Appendix 1

Stop and Search Working Group – 11 July 2013

Transcript of Item 5: Stop and Search

Jenny Jones (Chair): It is good to see you here and this is obviously an issue that is very topical at the

moment. We did plan this some months ago so it has been quite interesting to see it popping up in the

news. Perhaps I can start by asking you to introduce yourselves and say what your roles are.

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Yes, I am Andrew

Morgan, Superintendent in charge of the Metropolitan Police Service Stop and Search team and based at

Empress State Building. I have been in charge of the team since July last year, so one year this month.

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Duwayne

Brooks, the Deputy Mayor for Policing’s critical friend on stop and search.

Jenny Jones (Chair): I understand your work is voluntary, you are not paid in any way?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): No, it is all

voluntary work, all for the community.

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): Good afternoon.

Matthew Gardner, I am the Borough Commander for Brent in northwest London where I have been in

charge for the last three years.

Jenny Jones (Chair): Thank you. Mr Morgan, would you like to tell us how you think stop and search

has changed?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): When the current

Commissioner came into the service, and Mr [Craig] Mackey his deputy, they were aware that there was

quite significant concern in the communities about how stop and search was taking place in London, the

volume of the search, it was seen as ineffective, the outcome rate was not good. They went through a

consultation process, they spoke to many people, recognised these concerns, and from what they were

told they came up with this strategy, the STOP IT Strategy. This they believed was an appropriate

strategy to deliver all the outcomes they were seeking, which was improved performance around

reducing the volume, focusing the activity we were taking across London to achieve a better outcome

rate. By outcome rate that is a combination of arrest, the issue of cannabis warnings and the issue of

fixed-penalty tickets for public disorder.

The strategy was devised and then my team which is already in place, it has been in place for a number

of years, I actually came on to the team after STOP IT was devised, so some five months after it was

launched. It was launched in February last year by the Commissioner personally who gave a presentation

on what his vision for the future would be. Mr Mackey reaffirmed that this is around about a five-year

vision to deliver everything that we need to deliver. The process then was followed up by briefings led

by Mr Mackey, and Mr Gardner was one of the people who delivered that session to the senior officers in

the service. That was the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) officers and Borough Commanders

I believe, at an event in February. Then they were tasked to go away and cascade the message down to

every single officer in service, including special constables.

Jenny Jones (Chair): I was going to ask if you have had some feedback from officers about whether or

not they feel you have made stop and search a less-effective tool for them to use?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): No. I think it is fair to

say we have confused some of our officers because they thought we had been giving mixed messages.

In recent months my team has actually been going out to the various boroughs to deliver the message

ourselves. Each borough has a stop and search lead at senior management level and they, probably

below them, have a structure, including inspectors, who help to deliver that message to all the officers

and to supervise what they are doing to ensure the vision is actually being delivered.

From my perspective, we have gone out to the boroughs, we know from some of the messages we got

back that officers were confused around some issues. There was a clear acceptance they knew what the

message was and what we were trying to achieve. In support of what the Home Secretary said the other

day, the Metropolitan Police Service has brought the volume down considerably. At the same time,

through a change in the way we use stop and search, it is a bit more focused, it is more intelligence-led.

We have improved the outcome rate to the latest figures I was given today for June, it has risen again to

21.8%, so that is roughly just over one in five stop and search results and one of those positive

outcomes.

Jenny Jones (Chair): What impact has it had on the Metropolitan Police Service operationally, this

change?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Operationally, when you

have 30,000 officers and a number of thousand special constables, it is a big message to get over to

everybody. A considerable amount of effort has gone into briefing officers, whether that be by

individual supervisors or in team meetings, or larger meetings. It was left to each borough to decide

what was best for them so it did not impact on operational policing and delivery of policing every day,

with some reinforcement, as I said, from our team going out when it was required. I am sure that

Mr Gardner and others did unique things themselves as well to get the message over. We used all that.

There have been lots of things using e-briefing, so in emails, briefings on our website. The

Commissioner and other ACPO officers have given messages in the media and on the national news.

Jenny Jones (Chair): If you are not doing as much stop and search then you must be doing more of

something else. I mean are you doing more talking, more patrolling?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Yes, it might be that

when officers formulate their grounds to do a search, it may have been in the past that officers were too

quick to actually go into the search phase. The key part of the message has been where we are saying,

“Look, by following all the methods that a good professional police officer has open to him, you might

actually negate the need to search, so let us question more, let us see what the response is”. There

might be a valid reason for negating what the officer may be suspecting of that person, which could lead

to it just being a stop and an account or it may need no further action or an apology, a “Thank you very

much, sir”, and the person goes on their way.

Jenny Jones (Chair): Great. Mr Brooks, Duwayne, what is your reaction to what you have heard?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Well that is

the Metropolitan Police Service’s perception, is it not? The perception out in London is that stop and

search has not improved, basically. If we just look at the recent reports, the same things keep coming

up, supervision, unlawful stops, training, poor engagement, and that has been the same for the past

20 years. The Metropolitan Police Service can talk about target rates. If we look at the stops, they say

that stops have fallen from 500,000 to 350,000 stop and searches, but what does that mean? What are

we trying to say here? Then you ask the critical question, what are they doing instead? If they are not

doing all these stops, what are they actually doing? That is what the general public is talking about.

Also, they say that they have got a 20% target rate for positive stops. Now, how are they achieving

that? That is happening in a sense overnight. How has that happened? What some of the young

people are saying is that the police officers are not filling in slips. When they get a negative stop they do

not fill in their slips and when they get a positive stop they do. Now, for me, the Metropolitan Police

Service has not done enough to tackle that rumour because at this moment in time it is a rumour. We

have not got any concrete facts, we have not got any evidence per se. However, when you look at that

and you take a look at the figures, it is an explanation of why the stop and search stopped, why the

stops have gone down and why the positive stop rates have gone up.

Jenny Jones (Chair): Do you think that it is a case that the police officers may be confused and so

they are just using whatever they can and getting mixed up?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Well, how

many times are we going to hear excuses about training and supervision? That is another excuse about

training, is it not, an officer being confused. That is what you have supervision for, that is what you have

inspectors for, and they should be talking to police constables (PC) and sergeants about what is

happening when an officer is conducting a stop and search.

Jenny Jones (Chair): Where do you go for your feedback? You are talking about what the public

thinks; where do you get that information?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Well, every

borough has a community monitoring network group, we have one in Lewisham and it is well attended.

What happens is our young people will come along to our meetings and they will engage because it is an

environment where they feel secure, they feel confident and they trust the people that are there. They

give us the feedback about what is happening in Lewisham, and there are other monitoring groups where

they have the same process and they get the feedback too. That is how we get the feedback about

what is happening in London.

Jenny Jones (Chair): Who is “we”?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): What we

have, as I said, we have effectively boroughs, and every single borough has a community monitoring

network group. All the Chairs then meet here now under the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime

(MOPAC), so we have a community monitoring network group of all the Chairs. They bring the

feedback about what is happening in their boroughs, they bring that to MOPAC and I am working with

MOPAC so I get that feedback.

Jenny Jones (Chair): The Mayor’s Office knows about what you are saying now?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Yes.

