female staff at Euston where this was a particular problem. There are diversity notice boards at all operational and HQ sites. A number of smaller motor cycles are retained at each Garage for the use of female officers should they prefer to use them. In order to overcome perceptions around motorcycles a slow riding familiarisation day was held at Hendon particularly aimed at overcoming the concerns of female staff.

10. This OCU continues to be represented at recruiting fairs over and above its own open days. We have also run a day at the headquarters building for female staff to raise and discuss issues specific to them and a similar day for BME staff. These groups were open to anyone from these groups on the OCU to attend and duties were arranged accordingly.

11. This OCU requires officers to possess certain key skills in order to function effectively. This limits the pool of people from which police officers can be recruited. It is a pool in which female and BME staff are still under represented. Two steps have been taken to address this. The first is that we have attempted to recruit directly from other forces into the OCU. This has met with limited success. The other is that the requirement for officers to be more than a basic driver has been re evaluated. As a result a limited number of officers who are basic drivers will now be accommodated on the command. This means we may be able to accommodate officers of more junior service and so may be able to recruit more staff from underrepresented groups in the future.

12. We are in the process of creating a short video showing a visual overview of the role of the Traffic OCU. This will include the role of the core relief officer; the collision investigation and ANPR teams; as well as the more extraordinary projects that OCU get involved in such as this year’s Tour De France which comes to the capital for the first time in history. The video seeks to inform potential joiners to the unit about what a traffic officer does. The video will also address diversity issues and other perceived barriers to joining the OCU. Furthermore the video will be used at public road shows and other such events to increase awareness of the work of the Traffic OCU. This will complement the newly revised welcome pack.

13. Finally the OCU is exploring the opportunities for PCSOs and special constables within traffic. These routes are increasingly providing stepping-stones to BME personnel who wish to become regular police officers. It will potentially increase BME representation in the OCU and may lead to increased applications from BME police officers in the future.

14. The OCU continues to monitor the ethnic breakdown of those arrested and stopped and searched by traffic Officers. Of 2061 searches performed by traffic officers 41% were on citizens from a BME group. The remainder were shown as white or unknown.

15. Officers on the Traffic OCU made 5287 arrests in 2006/7 compared to 3,907 in the previous financial year. Of those in 2006/7 a total of 3,889 were generated as the result of ANPR activations. Of the total number of arrests 44% were from BME citizens and 44% were from white citizens. The ethnicity of the remainder is not known.

16. ANPR operations can be considered largely non discretionary in terms of the original encounter. They are predominantly a response to intelligence held on databases concerning vehicles.

17. A further example of the targeted intelligence led approach to stop and search and arrest used by this OCU is Operation Foist, which was run on Hackney Borough for 4 weeks. During that time 202 arrests were made as a direct result of the operation. Of these only 154 could be analysed in detail. Of the 154 analysed 120 (78%) has a recorded history of offending and they had a total of 998 previous convictions between them. Of the 154 analysed arrests 42.9% were African- Caribbean and 31.8% white. During this operation police seized 1894 vehicles from drivers who were either uninsured or did not hold the appropriate licence. This has added to the original rational for the sighting of the operation from the traffic OCU perspective. This was that the area had one of the highest fail to stop collision rates in London. It is also a London Borough with one of the highest child casualty KSI rates in the last 3 years.

Community Engagement and Independent Advisory Group

18. The MPA and IAGs from boroughs have had a standing invitation to attend ANPR Operations.

19. The inaugural MPS Traffic Strategic Consultation Forum was held in Oct 06. Attendees included Road Peace, giving a voice to "victims and their families", key partner agencies in the emergency services and professional road users associations. Also MPA members TfL representatives, and a leading academic on traffic matters. Valued comments from those present were used to help shape the Traffic OCU 2007/8 Policing Plan. The second meeting of the Forum was held in Jan 07 and agreement was reached that all participants would like this consultation process to continue on a quarterly basis. The next meeting is scheduled to take place this month. The make up of this group is still under development but the list of organisations invited is attached at Appendix 1. Those present are there on behalf of organisations representing various road user groups such as cyclists. Of the 27 non-police members 8 are female and there is one BME member. The groups they represent however are diverse in terms of ethnicity and gender.

