Police issues resolved

I had a positive meeting with representatives of the Police on Friday, together with key members of the Advocacy Action Committee. This stems from a post I wrote on this blog on 14 April which was removed shortly thereafter and replaced with this note.

Amongst other things this note says that the Police were threatening legal action, and it is now necessary to provide some clarification and closure to this issue. It was my intention to republish the post at this point as the information it contained is still valid (see below for how). For a variety of reasons however I have decided to just write a summary of events.

Four days after I started this blog I received an email about a young Kurdish man who came to a youth group in some distress saying he'd just spent the night in a police cell, he didn't know why, and he thought the officers had been racist. This was a reply from a colleague to a request I'd sent out for things to write about. I published the email with some identifying information removed and some background information to put in in context, then I emailed various key people working for the Police, the Asylum Team, the Community Cohesion Advisory Group of the local strategic partnership, and others. On the first working day I received two emails from a police officer which I published in a comment to the original post, with some disparaging remarks about their investigation.

On 20 April, two days later, a senior police officer contacted one of the Advocacy Action committee members and said they were very unhappy with the allegations contained in the post, and in particular with the fact that I'd named an individual officer. They additionally felt that the blog could be a risk to community safety, and requested for it to be removed and for an apology. This was done immediately, together with a number of other changes to clarify that the blog was my personal work and was not a project of Advocacy Action's.

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I just want to make some remarks at this point on the four areas of continuing relevance, community safety, complaints, and finally racism.

Continuing relevance
The Police have investigated the original story, and they are convinced that the allegations were unfounded. They can't find any evidence of an arrest or custody, and in fact the cells in the Police Station we identified were taken out of service years ago. There were also other discrepancies in the story, although it is true that the man's door was broken down in the course of an unconnected investigation.

I still have a different perspective on this issue, as do the other people who have spoken to the Kurdish man (he hasn't wanted to speak to the Police). I won't go into the objective details (see my post Protecting vulnerable people from objectivity) because I'm interested in a more person centred or community focused approach.

Firstly the man was upset when he arrived early at the youth group, and he was clearly upset about the police. This may not be a legal issue, and it may not be an issue for a formal complaint, but he is still upset about the police, and from a person-centered perspective this is an issue that deserves some attention. It's also important that he wasn't trying to gain anything from telling his story, apart from some kind of catharsis probably. He never wanted to make a complaint (I stressed this in the original post). He was simply upset and he told the youth workers what happened to help him calm down.

From a community perspective there are also important issues. I have heard that there have been several similar incidents already in the last few months, and not only the Kurdish community, but also the professionals who work with them are talking about this. Several other people have also come up to me from the English community and told me about similar things that have happened to them, and one person told me that when they tried to complain the police had no record of their detention. This is all circumstantial, and can't be verified, and I'm sorry if the police are upset for a moment about me writing this, but this is what the community are saying, to each other at least. This is not an insignificant issue, for the community or the police, but it seems to me that the lack of corroborable evidence makes it difficult for the police's systems and approaches to deal with.

Community Safety
As I have already mentioned, the police were concerned that the content of the blog could have an impact on community safety within and around the local Kurdish population. I listened to the police's concerns on Friday and I don't want to detract from them, but from the perspective of this blog devoted to ethics and communication this is another opportunity to explore and think about why I disagree with them.

The first thing I said was that I've been trying to encourage people in the refugee and asylum seeking community (and others) to complain if they have a grievance for years, almost completely without success. The reasons people don't want to complain are quite worrying really, certainly disempowering, and do lead to an already vulnerable group of people becoming even more vulnerable in some ways.

Basically people just don't want to rock the boat, they don't want to challenge authority in a way that might cause them more problems. People think that if they complain they might be beaten up, evicted from their properties, or even deported from the UK. I remember one story of illegal working came to light after a man asked for the £20 pounds he was owed for his 10hr shift, only to be beaten so badly and kicked down the stairs that he had to be hospitalised: in the face of this kind of threat which illegal immigrant is going to complain? Another occasion a man went with his brother-in-law (who is incidentally a Home Office registered interpreter based in another part of the country) to report a racist assault, but when his details didn't come up on the computer he was taken into custody for 5 hours while his immigration stutus was checked: the assault was never reported.

The other reason is that this is already what they expected pretty much. This is how they expect to be treated by the police, and it's much better than their own coutries where summary beatings are carried out with rifle butts. England generally is much better in many ways, or at least it's where they want to be at the moment, so they will work for £2 an hour, they will turn their backs on low level racism, they will accept the various trials that come their way. There is a mixed story here: many people like working with refugees because of their strength and humour in the face of adversity - some of them are role models for us all. On the other hand why should people suffer unnecessarily, especially when there are laws and social expectations of good practice that are meant to protect them?