Roger Evans (AM): Councillor Brooks, one of the ways that malpractice is often highlighted by young

people these days is when they film what has happened to them in the street. We have had cases of

people phoning things on mobile phones, which have become public. Do you have any mechanism for

keeping track of what is going on in social networks, Youtube and places like that, to see if there is other

evidence? While people may be able to film what is happening very easily, quite often they will not

necessarily have the knowledge of the way the hierarchy works to progress that further. There may

actually be pieces of evidence out there, which are not feeding through the very formal structure, which

you seem to be telling us about.

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Well I do

not think MOPAC has the resources right now to be looking at, trawling through social media to find out

about issues about stop and search. That is why we have the monitoring groups, and what we want to

do is encourage people to attend those. What would also help was if Assembly Members were to

contribute and remind people about the stop and search monitoring groups in their boroughs also.

Jenny Jones (Chair): I think you will find some of us do.

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Some of

you do, some of you do not.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): I want to just explore with Councillor Brooks, he talks as if to say there

are 32 community monitoring networks. If there are, when did they start, because there have never been

32 community monitoring networks.

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Well there

should be. Every single borough should have.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): Yes, I know that you are saying there should be; I would just like the

facts of it. If we were to contact MOPAC there would be records in terms of how many borough

community monitoring networks are feeding in, and the Chairs?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Yes.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): Because I would say to you it is the generalised term that you are using.

I can well imagine there will be some boroughs that will have these networks, but I could almost bet that

there will be other boroughs that will not, and I would just like to know factually what is going on. Will

MOPAC have that information?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Yes, they

will have the monitoring groups, which hold the police to account, but they may not have a function, an

engagement group, that may be the difference.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): It may also be language. I think maybe if we are clear about what people

are calling what that would help us. We will get in touch with MOPAC.

Jenny Jones (Chair): Just a last couple of questions to Mr Morgan. What do you say to this, that

police officers are just not recording the stops? That is quite a serious charge actually, even if it is done

in confusion.

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): There is no defence to

that. Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, every stop and search should be recorded. Obviously

stopping a car is a different issue. In the Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) report that

was published this week the HMIC have intimated there is a level of officers not filling in the forms. We,

on my team, recognised that ourselves before HMIC had done their inspection that there was an element

that officers were failing to put forms in. We inspected a number of our systems to try and find out why.

We did find some issues that, for example, using the national custody computer that we use, we were

finding people had been arrested, taken into custody, but because the officer was busy doing all the

other things they never actually completed the stop slip and put it on to the database. We are actually

finding negative reports there. That sort of came out when we were looking at the outcome rates.

As Duwayne said, I do not doubt the accuracy of what he is saying, there probably are officers who have

failed to put stop searches in. Why they did that I do not know. It may be they have just forgotten to

do it. They did not do it because they were finishing duty and were going to do it next time and they

did not. I accept what he says that there is an element of officers not doing it.

Jenny Jones (Chair): We will come back to this probably at another meeting, so thank you for that

evidence. There is just one more thing. When you record data, we know for example how many stop

and searches were for cannabis and we know how many stops had a positive outcome on cannabis, but

we do not know if that is the same thing. We do not know if perhaps people were stopped for cannabis

and a knife was found, or they were stopped for cannabis and nothing was found. Do you record the

data like that so that we can actually see if you are stopping people and then the outcome is for the

same reason as the stop?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Yes. The data around

cannabis or drugs, there are two ways of doing that. There is a cannabis warning, which you clearly

know.

Jenny Jones (Chair): No, I know, it is not about that, it is more about, is there a positive outcome for

the same reason you stopped them?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): No, there can clearly be

a difference. For example, I stop someone from grounds, somebody has observed someone perhaps

waving a knife around, I therefore speak to that person, I am satisfied it is the right person that I have

been given the information about. I “GO WISE” - which is the mnemonic we use to give grounds,

objective, etc- tell them I am going to search them for a knife. I search them, but in between the time I

have been told this information they may have given the knife away, they may have hidden it, they may

not have had a knife, the person might have misconceived what they saw. However, in that search, it is

quite possible that person has another unlawful item on them. In doing the search I might find drugs, I

might find stolen property, which could be a SatNav from a car, could be stolen credit cards, could be

items used to go and commit another crime, a tool to be used for breaking into cars or houses. If you

actually find something that is another offence then you are obviously not going to let them go, you are

going to arrest them for the offence that might be linked to. If it is a weapon, you are going to arrest

them for having an unlawful weapon.

Jenny Jones (Chair): It is more about having the link, being able to read the data properly so that we

can see that, you know, if there are 40% of stops that result in cannabis, if that was the reason that they

were stopped in the first place.

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): The answer

to your question is, yes, you do get the breakdown of those figures. We have had the breakdown in

Lewisham for quite some time actually. If I was to give you some figures from this time 2011, for

example, we have, “Reason for search”, say, “Stolen property or drugs”, total searched, total arrested,

and then you would have the reason for arrest, if they were arrested, so if a positive outcome you know

why. For example, we have got one drug search, the reason for search was drugs but they got arrested

for having stolen property, so you can get the breakdown. However, it is borough-wide, it is borough

level you have to get the breakdown for.

Jenny Jones (Chair): Thank you very much, because that is quite an issue.

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Yes,

because one of my issues was we were having lots of people being stopped but then they were arrested

for a public order offence. I was trying to ask the Metropolitan Police Service, can they give me a

breakdown per borough because if then they had been arrested for a public order offence then

something has gone wrong in that encounter.

Jenny Jones (Chair): Absolutely.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): Unless it is the section that has been used.

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Can you

repeat, sorry?

Jenny Jones (Chair): Unless they were stopped for a public order offence. But you are saying it is

not, yes, very interesting. Yes.

Joanne McCartney (AM): Can I just press this issue about officers not filling in their proper recording

of stop and search encounters. You suggested that is going on and it is because they forget because

they are at the end of a shift or whatever. Do you have any indication about what the scale of that is?

Can you say it is 1%, 2% of encounters that are recorded?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Personally, when we did

our internal look at that, we suspect it might be around about 5% or 6%. The HMIC inspection indicates

they think it is slightly higher, but obviously they have taken a national perspective and it was not just

Metropolitan Police Service alone. I gave those reasons as possible reasons why they do not go in. I

accept there could be a reason, unacceptable reasons why they have not put them in, but obviously,

unless the person makes a complaint or actually asks for a copy of that search, we probably would not

know that encounter ever took place if it was a one-to-one.

Joanne McCartney (AM): Unless someone complained.

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Yes, or there was some

other way of knowing it took place, if it was on closed-circuit television (CCTV), as you said, or

somebody used their camera on their phone or some other camera to record the incident.

Joanne McCartney (AM): Can I ask, the target that has now been set that when you do a stop and

search you should have a certain percentage result in arrest, is that in danger of making that situation

worse? Because a target has been given, that is actually going to make non-recording more prevalent?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): No, I do not think so.

When STOP IT was devised and the targets were set of 20% positive outcome rate, the intention was to

reduce the number of ineffective ones by actually using all the information available to us through

intelligence, through targeting, through, as I said earlier, asking more detailed questions. Through those

questions you may not need to search because the person has satisfied you they have a lawful purpose

or there is no reason to search. We were satisfied, through the promotion and compliance with the

programme, that we could achieve the target through positive performance as opposed to - as you

intimate - negative performance of actually not putting slips in.

