Benard Hogan-Howe's twitter debut, digested
The Met chief with a flair for PR took to Twitter this evening for a Q&A. He chose which questions to answer, so no surprise he came out looking pretty decent. Here are three of his responses which are worth noting.
How do you plan to restore community confidence?
Saying the Met want to “improve” stop and search is interesting. Does this mean less stop and search? I certainly hope so. There’s plenty of evidence, not least from the Guardian’s Reading the Riots series, that it fuels justified resentment against the police which impinges fatally on their ability to police with consent. I want to know what that “improve” is going to mean in practice.
Was the authorisation to use rubber bullets prior to student demo a deliberate move to frighten folk from protesting?
It was unhelpful at best. Hogan-Howe also identified “public protest” as one of the biggest challenges facing the Met. Protesters are citizens, and so are the police. A culture which pits the two as enemies is not a good place to be.
Do you think the use of tasers will increase the number of complaints against met officers?
The assertion that giving the police more tasers will not lead to more tasers being used is one which needs to be challenged. It’s counter intuitive at best. I’ll see if I can find any relavant data. Anyhoo, on a philosophical level, as I’ve said before, the routine issuing of tasers to police is a bad idea. The police should not be routinely armed against their own employers. That’s not what the police are for.
See the whole exchange on the Met’s twitter feed @metpoliceuk
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