20. This OCU continues to contribute to local road safety forums and engage on an individual basis with representative groups across the capital. This is likely to be extended to borough based community police consultative groups in the coming year. One further development is this OCU’s membership of a group entitled “Working with Diverse Communities to Improve Road safety in London”. ETHNOS consultants are managing this. The bid has to be in by the 21st of May and the group should begin meeting in July. It is anticipated this group will meet the needs of BME communities more specifically and can feed back into the Strategic Forum once operational.

21. Current consultation has highlighted increasing public concern about anti social behaviour on the roads and a perceived over reliance on technology. No issues of discrimination or disproportionality in their normal sense have been raised to date. Disproportionality in terms of the mode of transport victim in collisions has been an issue. For example of 232 people killed in London in 2006, 43 were motorcyclists. This equates to 19% of the total casualty figure but motorcyclists only account for 2% of road users. In terms of those seriously injured motorcyclists account for 21%.

22. The OCU currently has 14 officers employed on a motorcycle tasking team. Parts of their duties include running Bike Safe courses. Last year this OCU ran 175 courses, training 1547 members of the public.

Monitoring and data accuracy

23. Data accuracy is increasing. At the time of the last report to the EODB a total of 1482 searches had been recorded in the year. This year the total is 2061. Undoubtedly some of this increase is due to more proactive policing by traffic officers engaged in roles necessitating use of the power. However it is believed this is also due to increased diligence in the submission of the relevant forms and positive efforts to ensure they make it from the local garage to the headquarters building.

24. This increased attention to accuracy is further underlined by the proportion of forms where the ethnicity of the person searched is not recorded having dropped by 1% despite an increase in the number of forms received of 39%.

25. New IT systems mean data on arrests made by traffic officers is becoming increasingly reliable.

26. Internally the HR unit monitors diversity statistics and HR staff have membership of all panels and boards to deal with promotion and selection in order to ensure policies are properly followed.

27. Diversity information is monitored and discussed at every SMT meeting.

28. Staff attitude surveys are conducted to monitor perception across a broad range of issues to complement the statistical data gathered as a matter of routine. These are broadly positive with increasing staff participation.

Abbreviations

OCU 

Operational Command Unit

BWT

Budgeted Workforce Target

ACPO

Association of Chief Police Officers

BME

Black & Minority Ethnic

ANPR

Automatic Number Plate Recognition

PCSO

Police Community Support Officer

KSI

Killed & Seriously Injured

IAG

Independent Advisory Group

TfL

Transport for London

PDSU

Police Driving Standards Unit

HR

Human Resources

IT

Information Technology 

C. Race and equality impact

1. The OCU undertook an equality impact assessment for its recruitment processes to increase the number of female and black and minority ethnic (BME) police officers. It did not find that its measures adversely affected any particular group.

2. An equality assessment process was carried out as part of the re-writing of the Police Diver Vehicle Regulations that covered aspects of the work of the Police Driver Standards Unit (PDSU). A separate one is being written know to cover the PDSU process and should be available by mid May.

3. An equality impact assessment has been undertaken and is included in the 2007/8 OCU business plan.

D. Financial implications

1. The OCU has a budget of £42.7m. In the financial year 2006/7 we generated an income of £1.1m.

E. Background papers

None.

F. Contact details

Report author: David Snelling Chief Superintendent, MPS

For more information contact:

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

Appendix 1

Strategic consultation members

• MPA
• Association of London Government
• London Technical Advisors Group
• London Accident Prevention Council
• Transport for London
• Freight Transport Association
• Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS)
• GLA (Mayor’s Office)
• London Fire Brigade
• RoadPeace
• London Ambulance Service
• Confederation of Passenger Transport
• Motorcycle Industry Association
• London First
• Living Streets
• Brunel Law School at Brunel University
• Institute of Advanced Motorists
• VOSA – traffic commisioners
• Queen Mary, University of London
• London Cycling Campaign
• London TravelWatch

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