Police changed the way they work in communities

Superintendent Angela Williams, second in command of the Bradford South division, maintains a new trust and understanding has been forged between the police and the community since the devastating riots of 2001.

“The diverse groups of Bradford understand what the role of the police is, and trust us. Likewise, we understand the community a bit more than previously,” Supt Williams said.

She said much of the improvement was down to the advent of neighbourhood policing, which the Force had invested heavily in since 2004.

“From our perspective, we have mutual respect and trust. People on the streets have said the same thing.”

Supt Williams said the police workforce now better reflected the community.

She said: “We are still recruiting Police Community Support Officers. A lot are from Bradford. They were born here, they live in the area and they care about Bradford. They are known in the community as members of the community, not as police officers.

“I believe that scepticism of the police and what they do has been bridged because of the links with officers in the area.”

Supt Williams pointed out there has been a one-third reduction in recorded crimes in the last ten years for the Bradford district. In 2001, the figure was 63,000. It is now 42,000.

“It is really positive that crime is falling to that degree,” she said. “It is also reassuring that in the last four years public confidence and satisfaction is at its highest ever recorded level.

“A lot of this is down to community engagement. The Neighbourhood Policing Teams are on first name terms in the community.”

Another aspect of building bridges with the community has been the use of PACT (Police And Community Together) meetings, which are now also online.

A further innovation has seen local NPT officers attending mosques during Friday prayers and having lunch there with members of the local community.

“It’s not just about sending out newsletters, it’s about face to face engagement,” said the superintendent.

Supt Williams said that the advances police had made could be seen in the successful policing of the English Defence League protest in Bradford last year.

“We were far better equipped to deal with that than we were in 2001. We had five or six months planning for what we would do with the EDL when they turned up. But what was also different was that we were able to engage with groups in the community and get the message out to let the police deal with whatever happened.

“We didn’t tell local young people not to come into the city centre, but asked them to get involved with the community events that had been organised.

“The young people of Bradford were fantastic. They didn’t come near the demonstrators, and those who might have wanted to get involved had the trust and confidence in us and let us get on with it.

“It was a good benchmark for us. It’s all right us saying we have moved on over the last ten years, but the EDL was a really good line in the sand and proved that we have moved on.”

Supt Williams said there was still work to be done.

“We have new emerging communities, like Slovak and Polish people. We are forever looking at how we place and engage new community groups.”

Another significant community project to have played a part in community cohesion has been the MAGIC project (Manningham and Girlington Influencing Change), which is headed by NPT Inspector Steve Dodds, working with the fire service and other individuals.

The project goes into schools and encourages young men, aged 14 to 16, to become good achieving citizens, rather than following a life of crime.

The youngsters give up their time over the weekend, working with the fire service and anti-social behaviour teams, and becoming ambassadors, taking back positive messages to friends and family.

Supt Williams said: “Our Chief Constable is really committed to neighbourhood policing.

“Even though we are effecting a reduced budget, like all public sector organisations, we are committed to providing NPT services, including 999 responses, locally based detectives and dealing with matters that safeguard people. Back office functions are slimming down, but the emphasis is on the front line. It works for us and it’s here for good.”

Supt Williams said redevelopment of the city centre was starting to take shape and the newly-opened city centre police contact point was one of the ways in which there could be more engagement between the police and the community.

The police would continue to be part of the positive things going on in the city, including the upcoming science festival and Positive Bradford Day.

She concluded: “The main progress we have made over the last ten years has been through neighbourhood policing and resulted in the engagement we have with people out there. Our communities understand our role and have trust and confidence in us, and we understand their views.

“Our PCSOs are reflective of the community, which is one of the plus points, along with neighbourhood policing engagement, understanding each other’s roles and values, and reducing crime overall which allows us to invest more in neighbourhood policing and police engagement through the use of Proceeds Of Crime Act legislation, where assets seized from criminals poured back into community projects.

“We can target individuals for their ill-gotten gains and take such as houses and cars off them and put them back into the community as re-investment.

“If people call us for a service, we should give a good service, and I think we have come an awful long way in that respect.”

Supt Williams added: “Bradford South is at the forefront in the Force in technology and how we use it to engage with the community.

