Recent Tweets
Loading tweets...
The Top Cop: Interview With Sir Hugh Orde
Originally written for the Huffington Post UK.
The most radical changes to the police service in 200 years, combined with massive budget cuts, have left officers “frustrated” - and could soon have a knock-on effect on crime, according to one of the UK’s most senior policemen.
The election of police and crime commissioners in November will alone represent “the biggest change in policing since 1829 without question”, Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), told the Huffington Post UK.
And with 20% budget cuts also looming, it now seems”probable” that crime will rise as a result, Orde said.
The prospect of forced redundancies may even put the right to strike ‘back on the agenda’ for rank and file officers, Orde warned.
Meanwhile, police have come under renewed pressure over racism and corruption, particularly in relation to the media - but Orde insisted the service was not corrupt.
“For the first time officers suddenly feel vulnerable,” he said. “They’ve been doing a good, excellent - outstanding - job, but for no other reason than finance they can suddenly find themselves out of work.
“That’s different, and culturally that’s a huge challenge.”
While arguing that many of the reforms affecting police are still subject to negotiation - and praising the work of officers - Orde said it was now inevitable that profound changes would leave the service vulnerable to future cuts.
Orde spoke to the Huffington Post UK in the week that 30,000 police officers took to the streets to protest against “criminal” budget restrictions, the prospect of forced redundancies and what they see as the “privatisation” of the service.
In an interview on Thursday at Acpo’s offices in Westminster - within earshot of the mass of protesting officers outside - Orde said while crime was down 3% overall nationally it was now possible that reductions in police numbers - thought to be at least 16,000 lost posts by 2015 - would lead to a rise in crime.
“Is it foreseeable that crime will increase if the cuts continue to bite? Answer, yes it probably is,” Orde said. “Or will crime start to increase - yes that is a real possibility. Our job is to keep that to an absolute minimum.
He added: “That gets tougher and tougher.”
Orde said he “fully understands” why officers are worried - but as the president of Acpo, which is made up of 334 officers of the rank of Assistant Chief Constable or above, but not rank and file officers, he admits he may be “increasingly out of touch” with their concerns.
He also said that officers were “equally concerned” with their “personal circumstances” - meaning their own pay and pensions.
Chief officers have been asked to cut 20% from their budgets and are currently preparing to start negotiations with the government over the second part of the Winsor Review of pay and conditions.
Among his recommendations, Winsor concluded that policing needed to attract higher-quality graduates, with a minimum requirement of three A-levels to join the service.
But his report also recommended savings in pay which would cost 40% of officers up to £4,000 per year, cutting starting salaries to £19,000, as well as annual fitness tests and an end to the ban on compulsory redundancies.
Orde said that of all the many changes currently affecting the police, the prospect of forced redundancies was the “most radical”.
He said: “These officers you saw exercising their right to protest - they can’t strike, and they could all have been ordered to work today by their chief and they would have had to have worked - part of the balancing act was because they held an office, they’re not employed, and they have a job for 30 or now 35 years, provided they don’t misbehave or are not performing.
“What Winsor’s recommendation does is change that contract on one end, because it would allow us as chiefs, in extremis, to make people redundant.
“No chief, in my judgement, wants to make anyone redundant. But if one looks at the next CSR period - is it going to be better? Answer, no. If we get hit with 20% cuts again the only way you’ll be able to achieve that is by cutting numbers. “
Does that not put the right to strike back on the agenda?
“I think it does. … But I still firmly believe the last thing they want to do is strike. It just goes against everything they joined for. You cannot stand up and say I want to protect people but I’m not going to come into work.”
Regardless, Orde said, there is still “a greater noise around the right to strike, if not to exercise it”.
A spokesperson for the Police Federation said that it was currently looking at methods for balloting its members on the right to strike.
It is now likely such a ballot will not be held before the autumn, PolFed said — and added any decision not be made “on a whim”.
“The reality is it’s not an easy path, and probably quite a long path,” a PolFed spokesperson said, while adddingthat officers — including some at Thursday’s protests — were openly discussing it, and that reflected the depth of anger at budget cuts.
By the autumn elections will be held to select elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), whose job it will be to oversee 41 forces in England and Wales, replacing Police Authorities.
Orde has previously said he could foresee police chiefs resigning if PCCs affected their “operational independence” - and he stands by that line.
Also concerning, he says, is the quality of candidates that have come forward.
“We’re really waiting now for the parties to nominate [their candidates],” he said. But of the list of current candidates, Orde admitted “I don’t recognise a lot of the names”.
“My sense was the government were looking for some pretty high-profile, qualified individuals who would deliver a completely different style of governance. I’m not sure how happy they will be with some of the lists.”
“For one thing there are a number of police officers on it. I have a big problem with police officers being police and crime commissioners.”
Orde also believes elections will be decided on local issues, leading to a potential conflict at times when forces have to send officers elsewhere in the country - as seen in the riots of summer 2011.
Despite protocols put in place by the government, at Acpo and the Association of Police Authorities’ insistence, the ability to nationally coordinate a response when forces are overseen by locally elected commissioners is still “potentially a tension”, Orde said.