Even today with my more distant relationship to the refugee community I hear quite a lot of stories going round. And the reaction of the community to this story of being detained overnight by the police? People aren't exactly indifferent, but they're not very impressed either, it doesn't seem like a surprising or serious matter to them.

I think this is the real community safety issue, and I'm sorry but I can't see anyone who might threaten community safety taking the time to read through this blog (although I wish they would, they might change their ways). How can we address these issues? The first thing has got to be being able to talk about what's going on, or to read about it, and certainly to think about it. There are lots of organisations who are actively working towards making our communities safer places to live, but this story, and this blog, suggests that there are some continuing issues that need to be looked at in a different way if we are going to effectively deal with them.

Complaints
No complaint was made in this case: neither the Kurdish man, the Police, nor I made a formal complaint. I've already said that Complaints are great, but the practice of them often is not, so in many ways I'm glad.

The Police do have a statutory complaints procedure providing initially for a local resolution of minor complaints, or through the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) for more serious matters.

I've been lucky to have been able to do quite a lot of thinking about complaints over the last nine months, and lucky that it's been in the context of a multi-agency group writing a code of practice. In the light of this experience, and knowing the issues with making complaints under other statutory procedures including that for Social Services and the NHS, I can't help thinking that the proper police procedure is still inadequate in some ways and for some situations.

The main problem is the unwelcoming bureaucracy: if we are going to encourage people to feel that complaints are great, we need to be more open and encouraging about the process, and we need to be going out of our way to support people to make more complaints. This system isn't very encouraging though, and as with many complaints procedures it is tiring and difficult for the complainants.

I also can't help thinking that while the police are very good at investigating crimes, the process of investigating a complaint is quite different, as are the potential outcomes and methods of redress for upheld complaints. I feel that the police culture and experience of investigating crimes is actually a barrier to the sympathetic handling of complaints. It would be interesting to do some research about this perhaps.

Racism
Racism is a very emotive word, and probably not something to put in a headline on a blog. Since these events I have written some thoughts about Racism and discrimination. Racism is a very important issue for me, and I have many friends who experience it at different levels. At the same time however I don't think we should be too upset by it - we need to talk about it and work against it and concentrate on moving on.

The Macpherson Report on the Stephen Lawrence Enquiry provides one positive step in this direction (see here for background), with this definition:

A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.

This definition takes us in two directions which is not all without problems, but while it opens up many more incidents to be counted officially as racist (a relief to the victims), it also takes the focus away from the perpetrator of an incident and away from the criminal law, placing it instead on perceptions and feelings.

In this way we can see that someone may act in a way that they think is positive, but which others may percieve as racist. The Macpherson definition allows a debate to go on around these borderline examples without undue pressure being exerted on those who would previously have been considered 'alleged criminals'. The analogy I tend to draw is with that state of 'marital bliss' where the loving husband (it can work in all sorts of combinations) offers help to his wife: he is just being nice; she thinks he's being patronising (or, why can't he offer to do some of the dirty jobs, or what's his ulterior motive, or...). The point is in this common situation between people who know each other well there can be and quite often are quite different interpretations placed on people's actions.

At least one of the officers on Friday was upset at my implication that police officers could act in a racist way without knowing it. This was seen as a slur on those officers' professional practice, but actually it was meant as a softener, a reminder that even if I agreed with the Kurdish man that police actions had been racist, it was those actions that were the problem, not the individual officers. It was also an indication that there was a learning opportunity here and I wasn't simply going to throw allegations around.

Conclusion
At the end of the meeting we discussed some ways that Advocacy Action could work with the police in future. Obviously I promised not to publish individual officers' names on my blog (although anyone is welcome to publish my name as I work in the community).

More positively we did think about some of the experiences with the police that the community are talking about, and how we can address these issues in a more proactive way.

We thought about developing some simple guidance for young refugees or asylum seekers who may have dealings with the police.

We agreed to pick up the phone more, talk to each other about any issues that come to our attention.

Some hopefully this debate will continue in more practical ways, and I am certainly feeling positive about this outcome.

Rather they convict me than abase myself

I spent some time with Shaun today going over some things in more detail and trying to work out a strategy. It's a good thing I have advocacy experience, or what he said would have been difficult to deal with. [For background see More Police Racism and Undressed, humiliated and lied to.]

I'll get to what I mean by this by the end of this post, but first the details and the strategy.

The first detail to suddenly jump out at me was the date he was stopped. The 5 January: just two days after he was last in Court (because the police failed to record that he had produced his documents) and just three days after I wrote him a supporting letter pointing out his good character and reliability at producing his documents on all the other occasions...

