Norma Leespeaking 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

THE PUBLIC ARE THE POLICE - UNTIL THE PUBLIC ASK QUESTIONS? The Peelian principle tells us that “the police are the public and the public are the police”. Let us consider how that relationship appears to work through a simple comparison. A member of the public is suspected of a crime and reported to the police. Police may obtain documents, question witnesses, examine communications, test explanations and follow the evidence. Where justified, matters proceed towards prosecution. Now consider what happens when members of the public gather evidence which they believe indicates criminal conduct by police officers. They submit the documents. Identify the individuals. Explain the chronology. Ask for relevant records to be preserved and the evidence independently examined. At that point, the public can encounter a rather different vocabulary: “Complaint handling.” “Outside scope.” “Not reasonable or proportionate.” “Previously addressed.” “No further correspondence.” Each expression may have a legitimate application. None, standing alone, explains whether the evidence of suspected offending has actually been assessed. The question is straightforward: Has somebody independently examined the alleged conduct against the relevant criminal law, or has the allegation been processed into an administrative conclusion? A complaints outcome and an assessment of possible criminal offending answer different questionS. The public should be able to understand which question has been considered, by whom, on what evidence and with what result. There is no entitlement to have every allegation accepted. There is every reason to insist that police status should confer no immunity from proper scrutiny. Nor should members of the public be expected to prove the entire case while the records capable of confirming or disproving it remain exclusively in institutional hands. That is why preservation and disclosure matter: the original communications, decision logs, instructions, attachments, audit trails and relevant metadata. Those records may vindicate the officers concerned. They may expose serious failings. Their examination should permit either conclusion. The public cannot exercise its part in policing by consent if its evidence is dismissed whilst the institutional explanation is protected from meaningful examination. The comparison therefore ends with a question: When the allegation concerns an ordinary citizen, police ask whether the evidence warrants further enquiries. When the allegation concerns policing itself, is that same question being asked with the same independence and seriousness? The Peelian principle becomes difficult to recognise if the public are partners in policing only until they seek accountability from the police.