Joanne McCartney (AM): One thing that the HMIC did say that links to what Councillor Brooks has

said is that they found there were disturbingly low levels of supervision. We know that the Metropolitan

Police Service in its new local policing model is changing that level of supervision further, so we are

going from one of the highest supervision rates in the country to one of the lowest supervision rates in

the country. Does that give you cause for any concern?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Obviously, as you said,

the local policing model, 16 of the boroughs two weeks ago changed their ways of working. What that

means is there is a smaller number of officers dedicated to 999 emergency response, but there are more

officers dedicated to the neighbourhoods element of that and direct contact with the community.

Joanne McCartney (AM): But not supervisors.

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): No, the supervisor ratio

is lower but the availability of the supervisors right throughout the day ensures that no neighbourhood

team will not have any supervision present. There will be supervisors, there will be inspectors above the

first-line sergeant supervisor, who will be intrusive in making sure their officers are doing what they

should be doing, and obviously when the officers produce their records actually supervising.

Joanne McCartney (AM): Councillor Brooks, does that give you cause for concern if the supervisory

ratios are reducing in the Metropolitan Police Service?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): In terms of

stop and search, of course it does. If we had higher levels of supervision and we have had these issues

and it is going to be reduced then the issues are going to increase. The burden then comes back to us as

members of the public or politicians, councillors, Assembly Members, it is for us then to improve our

community monitoring network groups locally. That way, if we have young people coming in who feel

confident and can trust the process, they will help us to hold the police to account locally. We in

ourselves, we can do the supervision.

Joanne McCartney (AM): Thank you, and I would like to ask one more final question to

Chief Superintendent Gardner. Just returning a little to Jenny’s question about the confusion that

perhaps was caused with officers on the ground as to what the messages were coming out. Did you find

that in Brent, and I suppose what did you do to remedy it if it was the case?

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): I think it would be

naive to sit here and say there is not an issue here with leadership and communication in such a large

organisation of 30,000-plus police officers. It is an issue that is a difficult message to get out.

Councillor Brooks alleges to that fact, this is an issue about perception as communities, and our officers

are the ones that deal with those issues on the street on a day-to-day basis.

Raising your point there around supervision, leadership and the capacity of supervisors in London to do

that under the local policing model, we have had to look at this differently. I have been asked to come

this afternoon to talk about what Brent is doing. We have utilised volunteers, over 100 volunteers at

Brent who go through and check stop and search records on a regular basis, over 200 per month, which

at the moment is about 15% of what we do at Brent. They feed that back to the supervisors. It is not

doing the role of the supervisor, it is checking, a balance role to assist supervisors to say, “This one has

fallen through the gap” - as you were saying there - and raising those issues for supervisors to take that

up with that individual officer.

Once we are at that position, taking that further down the line, we then have a checking compliance

system for officers at Brent whereby, if we notice standards are dropping in relation to certain areas, stop

and search being one, that comes up on a tracker that is reviewed on a weekly basis. That enables us to

have the conversation with that officer, to develop them, train them, or ultimately sanction them if

things are not going right.

Joanne McCartney (AM): Can I ask, the use of volunteers, is that a recent initiative or is that

something you have done for a while?

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): No, that has been

going on for well over a year at Brent.

Joanne McCartney (AM): That sounds really quite innovative actually, yes.

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): If we asked

32 Borough Commanders around the table here, we would all have similar stories of the way that we are

improvising and thinking outside the box to address some of these challenges, to be open, fair and

transparent. This is about the policing of the communities that we are here to serve, we do that through

our officers. My officers on the front line deliver performance for us and there is no better way than to

have members of the community coming in and being a checking system for us in relation to that.

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): If I could add to that.

One of my first actions when I came to the team last year was to actually get a message out to the

community monitoring network and other monitoring networks to say there is an open invitation for you

to approach your Borough Commanders and say, “Can we come in and supervise an element, look at an

element of the stop and search records”, and actually give us positive feedback. By that I mean whether

it was positive or negative, give us feedback with an independent view of that. A number of boroughs

have taken that up and Brent is one of them.

Joanne McCartney (AM): That is really good, but I can see that Councillor Brooks wants to come in at

this point. I suppose it is asking people to contact their Borough Commanders for an invitation, is it

always forthcoming?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Well, I

cannot answer for all the Borough Commanders, but I know there have been issues with some local

groups that they do not get anybody from the police turning up. I know that happens. It is great to

hear that is what is happening in Brent. Are you involved in the local stop and search group, does the

chair of the local stop and search group know what is happening in Brent? Because I think that is where

it all boils down to. The police can be doing what they want to do independently I suppose, like

anybody else, but how are you getting the feedback from the monitoring groups whose job it is to get

the feedback from the members of the public in that borough?

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): I am involved in

the local stop and search group, we have about ten members on that. Eighteen months ago we had the

youngest stop and search group chair in the United Kingdom (UK). It is presently chaired by our

independent advisory group chair. My leadership team members are the stop and search leads for the

borough. I have been involved on a more strategic level cross-borough working with the local Member

of Parliament (MP) at search forums. That was a session probably 14-15 months ago where fantastically

we had about 70-80 young people turn up from all backgrounds and I actually got some really tough

questions at that session. I could feel the atmosphere.

From that I was openly challenged, would I be willing to work with young people to develop an app to

enable young people to give feedback about their experience of stop and search, and that was a direct

challenge from my local MP. “Of course I would, why would I not want to do that?” was my response.

We have worked with those young people. Actually the young guys that have done it have distanced

themselves from us because they need to be seen to be independent from the police of course or else it

does not have the validity. That report has been mentioned in the HMIC inspection. It needs to

progress, they need some support on that, but there have been about 4,000 people who have

downloaded this app and that enables us - myself and the other fellow Borough Commanders across the

UK - to actually get that direct feedback from the community. People who have been stopped at the

time (a) they want to give us that feedback, you know, they do not have to do it through a complaints

system, which, if we put our hands up to that, that can be long, laborious, has not got the trust and

confidence of the community to come in and complain about it, hand on heart, from the feedback I have

had from young people, probably not on many occasions. Certainly that is an avenue that I think the

Committee would be interested in looking at. HMIC inspection have been interested in looking at it and

it enables certainly young people, or anybody stopped out on the streets of London, to give their

feedback.

If we raise the level sufficiently of that, part of that process is, “What is the officer’s shoulder number?”

Now we get to a point whereby officers who have given shoulder numbers, that enables the senior leads

to say, “OK, you have done 17 stops in the last two months, you have had 4 complaints, and actually

there is a current theme here that you are aggressive or disrespectful, etc”. That opens the door to a

conversation about that and that is a tool that we do not have because we do not have that feedback

directly from the community at this moment in time. I think that is something to look forward to in the

future.

Jenny Jones (Chair): With that, we are going to come on to variations in performance between the

boroughs.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): Thank you, Chair. I wanted to pick up, because we have heard that

overall, since STOP IT has come in, we have seen a 40% reduction in the volume of searches, but that

hides that there is a lot of difference between the boroughs. I wonder whether, Superintendent Morgan,

you can clarify which boroughs are meeting the Commissioner’s targets and which might be holding back

overall performance?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): The document I am

looking at here is actually the latest figures, the June data, which was released this week, so I can

actually give you the most recent figures. Of the 32 boroughs, the volume, I think there are four

boroughs at the moment who are not actually reducing in volume, the other 28 have. The four boroughs

were Hammersmith and Fulham, Havering, Bromley and I do not know who the fourth was, I did not

write it down.

Jenny Jones (Chair): We used to get those reports; I quite miss them.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): The list I have, I am not sure when our data was collected, we have got

May’s data that shows there are large increases in Tower Hamlets, Southwark and Brent actually.

