In response to the recent wave of riots, Keir Starmer has promised to deliver a ‘standing army’ of specially-trained public-order police officers.
But at a time of stretched public budgets, how does the Prime Minister propose to do this? And if the Government anticipates that unrest will be an ongoing problem (which it seems to, or why set up the ‘standing army’), will more bodies alone be enough?
There is limited use in addressing the question of police numbers without addressing the question of police doctrine. More trained officers are helpful, but less than they might be if it remains police practice to contain riots and let them burn themselves out. When over the past few years I have proposed setting up a new, nationally-organised public order force, the proposal was aimed at least as much at creating a new operational and command culture as recruitment.
But for now, it’s a focus on the personnel question. Sadly, so far the Government doesn’t seem to be looking at any root-and-branch reform: Starmer’s Standing Army appears simply to be an enhanced version of ‘mutual aid’, by which forces already share trained officers. But how might he do it?
When it comes to policing serious disorder, the two grades of personnel that matter are those that have received Level 2 or Level 1 public order training. Level 2 is given to regular officers to allow them to serve as riot police when the situation requires it; Level 1 normally denotes specialist officers in full-time public order roles.
The nature of Level 1 means that the only way to increase the number of trained officers available is to recruit more of them, and expand specialist units such as the Metropolitan Police’s Territorial Support Group (TSG). This runs headlong into one of the main objections to my proposed specialist force: recruiting such officers is expensive, and critics say mainland Britain does not experience sufficient disorder to justify the outlay.
Level 2 is another story: according to police sources I’ve spoken to, receiving and then maintaining Level 2 Public Order training requires only a few days a year. This is why non-specialist officers with other duties are able to apply for it, and some forces (such as the British Transport Police) even make it available for special constables.
The obvious first step towards expanding the pool of riot police would be to extend Level 2 training to more regular officers. But this has a big downside, which is that pulling large numbers of police away from their other duties has a big knock-on effect on other areas of police work, and thus on victims of crime.
A better solution would create reservoirs of trained personnel without degrading other police work, or at least degrading it as little as possible. Happily, the relatively small time commitment needed for Level 2 competency means this ought to be possible – most obviously, tapping the existing pool of special constables by having every force extend to them the option of receiving Level 2 training, as some already do.
If insufficient candidates came forward, or their efficacy is limited by the 16-hour-per-month service commitment of special constables, this training could be given a pay premium attached to a call-out obligation, creating a reserve of riot-control specials which commanders can call up when required.
Given that public order policing is of a very different character to regular police work (which creates doctrinal problems), the Government might also explore the possibility of creating a new class of special constables specifically focused on riot control work (perhaps under the auspices of the Territorial Support Group), with entry requirements and service obligations tailored to the specific challenge such a force would be trying to meet.
Finally, there’s the Army. Deploying troops to restore public order is one of those questions (like nearly every question on riot policing, in fact) where there is a gulf between the public, who strongly support it, and politicians, who invariably rule it out.
The merits of each position hinge on what ‘deploying the Army’ means. Armed troops on the streets would certainly be quite the Rubicon to cross – but as only one fifth of Britons support the use of live ammunition against rioters, and 62% support ‘using the Army’ (per YouGov), this is clearly not the position of some three-quarters of people who back the policy.
If the proposition is instead to use military manpower to support conventional public order policing, politicians’ vibes-based objections fall flat. The state calls on the Army in a wide variety of civil contexts, such as flood response, and there doesn’t seem to be a compelling reason that public order should be an exception.
The practical objection is that soldiers (and sailors and airmen) are not properly trained for such work – to which the obvious answer is to create pathways by which military personnel, regular and reservist, can receive Level 2 Public Order training and be turned into another ready reserve. The Royal Military Police would seem an obvious place to start.
Of course, this runs into the same objection as more widespread training for regular officers; successive governments have already been accused of too swiftly resorting to the Army as a civil backstop, at the expense of its primary duties. Again, focusing on the Reserves (formerly the Territorial Army) would mitigate this; a Reserve unit attached to the RMP could provide another avenue for creating the above-mentioned public-order focused special constables unit.
These proposals would not, on their own, solve all the problems that have caused the public to lose faith in the police’s ability to ‘protect people and property’; only an overhaul of riot-control doctrine could do that.
But they would be cost-effective and time-efficient means of expanding the pool of trained officers available to deal with widespread and sustained disorder – and turn Starmer’s Standing Army from an operational conjuring trick into an organisational reality.
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