“It’s only as good if people choose - if the PCC says for example I have no confidence in the chief, well you can have all the protocols in the world the relationship’s destroyed.”
In recent weeks police forces across the UK - and the Metropolitan Police in particular - have come under pressure over racism. More than a dozen Met officers are currently suspended facing investigations over allegations of racial abuse, and several are facing charges.
“It’s something you can never take your eye off,” Orde said. “But confidence in the police is rising - look at the evidence, look at the polls. Crime is dropping and confidence is rising.”
“The best indicator of corrupt cops for me - do we prosecute police officers for speeding? All the time. You ask cops in other countries if they’d prosecute another cop for speeding they’d look at you in abject horror.
“Is this an endemically racist police service - no it isn’t. Will you get individuals who behave way outside the bounds of respectability, yes you will.
“You have to do deal with it very robustly, very quickly and very effectively, and my sense is that is what the Met commissioner is doing. … I don’t think there is endemic or institutional racism in policing.”
Orde has recently been the subject of speculation that he may put himself forward for the role of chief constable in Scotland when a reorganisation of its eight current forces into a single command is complete.
Given Orde’s enthusiasm for a similar reforming mindset when it comes to policing in England and Wales, it is perhaps natural that his name has been linked to the role.
Recently Orde gave evidence at a Holyrood committee in which he praised their reforms, and told the Huffington Post that it’s a model he hopes “we learn from that down here and that government look at it very seriously.”
Despite cheekily referring to the speculation (“there’s a good job going there you know…”) Orde insists that he has a job and is “very happy doing it”.
“There’s no advert yet!” he said, of the Scottish role. “I don’t know where my name appeared from, someone is being mischievous I think.
“I’ve never finished a job early… This is a four year post and I’ve done two and a half. There is so much in the national policing agenda where it is essential that a coordinated response from chiefs is clearly and unambiguously delivered to government. And that’s my current job.”
It’s quite some job - and has not come without criticism.
Recently Acpo came under pressure after it was revealed it paid large consultancy fees, some up to £1,100 per day, to former police chiefs.
Acpo has since launched a review of how the amounts were reached and how the consultants were selected - though Orde rejects the claim of “corruption” made by a backbench MP.
“Our expenditure on consultants is peanuts,” he said. “If you look at what government spends on consultants, we hardly spend anything on consultancy, it’s not a big story, it’s a mischievous story.”
Despite those issues, next week Orde - as well as Home Secretary Theresa May - will speak to the Police Federation’s annual conference.
So what can he tell those officers who he said have never felt as vulnerable as they do now?
“[Officers] see the government as overly critical… they sense their work is not acknowledged,” he said.
“There is a sense they feel let down. But our job as leaders is to lead them through it.
“And I’ll be absolutely straight with them and tell them we have to get on with delivering regardless of our personal circumstances because that’s what we’re paid to do.”
The Terror Drug?
Originally written for The Huffington Post.
A legal - and potentially lethal - Somalian drug and cafe culture taking root in British cities may may be the next battleground in Britain’s fight against terrorism, experts have claimed.
Khat is a green-leafed shrub which when chewed and mixed with saliva produces a mild amphetamine high. It has long been used in Yemen, Somalia and other African countries but is now widely banned in the West, including the Netherlands, generally known for its liberal drugs policy.
In the UK, however, khat is legal, and it is widely available. It costs about £4 to buy a bundle of the stringy green plant wrapped in banana leaves, and is available from supermarkets located in the Somalian communities found in London, Bristol, Birmingham and other cities.
More than 100,000 people of Somali origin live in the UK, according to most estimates. A 2005 Home Office report found more than half of Somali men in the UK used khat, and that almost 80% used more than they did in Somalia.
According to people who use it, khat makes users feel energetic, chatty and confident. In 2008 a (predictably effusive) reporter for Vice magazine took khat and wrote later that after about 10 hours of constant chewing he “felt certain that I could chat up any chick and win any argument. Instead of pretending to throw a punch as a joke, I got all hyper and threw a chair”.
Like most drugs khat has significant medical side effects. According to drugs advice website Frank,its use can cause insomnia, delusions, high blood pressure, anxiety and even mouth cancer. Most studies say that khat is also addictive, and can produce withdrawal symptoms.
But in the context of the Somalian civil war, critics say, khat isn’t just harmful - it’s deadly.
Every aspect of the drug, from its production and export to the cafes where it is sold and chewed, has been linked to the al-Shabaab terrorist group which on Wednesday carried out another deadly suicide bombing in Somalia.
The khat cafes (‘mafrishes’) where the drug is usually taken are often almost impossible to find unless you know where to look, and are hidden behind locked shop shutters or unmarked doors.
Critics say they are increasingly acting as recruiting stations for the al-Shabaab terrorist network, and many mafrishes are reportedly hostile to outsiders. The Huffington Post UK was advised not to even attempt to enter.