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): I am talking, sorry,

rolling period as opposed to individual month.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): Right, OK, so the rolling period, Hammersmith and Fulham, Havering,

Bromley and one other.

Jenny Jones (Chair): Let us know.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): The one other. They have seen a significant increase?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): I would not say

significant increase, but it is an increase on the volume of the previous year.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): OK, but the ones when we saw the monthly basis, the ones we had

seen for May, Tower Hamlets, Southwark and Brent, it was over 30% increase, which seems quite

considerable. What are you doing to work with boroughs to find out what is going on?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): What we do now, when

we see significant variants, my team actually have a look at the figures and provide a commentary to my

senior officers of why that has taken place. That could be down to that month that borough actually

used section 60 authorities a number of times related to, I think it was knife crime incidents, where an

authority was given without having to provide grounds to search for weapons. Obviously that would be

a number of searches done linked to that authority and for the period of time it was running. Therefore,

if the overall numbers through use of section 1 powers is coming down, but a number were done using

section 60, that would take that volume back up again.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): That is why some of the boroughs may be over 30% increase in a

month, because of those?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Yes, it can change quite

significantly in a month for a particular borough. This month’s figures for section 60, Westminster is the

borough that used it most, it was only authorised seven times, but four of those authorities were for

Westminster. I actually was one of the authorising officers for one of those. I was on night duty shift,

there had been a stabbing where a young man had been stabbed six times, it was believed to be gang

related, it was on a border between where these two groups would live, so there were a number of

people in the area. The inspector gave an immediate authority for that and then contacted me, as our

policy says, explained to me why he had authorised it, and I ratified that for another four to six hours,

until about 3.00am in the morning, until all of the people -- because we were fearful that there might be

a reprisal and another one or more persons might have been stabbed. Therefore that authority was

given to prevent that happening.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): OK, but clearly you, and your team, are analysing the performance of

the boroughs. Working out where there is an increase, why, if there is a particular reason. What if a very

good reason like that, it just seems to be going up, do you talk to the borough about that, talk to the

officers concerned?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Hammersmith are

probably the borough who have had the highest, and that is a positive leadership decision by the senior

leadership team and Borough Commander of that borough. They have specific reasons why they have

done that. They have gang-related issues, they have street crime issues, so they have made a conscious

effort to use that power to actually reduce or detect those types of crime. We do know, it has not just

happened out of thin air, it was done for a specific reason with the full knowledge and control of the

senior leadership team.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): Does the Metropolitan Police Service set actual targets for how many

searches or how many arrests individual officers should make? Do you actually set targets for them?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Absolutely not. The

Commissioner has been very clear. You are quite right, if we set individual targets, say, “You must

achieve ten”, and you have to achieve it by tomorrow and you have only done five, that could easily lead

to five inappropriate stops being done because you have to achieve ten. There are no targets. Where

there could be targets is if you have a newly recruited officer who has come out on to the street, every

officer has to prove themselves competent in all the use of their powers and the way they engage with

the communities. There are instances where a borough could quite rightly say to a probationary officer,

“In this month, we expect you to do five stop and search encounters”, which will either be supervised in

person by a mentoring officer or a supervising officer, and obviously then the scrutiny of the paperwork

they completed after that, to ensure they are competent. That is where it would be valid to give a

target, but the clear message from the Commissioner and ACPO down to our leads and others is the fact

they should not be setting individual targets for individual officers or team targets.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): Good.

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): We have anecdotally

had information fed back to our team that that has happened, so we reinforced the message by letting

the Borough Commander know that officers have fed that information back to us. Or it might have been

that we have gone out to the borough and we have been told that in person, so that the lead and the

Borough Commander can actually enforce the message on behalf of the Commissioner and clarify why

that has taken place.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): Presumably a probationary officer, if they were given a target of five in

a month and actually they did not come across five in a month, they would not be disciplined or in

trouble because they have not met that target. There was not an appropriate time to use it.

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Myself and Matt would

have gone through the same thing - 30 years ago for me - but you had to do certain things before, at

the end of your probation, you became confirmed in the rank of constable. You had to achieve and

prove your proficiency in the various elements. Therefore yes, there is quite easily an officer who might

have been set a target for the month, you might find yourself on inside duties for a month, you could be

gaoler or station officer, where you had no opportunity to positively, with grounds, to conduct stop and

search. That would be clearly recognised by the supervisor because they would know that they are

supervising that officer personally. Or, like Brent and others, we have mentoring schemes, whose mentor

would be with that officer when they were conducting those searches, and would obviously be able to

advise and intervene if the officer was not behaving or dealing in a correct way.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): OK. If I move to Councillor Brooks, Duwayne, what do you think

explains this wide variation between London boroughs and how can we try and achieve sort of

consistency of approach across London?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): I think it

would be very difficult to have consistency across the boroughs because each borough has their own

issues around crime. Yes, we know some boroughs are similar, but what we have not seen, and we

cannot get from the figures, is what different operations have been taking place in those boroughs. For

example, in Lewisham we have an issue with burglary. Sometimes we have extra resources coming into

the borough and those officers could conduct a number of stops as well, which would increase the

average stops on the borough on a monthly basis. It is very difficult to (1) have consistent numbers of

stop and search across London, and (2) to just take up the figures and say, “Well there must be an

issue”, because we do not know what is happening locally in the boroughs.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): OK. You, through your role, are looking at the borough breakdowns

and flagging where you think there are any issues?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Yes, we will

be. We will be looking at those figures.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): Brilliant, OK. How do you think individual officers might be better held

to account? We heard from Brent about work that has been going on there where you look at feedback

and approach specific officers. I think Leicestershire has done something similar to that, and Thames

Valley Police possibly as well where they look at prolific users, officers that carry out stop and search

more, and talk to them about it and work through it with them. Do you think that is the way forward?

Are you aware of other good examples?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Yes, what

is happening in Brent is great. We have got an organisation in Lewisham called Second Wave, which was

doing some of that. What they were doing were role plays so the police officers would come in and do

role plays with young people, stop and search encounters, and how a young person perceives it should

be done. That was happening, the Second Wave in Lewisham, and I am sure other boroughs are doing

the same thing. It all comes back down to community engagement, so without the engagement, without

the trust and confidence, we will not get the feedback that senior officers need about what is happening

on the streets.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): OK, that is crucial. Can I just move on. I will just go back to

Superintendent Morgan, in terms of the issue that it is not just variations between boroughs’

performance, but actually between different teams, response teams, so whether it is the Territorial

Support Group (TSG) coming in, neighbourhood teams and so on. What comparative analysis do you

carry out of data and do you do any specific work on different teams and perhaps training needs they

may have?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Within the mnemonic

“STOP IT”, the P is Performance. We have a performance framework, so within my team I have a

dedicated analyst who interrogates our database and then produces borough-by-borough analysis, or by

unit, and then that can be broken down further to into team, and when necessary it can go right down to

the individual officer. That is produced monthly. It is provided to the stop and search lead on each

team. Elements of that are provided to the community monitoring network. Some of it goes on to our

corporate database, so anybody coming in through the Internet portal can look at those figures for

themselves.