The next detail was that the receipt he was given for the stop and search. I knew he was given a fixed penalty notice for a faulty brake light, but this receipt that he was given at the same time tells another story. It says he was spotted outside the 'Latzian Club' [sic] 'drug dealing' (he was actually getting a take-away from Cantor's Fish Shop a few doors down). They then followed him all the way from Chapeltown Road, through Little London, to Clay Pit Lane near the City Centre. Then they stopped and searched him and the car and wrote 'the car smelled very strongly of cannabis' (not true, just an excuse). It was only after all this following, searching and making up a story that they finally brought up the brake light issue.

Shaun and others wonder whether it's legal to stop someone for one reason and then slap a fine on them for something else? If a Police Officer decides to search you for any reason other than suspected terrorism, they have to explain why they're searching you first. There's a list of potential reasons on the back of the receipt. They said it was to look for drugs, not a faulty brake light (which isn't a reason). Shaun also wonders if it's legal to immediately give someone a penalty notice for something so minor - isn't the usual procedure to tell you to get it fixed?

The third detail that seems key to any defence is that Shaun is an extremely cautious driver. Because he gets stopped so often and he knows the Police could pick on any minor issue to justify stopping him, he literally checks his car once or twice a week. I've been frustrated before when we've been on our way somewhere and he's stopping yet again to do basic maintenance like checking the tyres and topping up the washer water. With all these stops and checks and producers, and all the care Shaun takes, this brake light was a very unlucky event. I can't see how he could do any more than he already does to ensure his car is always roadworthy.

Anyway, our defence is building up, but on Thursday I got some pro bono legal advice from my kind and distinguished friend Ruth Bundey that confirmed some nagging doubts of mine and kind of put a dampener on things.

The fact is that the light wasn't working at the time Shaun was stopped. Shaun has not denied this, just said that he is very cautious and that the police are simply victimising him for an unlucky coincidence (if it had been a day or two later he would have spotted and fixed the broken light anyway).

Unfortunately the language of the Courts and the language of Shaun differ here. Shaun says he's not guilty because the broken light wasn't the real issue: the real issue is that at that point the police were looking for any excuse to justify their failed stop and search. It seems that the Court will say that this is not a valid defence: it doesn't challenge the material basis of the charge, that the light was faulty.

There are two strategies at this point. Firstly write to the CPS on Monday and try to persuade them that this prosecution is not in the public interest (it will cost more than any fine Shaun receives, and it cannot make him any more careful about his car). This is ok with Shaun, letter to be posted Monday.

The second strategy, if this fails, is to plead guilty on 7 June. That is, to agree that at 18.30 on 5 January the brake light was faulty. Then there is an opportunity to detail the mitigating circumstances (the caution, the many times the lights have been ok, the fact that he was stopped for another reason, etc.). If we do a good job of this mitigation then at the very least the fine will be minimised, and there is a chance the penalty could be waived (I don't know the proper legal terminology here, but Shaun may not have to pay any fine).

This is not ok. This is the interesting bit.

'Plead guilty? But I'm not guilty. I'm not willing to say I'm guilty for something I don't believe in. It's not about the fine - they're abusing me enough already and any fine would just be a continuation and a confirmation of this abuse. I don't care about a fine.

'I want to stand up and say what I believe in. I don't feel I'm guilty, and I think I've got enough evidence to persuade the Court to dismiss the charges.'

So we come to a third strategy. I'd like to call this the brave and principled strategy, although I suspect you readers may like to categorise it in other ways...

Luckily, both as an advocate and as a friend I respect Shaun's right to decide how he wants to defend himself. I also understand that by following his own path, with the support of myself and other friends, Shaun will gain in self-respect even if he loses in dollars. We have agreed to write a statement together for the Court, outlining his defence and helping to ensure that Shaun can say what he wants to say as coherently and effectively as possible.

I just hope we get a sympathetic magistrate.

Undressed, humiliated and lied to

This is what happened when I went to Leeds Magistrate's Court with Shaun last Wednesday, as promised.

First the court official asked Shaun 'is your headwear for religious reasons?' Shaun said yes and that was ok, but this was just the first of four instances of what I think should be described as violence towards us from the court. I'll describe the others and then explain what I mean.

The second thing was that Shaun was given a 'Statement of means' form to fill in. This had to be completed before Shaun could go before the court, and it was an offence not to provide the information (a note said 'see the other side for details' but the other side was blank). This form was not only difficult to fill in on the spot with no warning, but it had no relevance to the hearing.

Thirdly as we were entering the court I was directed to go to the back of the room. I thought at this point that I should say I had come to speak to the court. The court official went to check this with the magistrate, came back and said I should still wait at the back until I was called to speak. This was a lie, and it led directly to the final piece of violence.

Finally, Shaun was before the judge/magistrate. He was told the charge (faulty brake light), asked whether he understood this (yes), and asked whether he pleaded guilty or not guilty (not guilty). Shaun asked if he could explain what happened and he was allowed to speak for about 2 or 3 minutes. The judge/magistrate didn't seem very interested, said that this wasn't a trial, asked the CPS representative if they wished to pursue the case (yes), and that was that.