“A lot of what we have done has been a first for the Force, reflected in our use of Facebook and Twitter.”

‘No common story’ linking accounts of how riots unfolded

The phrase Saturday Night & Sunday Morning is usually associated with the brilliant first novel by the late Alan Sillitoe.

But the title has been adopted by Bradford University peace studies academics Dr Janet Bujra and Professor Jenny Pearce for their study of the circumstances and consequences of the 2001 Bradford riot, which lasted from about 5pm on Saturday, July 7 until the early hours of Sunday morning.

The main picture on the book’s front cover, and repeated inside, shows a white woman, Nora Stanton, in her dressing gown being helped across battle-scarred Whetley Hill Road by 29-year-old Tariq Mahmood. The implication is that though the majority of rioters were Muslims, not all Muslims were rioters.

Dr Bujra said the photograph also showed that not all young men were rioters. Mr Mahmood was doing something very different as did a lot of other people of all ages.

“Certain things became clearer. I was surprised, for example, by the anti-fascist groups and their lack of organic links with Asian youths in Bradford, making their efforts ineffective. It tells you something about their language: they didn’t come out and recruit those lads who rioted, it seems,” she added.

Sectarianism of a kind or, as the authors put it, “particularism”, has been one of the obstacles to an open, honest exchange. Communicating across ethnic lines is difficult because of divisions or schisms within groups.

“There’s an awful lot of prickliness, negative views of others. We found it very difficult to talk about our book: we waited a long time before publishing it because we found that talking about it created quite a lot of hostility.

“Part of that is what we have tried to bring out in the book: different parties have different perspectives, they don’t have a common story.

“So the minute you start to talk about it people say, ‘No! It wasn’t like that.’ Not because they are lying but because they see it from a different perspective.”

The book’s early chapters deal with the build up to the violence, a description of it from various viewpoints, the reporting of it and an analysis of the social forces at work at the time, including the policing.

The failures of the policing ten years ago are contrasted with the strategy for policing the English Defence League demonstration last year.

Evidently the authors think that Bradford collectively has taken a step in the right direction, although this view is not unanimous among some of those interviewed.

On page 168 the authors write: “The rioters we re-interviewed did not think Bradford had changed much. Although one felt as ‘much British as the next’, he still maintained that Asians and blacks are not accepted in British society. They were also sceptical about the politics of their own community...

“All but one mentioned their worries about the on-going drugs trade in Bradford and the way it was dragging in younger kids: ‘We’ve (the rioters) all grown up...The problem is the new generation. I work with the new generation. They’re a lot worse. We had a 12-year-old who was pushing drugs. We never had that at my age’.

“This may be the nostalgic voice of a generation moving into maturity. However, fears for younger brothers and sons were expressed by nearly everyone. The problem was ‘easy money’ and no opportunities.”

Dr Bujra said things had not changed for the better for that category of young men, who felt insecure about their future.

“I think opportunities are limited, horizons are limited. Immigerant groups tend to go up in society. Here they have stayed at lower-middle class. The lure of the streets and the drug culture is a real problem.

“But at the same time there is a whole category who have got middle-class jobs, particularly in the youth service, health service and other sectors.

They have found places, so things are beginning to move. You see that in the way people are beginning to move out of ghettos, so-called; but they may not be very far away from where they started,” she added.

Under the veil of anonymity some senior Bradford Council officers voice refreshingly candid opinions about marketing exaggerations that have bred public cynicism, bad planning and poor decision making going back over decades.

One says the future empowerment of women in Bradford “will fundamentally change the way we (and) the outside world views this city...and the biggest opportunity for Bradford will allow women to empower themselves.”

The authors themselves conclude that the key to building a cosmopolitan city which over-rides particular community and nationalist imperatives is deepening democracy and participation.

“Those presently without power and voice within all communities must gain it so that they can see the worth of playing a role in shaping the district’s future.

“Gaining a voice must include listening to the voices of others and acknowledging the complex trade-offs in decision making...”

But is this empowerment to be bestowed from above or created and earned from below by communities taking the initiative and responsibility for their own actions?

Professor Jenny Pearce, of Bradford University Peace Studies