What is expected of the stop and search lead on the borough then, once they have that material, is to

actually look at individual officers or team performance in there, if they are an outrider, if they are very

good or if they are lagging behind the others, and try to identify reasons and then take effective action

to address the underperformance and recognise the good performance.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): The borough would not have responsibility for the TSG, would they?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): No, I said by borough

and by DOCU, I mean people who are not on the 32 boroughs, so there is TSG, dogs, mounted, they all

get the same information as well. As part of the framework, we call the Senior Leadership Team (SLT)

leads into performance meetings chaired by an ACPO officer. My commander who leads that is

Commander Adrian Hanstock. There is actually one next Tuesday and he will be chairing that meeting.

It is attended by the lead, or if they are not available their deputy, and we will go through all the

performance information and we will point out if there is anything that looks unusual compared to

perhaps their previous performance. As you rightly pointed out earlier, if a borough suddenly has a large

rise, we will ask them why was that. If there is a significant change in any particular direction - and this

happened at the last meeting - the ACPO lead actually posed a question to two boroughs, neighbouring

boroughs, who were sort of diverging in what they were doing, to ask pertinent questions, and then

obviously if they did not have the answer at the time to seek feedback back to the team and then back

to the ACPO lead.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): OK, thank you for that. Duwayne, do you want to comment on your

experience of the different approaches between your neighbourhood policing teams and TSG, and others

in the Metropolitan Police Service and how does that affect public perception?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): The

community teams, Police Community Support Officers (PCSO) that level, I think they get a different

briefing from what the tasking teams and the response teams get. We have seen a difference in

Lewisham where the community teams are more willing to have a discussion with you, talk about what

you have been up to, just a little bit more of a conversation, where a response team or a tasking team, it

is just about making arrests. I think for different communities there are different issues, but in Lewisham

what our young people are saying is that they are happy to engage with PCSOs, for example, local

police. However, when we have TSG come in or it is just the response teams that are around doing stop

and search, there is an issue, there is a lack of respect, and the communication is not correct.

Can we do something about it? I think we can do. Can we expect the police to fix it by themselves?

No. As I have said before, it is for all of us who are in positions of power, it is all of us, it is our duty to

work with the police and work with local communities in our areas to improve relationships, to improve

engagement, and also to help supervise so that those officers who are causing an issue in our

communities do get pulled in and spoken to.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): Are you concerned at all, the new neighbourhood policing model takes

out some of the dedicated officers who build this rapport with the community, and also have more of an

investigative function now, not just secure sort of patrolling the streets. Is that a concern for you as well

in terms of community confidence?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): I have not

gone through the policing model, so I cannot really comment on that at this moment in time.

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): What I can actually add

to the TSG element is that the Chief Superintendent in charge of the TSG for London, Mr [Mark] Bird,

actually contacted my team some time ago. He asked to take part in a master class where my team

would speak to all of the supervisors in the TSG and take them through all the positive aspects that

STOP IT was trying to deliver for them to take back to their team that they supervise and to address

some of the concerns that the community have raised. Duwayne is right, there has been concern raised,

and they have taken positive action to try and address those concerns.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE (AM): OK, thank you.

Joanne McCartney (AM): I wanted to ask two questions, if I may. One is, I understand that the

Metropolitan Police Service is piloting doing some call-backs on people to get some customer - if you

like - feedback; and secondly, I have been out with officers doing stop and search and interestingly

people are frustrated at getting stopped and searched. They really are, particularly if they are doing it

time and time again. I sat on one last year where an officer was wearing a body camera, when that was

pointed out to someone who was being stopped the demeanour changed, it was a rather passive

encounter, rather than a confrontation. I am just wondering, is that something you are looking at as

well?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Yes, the issue of body

cameras was a specific thing that the HMIC looked at, having seen it being used in Lambeth Borough.

After they had left they actually contacted us to come back again to look at body-worn camera records

and they did - I think it was eight other forces around the country - look at the interaction, because the

lead Her Majesty’s Inspector (HMI) doing the inspection actually said that the best would be to be

standing there watching it, but obviously that might change the interaction. Body-worn cameras is the

best individual sort of inspection of that interaction to see is it taking place correctly, is the interaction as

good as the police service would like it to be, and, if not, then it gives us an opportunity to speak to that

officer and address any issue.

Joanne McCartney (AM): It seemed to me, I must say, that the encounter that I witnessed was done

extremely politely, but it just struck me that it may have been extremely politely because it was being

recorded as well. Is that something you would welcome, a further rollout of cameras?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Of course,

and if any of you have got any influence over the Commissioner, it would be to say, can we have more

body cameras. Obviously there is an issue around money. But if we do have more officers with cameras

and things go wrong, we still need the public to complain, because we are not going to have individual

people just watching hours and hours and hours and hours of recorded footage. So, yes, we want the

body cameras, we want those, but we also want the support mechanism around the body cameras.

Joanne McCartney (AM): I think on the call-back, if we could perhaps have that in writing, what the

initial findings are. Can I just ask one further thing, which is not in here, and that is, we all want to see

stop and searches reduced because they have been much too high. However, what are you doing to

make sure they are actually being used when they should be used, because there are liable to be

situations where you do need to use them and the prevalence may need to rise because of certain

situations. How are you going to make sure that the reverse does not happen as well?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Yes, you are quite right,

going out to the boroughs and speaking to the officers themselves, as I said, there was some confusion.

We clarified the fact that, if you have the right grounds and there is good reason to do the search, we

are not telling you not to do the search. We are just saying let us investigate professionally, confirm that

we need to do a search, we treat the person with the appropriate level of dignity and respect, we explain,

we thoroughly go through GO WISE. If we find something and it leads to an arrest then fine, but if we

do not then we thank the person for their co-operation and we actually try to conclude the outcome

with them walking away thinking, “Well, that officer was professional, he treated me with some courtesy,

I understand fully why he was searching me, I understand the grounds because he explained them to

me”. I think that is a good outcome for us is if the person fully understands. They might not like that

they were stopped and searched, because unless there are some people out there who say, “Well I like

being stopped and searched, I would like to be stopped again”, it is unlikely that they are going to have

a positive outcome. However that is the best we can hope for, that they fully understand and they

recognise we have acted professionally and with good reason.

Joanne McCartney (AM): What I am asking for is, are you monitoring. For example, I noticed at the

MOPAC challenge this morning one of the questions was that two boroughs, Lambeth and Southwark,

quite similar, Lambeth has had stop and search halved and yet violence with injury has risen, whereas

Southwark stop and search has stayed the same yet violence with injury has gone down. Are you looking

at those trends to see if there is any correlation? That is really what I am after.

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Yes, we are. We have

done a thorough review of the STOP IT programme for the time it has been in place. As a team we have

made some recommendations to our ACPO leads, which is being considered at the moment, for some

changes for the future. As I said earlier, the Deputy Commissioner sees this as a potentially five-year

programme because we are not complacent, we have improved. I think most people, the Equality and

Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and HMIC, have recognised that. It is not us saying it, we have other

people saying it as well, but we are not complacent and we know we have still significant improvements

to be made in certain areas.

Variance between boroughs, yes, we look at those variances, I am not aware of the Southwark/Lambeth

one that you just raised.

Joanne McCartney (AM): It was raised today in the MOPAC challenge.