Abukar Awale, a Somalian in the UK who is campaigning to ban khat, says that the cafes snare young, vulnerable and usually unemployed Somali men, for whom the legal high leads to a circle of “pain and suffering”. And as the most prominent Somalian critic of khat publicly calling for it to be banned in Britain, Awale says he has been threatened by those involved in its sale.
A former addict himself, he told the Huffington Post that as a user “you wake up at 3 in the afternoon, you’re awake all night chewing it, and you go back to bed in the morning and in order for you to function, to feel that your confidence is up, you have to chew again.”
Young users at the mafrishes can fall into a life of crime, Awale argues (“soon enough they’re selling minor drugs just to support the habit”) and while on khat are more vulnerable to radicalisation. He points to two British citizens who were recently arrested in Kenya suspected of working for the terrorist groupas an example of the type of people being targeted by fundamentalists. Two other British Somalis, 18 and 20 years old, have also been reported missing in recent weeks and are suspected to be in Somalia fighting for al-Shabaab.
“There is paranoia that grows inside them,” Awale said. “They think everyone is out to get them… They develop a lot of anger and hate towards police and the British public”
“That’s exactly the people that al-Shabaab are targeting now.”
Even outside the mafrish the wider social consequences of khat are hugely damaging says Dalmar Osman, who is the director of the Somali Development Group, which works with young Somalis in Bristol.
“The majority of the Somali male figures who chew it don’t have a lot to say in the family household [because they become disengaged] which then for the young people makes a real impact,” he said. “They are losing their male role model, and that plays a role in radicalisation and extremism, especially in Somalia itself.”
Osman is holding a four-day event in London this Aprilto educate young Somalis on the dangers of khat, and to inspire them to break the deadly cycle of unemployment and depression.
“It’s not a cultural issue,” he said, of the prospect of khat being banned. “If a young person starts chewing, which is not uncommon, it puts you a position where anything wrong becomes right in your eyes and it becomes easy for them to go in a bad direction, or a criminal direction.”
The production and sale of khat is also thought to fund the terrorist networks attempting to prey on British youth.
The plant is imported, usually from Kenya, four times a week via Heathrow, with less frequent imports from Ethiopia and Yemen. In 2010 HMRC said that more than 57 tonnes of khat was imported- on which it collected £2.9m in VAT.
Sources also told the Huffington Post UK that senior al-Shabaab leaders were formerly involved in illegally exporting khat from the UK to the countries where it is banned and were running some of the cafes themselves. The HMRC also admits that a “small percentage” of the khat imported legally is later exported to countries where it is banned - making huge profits for the criminals linked to terrorist networks who sell it.
A report by the Royal United Services Institute said western security and intelligence agencies face new challenges“as jihadism evolves and disperses into territories of ungoverned, or loosely governed, space across large stretches of the African continent”.
“Most significant is the potential for radicalisation and then mobilisation of a new subset of British youths,” wrote the author of the report, Tina Soria.
She told the Huffington Post UK that British Somali extremists can be more valuable to al-Shabaab than locals because they are more likely to agree to carry out suicide bombings. Several British and American citizens have been killed in Somali attempting to carry out suicide bombings.
“The issue of that community not being integrated or alienated in some way is the perfect profile of a possible terrorist or extremist. But economic and social factors play a major role too,” she said.
The threat of a British individual inspired by al-Shabaab committing an attack in the UK is real, she added, even if it doesn’t come as a direct order from the group’s leaders in Africa.
Amid all of this criticism there are increasing calls from politicians and campaigners to ban the drug for good. A previous government study in 2005 said that the drug should not be controlled, but following further research in 2011 it decided to take another look. The Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs is currently conducting a studybased on which the government will decide if it should be taken off the shelves.
But some argue that banning khat would just embolden the same terrorist networks currently suspected of benefiting from its legalsale.
Axel Klein, an expert witness for the ACMD’s 2005 report, recently told the BBCthat banning khat could create “an organised crime syndicate to start-up from nowhere”.
And in the opinion of many Somalis, khat cafe culture is just a healthy part of a normal social life. Khat may be addictive, but among those who use it many live otherwise normal lives.
When a group of councillors from Brent went to visit a local mafrishearlier this year they described a friendly and positive atmosphere, where “the communal nature of chewing khat was obvious – unlike in a pub, where people tend to talk to their friends, everyone in the room was sitting in a circle talking”. Most of the men there visited after work, they said, and mainly chatted about sports, Somali politics and their everyday lives.
Despite this experience Brent council decided to impose a “voluntary agreement” with retailers to restrict its sale to under-18s and to increase awareness about its health risks.
Somalis in the UK remain divided on the issue - and on whether adding yet another substance to the growing list of illegal highswill make the difference to a community blighted by unemployment, poverty and violence.
“I think no need to intervene,” one Somali khat user said in a recent study on attitudes to its use. “The government is not banning alcohol which is more harmful. Khat users are not intoxicated and can work and drive a car without a problem. So why not ban alcohol first?”
And as a recent Middlesex University study pointed out, when dealing with Somalia and its brutal recent history of violence, civil war, forced migration and poverty, isolating khat as the cause of all its ills is likely to prove shortsighted.
