Who's policing the police? Not the government, says Tony Travers

The policing of the G20 protests, increase in 'soft' arrests to meet targets, and use of armed police units in urban gun hot-spots are all connected. According to one pundit, they show that no-one is properly controling the police. That role is being filled by the media - and that's not right...

According to Tony Travers,, wirting in The Guardian, these stories have been given prominence by the print media, generating a response among their own readers and police authority members. He says that the British police are not baddies. But the coincidental prominence given to the three policing issues highlighted above points to an awkward reality.

"Because operational policing is the responsibility of chief constables, elected politicians cannot determine issues such as when guns are to be carried, whether to hold photographic galleries of protesters or, indeed, the holdings of the DNA database. Perhaps more importantly, politicians cannot be held to account for difficult – or bad – policing decisions. The Home Secretary, the mayor of London and police authority members can have a role in non-operational matters, but operational business is left wholly in the hands of the police themselves.

The vacuum left by this accountability gap is filled, says Travers, by the media. "In effect, the press are a national police authority, using the power of disclosure and reputational damage to change operational policing decisions. But are the newspapers, TV and radio really an appropriate way to put pressure on operational policing decisions?"

Read the rest of this article from The Guardian here