Jenny Jones (Chair): Could we have this in writing? We are going to go on to public confidence, but I

just wanted to say, on this issue that Caroline raised about the TSG and borough officers, there are

always more complaints against TSG officers than borough officers, and we always excuse that by saying,

“Well they are always thrown into much more difficult situations and so on”. Actually of course they do

a lot of routine patrolling when they are not called out to specific incidents, they are just out on the

streets supporting the boroughs. What I have heard from the young people particularly is that they say

the TSG treats them much less courteously than borough officers, that they call the TSG vans “bully

vans”, and they say that they have actually got more time for borough officers who do take more care

and so on because they live there, they have to cope, and the TSG just come blundering in. Are you

monitoring that?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Yes, as I said, Mr Bird

recognised similar things to what you have just said. That is why he asked us to come in to speak to the

supervisors. Their individual officers probably would not see it like that, but you could quite rightly say

they do deal in some very challenging situations and they do come in to support boroughs for serious

crime issues or crime trends to help that borough out. Historically, yes, the TSG have been criticised and

has had higher complaint levels, but all complaints in London are significantly down. I think the volume

is 35% down, and you could say there is a confidence issue about reporting.

Jenny Jones (Chair): Young people often do not complain anyway, which is what Mr Gardner said.

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): Yes, I accept that, and

we agree with that point that not everybody who is dissatisfied will complain because they do not see

the value in it.

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Can I just

say, Mr Bird - I cannot remember his rank - what he has done actually, he has set up a reference group

for TSG, which we meet on a quarterly basis. Those are the issues we look at: what are young people

saying about TSG in the boroughs around London. What would be helpful, I suppose it comes back to us

again, is the more we can go out on those carriers and the more we can encourage other people to go

out on those carriers the more we can help reduce the bad behaviour, let us say, of police officers who

are in TSG.

Jenny Jones (Chair): That is my Saturday nights fixed.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): Can I just make a couple of comments. I have three areas of

questioning, and they all underpin public confidence. I have a couple of questions for the

Chief Superintendent and then for Superintendent Morgan and then a couple of questions for you,

Duwayne. I would just like to put on the record that the police are using legislation that come out of

Firearms Act 1968, Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, Police and Criminal Evidence (PACE) section 1 1984,

Terrorism Act 2000, Criminal Justice Act 1994, and so that is to give it some history because I pick up

the point of Councillor Brooks, a sense of this déjà vu, this did not start in 2012. This is part and parcel

of policing.

Chief Superintendent, what are the key differences, because you have been in your post three years, but

how you worked in your first year to how you are working now, since 2012, and the bespoke stop and

search confidence model, what are the key differences you can tell us in terms of stop and search? Help

us to understand as the public.

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): For me to explain

that properly, I could probably do it in two or three minutes by telling you the journey that I have been

on and the stages that went through. Would that help?

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): Yes, it would help.

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): OK. When I took

over command at Brent in 2010, just after the spring, Brent was doing a phenomenal amount of stop and

search, 31,000 a year.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): 31,000 a year?

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): 31,000 a year.

Now the arrest rate from those stop and search was about 9% to 10%. We have moved from this

position as an organisation in the Metropolitan Police Service, locally at Brent and across London, and

nationally, to a very different position now with the focus we are putting on stop and search. At the best

it is a tool that reduces crime; at its worst it is a tool that divides communities, the communities that we

are there to serve. The journey we have been on was, is that right, is that amount of volume right, is the

outcome rate right? We thought it was not.

I looked at some analysis and I looked in detail, using a local member of my staff, I looked at all my

officers, who is doing x amount of stop and search, what is the outcome rate, at the time arrest rate.

Now I must take the time here to differentiate between arrest rate and outcome rate.

Jenny Jones (Chair): I think we do know about that.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): We know the difference.

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): Because for many

years we just looked at an arrest rate and to me a stop and search could be successful if we gain some

valuable intelligence. Just because you do not arrest a person does not mean it has not been a positive

opportunity to defend the wider public. Armed with that intelligence, I identified an officer who had

done 200 stops or more in a year, that is a lot, but this officer had an outcome rate of 30%, actually 33%

arrest rate. Therefore in my opinion, working in some challenging areas, he was doing his job effectively,

that is what that data was telling me. I invited the officer in and I said, “What is it that you do that

makes you effective in this particular area?” and we had a conversation and he raised about ten things.

PC Mike Morrison was his name, a very credible officer on the borough, very highly respected, been

there for many years, respected by the younger generation of cops coming through.

We talked about the kind of things that he saw and I said, “Go away and put that down on a piece of

paper for me”. Who else is doing well? Looked at that data, I picked up the top ten officers, got those

officers in a room, “What do you do collectively?” and they wrote a document, top ten tips. We then

used the same datasets to look at officers that were not doing well in relation to stop and search. This is

three years ago, so this was looking beyond the curve, and they were not doing well for a range of

reasons: (a) they were new to the organisation, they had not learned those street skills; (b) they had

perhaps come in from another area of policing and were rusty; (c) they had lost some confidence or for

whatever reason. We took 50 people, mentored them up with these 10, so a 1 to 5 ratio, and over a

three-month period they went out on patrol with these excellent officers. After three months, the

outcome rate, which is the measure that we use - whether that is right or not - to look at success, but to

me, if you are increasing the outcome rate for stop and search that has got to be moving in the right

direction, that increased by 80% across the working group.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): Can you just stop there a moment, sorry. Talking about the outcome

rate you were getting higher rates of arrest in relation to your stops and that is currently how you

measure success.

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): Same amount of

stops but actually over time, over six months, the outcome rate trebled from 8% to 24%.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): The outcome rate is arrests.

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): Correct. Arrest

and other areas like it might be a caution or a warning etc. A young person, we will find them with

drugs, it may be that we do not arrest them. Providing the ages are right and we can give them a

caution, it might be a first offence. That might be the most appropriate course of action with an

appropriate adult present of course. What we did there, through using our good officers, we developed

our officers that were not good, for whatever reason, and made them more effective, threefold. We have

gone through various stages on that.

That was one area that we have done, you are talking about where have we come from and where are we

now. That is what we have done at Brent and that is why we have got one of the highest outcome rates

in London. The Commissioner has set an outcome rate of 20% in February 2012, at that time we were

already at 22%.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): That is great but could I suggest to you it is about continuity and about

your leadership style. Of course, the strategy gives you a framework but the key to all this is continuity

and good leadership of the Metropolitan Police Service at borough level. Would you say that is a key

part?

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): I would say my

job as a senior leader is to be very clear on what I want my people to do. If I am not clear on what I want

them to do I cannot be surprised if they do not get there. Many officers across London will be doing this

and the answers are within our people. There are so many issues and demands that we place on our

front line officers and back room office, to police the streets out there to keep people safe, and it is

really important to just give them the time and opportunity to just put our foot on the ball and say, “This

is important”. That, to me, is what this conversation is about now.

If this is causing more harm to the communities that we are here to serve, that is not our intent. We

need to listen, we need to be open, we need to get volunteers to come and look at the way that we are

doing this. If there are lessons certainly from people like Councillor Brooks to tell us then that is what we

need to work and focus on.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): Thank you, that is great. I have got just two more questions for you, and

that is, in that year that your figures were high, how many times were you called to account, you know,

this idea of computerised statistics [Compstat]? Did your Commander or Deputy Commissioner at the

time call you in and say, “What is happening here”?

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): No. There was

not that.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): Why did they not?

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): Well, because at

the time Stop and Search has been seen as a tool to fight crime. We are looking at it differently now.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): Would you be called in now?

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): Yes, certainly.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): Good, so that is the other difference as well, is it not?

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): Absolutely.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): I think that is something that we should be telling people about that

accountability. I represent Hackney, Islington and Waltham Forest, and I can really say I do not have

much more to learn. I feel as if I have been around this circle in the last 13 years so many times, not

being facetious about this. It is just that we do not share information. Would you not agree with me

that if we found better ways of saying to the public openly, “We are using powers under section 60 so

we are not here to actually Stop and Search you because we have got reasonable suspicion” as you

would be if you were using them, “but we are here because we have intelligence to suggest that what we

need to do in this area for the 24 hours is to put a section 60”.

How many times do you find the opportunity to get that information over to the people who are caught

in section 60? Why I say this is because we are looking at some statistics here which I will go on to, but

the increase in the section 60 Stop and Search, 83%. Now, that was taken from the Metropolitan Police

Service’s (MPS) STOP IT reporting tool and that is around about May. Does the public not need to know

or have more information about your powers so that they can have greater confidence about what you

are doing? Because surely a section 60 is different to when you are using where you have to have

reasonable suspicion, say, section 23. Do you see what I mean?

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): I do, yes. Our

officers are trained that when they do Stop and Search, they inform the person of the grounds, the

reason why they are stopping them, where that power comes from. Whether that person understands

that, due to the language or the terminology the officer uses, is another debate. Whatever we can do, as

an organisation, as a community, to get those messages out to make the public aware of the powers we

are using, more we can do of that the better as far as I am concerned. As an organisation, we can always

do more to communicate that, but then it has got to be reciprocated by the community that we are

communicating to. Are they interested in it? Do they want to know? Some people will be, some people

will not, and it is the mediums that we use to get those messages across.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): One more question to you, Superintendent Gardner. Locally, you cannot

give information about, say, use of 60 before, but have you ever given an explanation to the public like

maybe using the local papers to say that this has happened because there is an issue of informing the

wider public as well as the people involved? Have you ever done that?

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): Good point. I

have a weekly column in the Wembley Observer and the South Kilburn Times. It has an email population

of 60,000 people, those two papers, and when we do a section 60 that is a community message that I

would put out. Not only explaining what we did but why we did it, and the results from that, yes.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): OK, I will come back to you because there are questions about public

confidence and the TSG that I would like to explore with you. My experience of the TSG is, when they

have come into my borough it is because the local forces are under siege because of the degree of

criminality that needs the TSG experience, but I will pick that up in a moment.

Superintendent Morgan, the statistics and the data that you are using or presenting to MOPAC and to us

comes from the public attitude survey. Now, I have got a comment here that says that it was in 2012,

having piloted a scheme, that the Metropolitan Police Service realised it needed to increase sample sizes.

It just seems a bit odd for the Metropolitan Police Service, with all of its research facilities, to be entering

into something like this and then it is afterwards or wherever, they come up with a problem about

getting data. Can you just help us? Is this survey, that is helping you with your work, adequate now,

and if it is adequate, will we be getting different results and different data than we already have?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): The public attitude

survey has been used by the Metropolitan Police Service for a long, long time. It is only last year, as you

rightly pointed out, that specific questions were added to the survey questions that were specific to Stop

and Search. We have, at the moment, about three full quotas of feedback from people who have filled

in that survey and answered those questions on Stop and Search. It will be another few months before

we have a full year of data.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): Are you happy with the sample size so that you do not have to apologise

and then be doing it again? It will stand up to outside scrutiny?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): It has been accepted

that the other surveys are an appropriate level. It is the same people who are doing those questions,

there are just two extra questions they are asked by the person interviewing them. They get phoned up

and asked will they partake, or they might do it through another way so they get those additional

questions asked at the same time. It is not a separate survey. If the sample size is good enough for

everything else then it is clearly equivalent for those two questions.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): You had sampled those questions in Camden. Is that why you did the

pilot in Camden? What I am trying to understand is why you were doing a survey of a pilot in Camden.

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): The public attitude

survey was not a pilot, it is something that was always done. My team changed by adding the questions

to that survey after getting approval for it so at the first opportunity the next survey, once those

questions had been added, it was done across the Metropolitan Police Service. It was not actually

isolated to one borough because people across the Metropolitan Police Service are questioned by the

polling company that do this on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Service. It is not actually us who do it

ourselves.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): OK. How does satisfaction with Stop and Search compare between the

general population and those who have been stopped and searched?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): I think it is a reasonable

assertion that satisfaction levels will vary and it is recognised that once you have actually been involved

in Stop and Search that your satisfaction level might go down. For instance, as I said earlier, if you have

been stopped and you were going somewhere in particular you may have been delayed for some time

whilst the interaction took place. I cannot ever see a point where somebody would be really happy with

that and say, “I would like to be stopped and searched more”, therefore, you cannot say it is a positive

outcome in that way.

The positive outcome that we are talking about is actually recognising we do it professionally, as Matt

said. Go wisely the bits that we are required to do under PACE, the grounds, the objective, etc, your

details, the fact that they are entitled to a copy of the search. You do that, you do it fairly, honestly,

with courtesy and dignity, and at the end you aim to leave that person thinking, “Well, this officer, all

right, I did not like the idea I was stopped and searched but I could not have asked for better in that he

treated me fairly. I know why I was stopped and searched. I know what he was looking for. Yes, I knew

he was not going to find anything because he told me what he was looking for and I knew I did not have

it”.

If that person goes away satisfied like that, that could have a significant impact on the satisfaction and

ultimately the confidence level in the Metropolitan Police Service. We want people to actually feel and

respect the fact that we are professional and we are not using the powers in the way you have outlined,

as a Committee, perhaps ten years gone by.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): OK, another question about data. In a letter to the Chair of the Police

and Crime Committee in June, you gave figures showing that 71% of those asked agree the police

should conduct Stop and Search, and 74%, when asked, felt that they were confident that it had been

used fairly. Do you know whether that was a low point or a high point in this area of question? Has it

ever been at 90%? Was the trend upwards or downwards?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): No, unfortunately when

we complete this year, that will be the baseline because obviously it has not been compared to previous

years’ data like previous attitude surveys around crime types and burglary etc. Those things have been

known for a long time and we have a number of years of data. This full year’s data will be the first, the

benchmark, from where we will be testing how we are improving.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): Great. Well, that is nice so we know that this is the benchmark that we

will be working from. Thank you very much. Then I have got some questions for Councillor Brook.

Councillor Brooks, you have touched on the perception of people who have been stopped and searched.

Any more to add, it seemed to me you were talking more about young people. Is it just young people

that you are picking up your understanding from about a perception about Stop and Search?

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): No, it is

not just young people. It is across the board, people my age and people older than me still complain.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): I am regularly stopped and searched by the way --

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): Are you?

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): -- so I can give you some perceptions.

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): By who?

Can you see any of them here that stopped you? No? By any chance, no?

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): A bit personal.

Duwayne Brooks (Councillor, Independent Advisor to MOPAC on Stop and Search): What I

would say is, for example, the chair of the monitoring group in Lewisham recently surveyed 120 young

people. The results that came back was there was still a lack of confidence in the complaint system, fear

of reprisals, where if you do complain you will be stopped and searched more, and also complaining

about the length of time it took, when you did complain, in getting a response. It is not the tool that is

the issue, it is how it is being used and who by. That comes along with the attitudes of the individual

officers and the culture that they operate in in other forces.

Can I just come back to communications around section 60, because when I was the Vice Chair of

Lewisham Stop and Search group. We would be sent an email about section 60 and I would then

broadcast it on the BlackBerry. We never had a conversation about what I could broadcast and what I

could not so I would then broadcast that. That would go out and that would say to young people that,

“You are not being stopped because you are on the streets or you are in a gang or because you are

black”, for example. “This is the reason why, they are expecting more youth violence, this has happened

in the borough”. That would go out and those other people would then re-broadcast it and it got out to

everybody.

What I found was, officers were coming to our Stop and Search group saying that when they were out

stopping people they knew they were going to be stopped, and I would say, “Well, that is what we want,

is it not? It is the prevention, is what we want. We do not want people being locked up for things that

they have not done”. His response was, “Well, no, I do not want young people to know that they are

going to be stopped and searched”.

Jenny Jones (Chair): They might be leaving their cannabis or the knives behind because they know.

Duwayne Brooks (Independent Advisor to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): What we

found was it is very hard to provide figures on a negative. So if say, a gang was coming into Lewisham

to do something but then they got a message saying that, “We’ve got extra police doing section 60 in

the borough” they are not going to come, and that is what we want.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): Is that not good for Lewisham?

Duwayne Brooks (Independent Advisor to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): It was

good for Lewisham but it is --

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): The sad thing is they are going to go somewhere else.

Duwayne Brooks (Independent Advisor to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): Well,

they may go somewhere else but it is about the communication. What we have seen now is lots of these

boroughs are on Twitter now. I do not know how many you have got in Brent, I think we have got about

6,000 followers in Lewisham.

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): I think it is 3,000.

Duwayne Brooks (Independent Advisor to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): You

have got 3,000, so if there is a section 60 we know they have been reduced dramatically, but if there is a

section 60 I do not think there is an issue around communicating that to people. I think it should be

communicated to people so we know what is going on in our borough.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): I think that is the question I was going to ask you, was, did you agree

with me that it is about openness, less defensiveness?

Duwayne Brooks (Independent Advisor to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): Yes.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): And that the public, that 74%, we move away from -- this is not about a

community not wanting the police to do their jobs, it is about how they get that information and the

BlackBerry messages are going to go out anyway so why can we not just be all working together?

Duwayne Brooks (Independent Advisor to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): Exactly.

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): You have answered that.

Joanne McCartney (AM): Can I ask about disproportionality because there has obviously been a great

deal of concern, certainly in the past and, I have got no doubt, still? The Equality and Human Rights

Commission in their Stop and Think assessment in 2010, stated that particularly with the PACE provisions

there was evidence to suggest that it was being used in a discriminatory and unlawful manner. I know

the Commissioner did talk about there being too many stops and search but I was quite surprised when

reading the targets for the new policy, that to reduce disproportionality was not one of the targets. Do

you think that was an oversight?

Andy Morgan (Superintendent, MPS, Lead Officer on Stop and Search): No, I think the service

has decided they would not set disproportionality targets. From the figures that you have probably seen

from the Human Rights Commission (HRC), there has been a significant change. They are talking

historical figures there so their work looked at 2005 to 2011. In that, they were using data from the

2001 census. As a service now, we are using the data provided to us by the Office of National Statistics

from the 2011 survey. The figures at the moment, the latest figures I have is 2.1 to 2.4 for the black

community and 1 to 1.1 for the Asian community so there is a marked difference from the period they

are looking at to what we are now in sort of mid-2013.

There has been a lot of debate about the issue you raise, should there be a target for disproportionality

and the number of people we search from each community. We do not think that is right. There are two

things it is doing, it is either preventing crime or it is detecting crime, the powers you are using. If it is

doing that, and the community have confidence that we are doing and using those powers appropriately

and fairly, and there is independent scrutiny. The key point you just made was the openness and

transparency, that we are now publishing and talking about it and having consultation and engagement

with anybody who wants to talk about it, then why would we set a disproportionality figure?

Where do you stop? Is it when we get to one to one for everything or if it goes the other way, or could

go the other way, would we keep it going infinitum?

Joanne McCartney (AM): Councillor Brooks, do you think there should be a target on

disproportionality?

Duwayne Brooks (Independent Advisor to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): In my

brief it says, “The legislation on the use of Stop and Search is very clear that it should not be target

driven”. I think you cannot move it outside of that. How would you create targets on

disproportionality? What would we say to police officers, “Right, you stopped, let us say, ten Asian

people this month, you cannot stop any more, or you stopped ten black or you stopped ten white, you

cannot stop any more”. How would that work? The legislation is clear, I am told, and I do not think

there should be any targets.

Joanne McCartney (AM): If there were no targets, what do you think the police should be doing to

ensure there is not excessive disproportionality, if I can put it like that?

Duwayne Brooks (Independent Advisor to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): That is

very difficult to answer, is it not, and it always come back to supervision and community engagement.

The only way, I suppose, an inspector is going to know that there is an issue around disproportionality in

their particular borough is by people complaining about it. How often will officers be supervised now we

know there is going to be a change? How often are stop going to be looked at? We do not know.

That is a difficult one.

Joanne McCartney (AM): Can I ask another question then, and this arises, I think, particularly out of

the case of Detective Constable Kevin Maxwell who won a discrimination case earlier this year. One of

the grounds for his success was that he said that he was an officer at Heathrow and that his colleagues

would put him forward to stop black and minority ethnic (BME) members of the community perhaps

because they lacked confidence in their encounters themselves. I am just wondering, is that something

that you are alive to as a force, and do you supervise effectively to make sure that all officers are

confident to Stop and Search whoever it may be they need to Stop and Search?

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): As I said, the data

we produce can actually go down to everything an individual officer does, so the number he did. From

that you get the details of the ethnicity of the people.

Joanne McCartney (AM): Do you monitor that? Do you check that certain officers are not being put

forward?

Matthew Gardner (Chief Superintendent, MPS, Borough Commander, Brent): Yes. Prior to this

current role I used to be a borough Stop and Search lead. I used to get that data and we would have a

look to make sure that there was no information there that clearly said there was something wrong, I

need to speak to that officer or I need an explanation on why something has taken place. It does go

back to the issue of leadership and supervision. Yes, it is vital that the person who is doing that does a

proper and efficient job, otherwise if you do not address it early on and correct whatever the issue is,

then it will continue until somebody else actually picks it up instead of you.

Jenny Jones (Chair): A quick final question in this session, it is to Councillor Brooks. What advice

have you given the Mayor’s office on Stop and Search and what they could be doing more of? More

oversight, for example, more advice?

Duwayne Brooks (Independent Advisor to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): I have

said that we need better supervision but my role is going to be primarily about reinvigorating the local

Stop and Search groups. What we want to happen is, if you have an issue around Stop and Search, then

your first point of call should be your local borough Stop and Search group. It is improving that

engagement. Then once we have improved the engagement there, it is to then work more closely with

police officers, and if we have better practice like what we have in Brent, is to share that across the

Metropolitan Police Service so we are all working from the same hymn sheet, in a sense.

Jenny Jones (Chair): Is there any more the Mayor’s office can do on this?

Duwayne Brooks (Independent Advisor to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): On Stop

and Search?

Jenny Jones (Chair): Yes, apart from giving you more resources obviously.

Duwayne Brooks (Independent Advisor to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime):

Obviously. If I had more resources I really could create miracles but they do not have any resources so it

is just about engagement, policy work, policy development and challenging the MOPAC and community

engagement groups to do more.

Jenny Jones (Chair): Thank you very much, thank you. Mr Gardner, you are staying with us. That is

very kind of you. Thank you to you two and we will adjourn for a couple of minutes so we can get our

other guests down here. Thank you.