At that point I offered to assist the court. Remember I had informed the judge that I had come to speak before I entered the room, and I had been effectively told that I would have an opportunity. In fact the judge reacted with more violence to my offer of help: he shouted at me, said I was abusing his court and if I wasn't careful I would be removed from the court or even worse.

Violence
I said I would explain what I meant by violence and why it was important to think of these four experiences in terms of violence. I would define violence as any use of power to restrict movement or action. There are lots of reasons and precedents for this definition which I won't go into for now, but we can see that it covers things like assault (because after we are assaulted we hurt and our movement is restricted), as well as a wide range of other types of violence. One area familiar to many people which opens up the definition of violence in this way is domestic violence, and here are a couple of quick links 1 | 2.

Let's go back to the headwear example that I started with. Shaun was ok, but imagine another young man coming to the court. He may not look very smart to the court officials in their suits, but the chances are he's made some sort of personal effort to look his best and to prepare himself mentally and physically. For many people these days looking good includes wearing a hat. Many young men in particular habitually wear hats. So much so that the hat becomes a part of their identity.

Then, just before they go into this scary room full of officials who have the power to change their lives, they have to remove their hat. Tradition or something says that wearing a hat before the court is a mark of disrespect, so you have to remove it. And now your 'hat hair' is looking stupid, you're feeling stupid, you can feel your head and your hair and the fact that you're not wearing your hat. Effectively the court has dictated that you feel humiliated before you even start. There is a very close correspondence here with the domestic violence situation of a man denying a woman the possibility of wearing clothes that she feels comfortable in. Both victims of domestic violence and victims of court violence feel less able to act, less able to speak out, less able to defend themselves. They suffer. But what pains me even more is that justice and liberty also suffers.

This violence can be seen again in the case of Ronelle. Legal procedures have taken place, she has been unble to speak out, and an admin error nearly caused her to be imprisoned, have her baby taken into care, give the two of them a record that will last for the next 18 years or more, make it more difficult for them to find work and support themselves to live and grow as a family. This is violence by any other name. We need to recognise this, and as advocates we are in a position to do something about it.

Racism and discrimination

These weren't subjects that I initially planned to write about here, but the way things have happened I need to say more.

Racism is a serious issue, but it needs to be seen in the context of wider discriminatory practices. One example of discrimination among many is the dalits of India (also known as the untouchables). A quarter of India's population is dalit, but they are systematically abused by many people (including the police, the judiciary, landlords and businesspeople) according to this Human Rights Watch report (see especially chapter VIII: The Criminalisation of Social Activism).

This is not racism, although it is very close structurally to racism. This is the legacy of more than 3000 years of religious and intra-racial segregation, discrimination and abuse. So much so that many Indian people (those in the caste system as well as some dalits) cannot even see the discrimination. And those who dare to speak out are likely to suffer.

It is very often the case that people who suffer discrimination of whatever sort also end up having difficulty communicating their problems. I'm not just talking about the dalits here, but about people in the UK with learning disabilities or mental health problems, working class people, people with few formal educational achievements, poor people, children, old people, people from minority religious groups, ill or disabled people, people who are not heterosexual, or people from minority ethnic communities. For a whole range of reasons these groups of people are more likely to suffer from discrimination, and are less likely to have their problems listened to or seriously addressed.

I am fortunate in many ways. I don't belong to any of these groups. I have a strong voice. I have been able to help some people to speak out and get results.

Ironically when I was working for Social Services & Health, a role where it is important to be particularly aware and careful of potential political implications of everything you do, I got the message that seior management did want advocates to challenge their staff and services. They recognised that there were inevitably people who were not receiving the services they were entitled to, and that these people often didn't have the resources to make effective challenges on their own.

Now that I am helping the Wakefield Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership to develop a Code of Practice for Children's Complaints, there are clear messages being developed about the importance of complaining for children and organisations alike.

Racism is a small element of this wider picture, and I take it as seriously as I do everything else. It is as wrong for a police officer to stop and search a car driver for the colour of their skin as it is for a doctor to not spend extra time making sure they can hear what a woman with a speech impediment is trying to say to them.

The police are doing well in some ways. Following the Lawrence inquiry they have a good definition of racism:

Recommendation 12 of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report states that the definition of a racist incident should be:

"any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or by any other person"

Source: Crime Reduction Toolkits

This is good because it depends on the perceptions or feelings of people, rather than objective and independent evidence which is often difficult to obtain. It has problems becasue it's hard to understand in some ways, especially if you're immersed in the legal system. It is also problematic because we can accept that an incident is racist, but feel that every other point about it makes it impossible to act on (someone wrote 'packey' [sic] on your car, but there are no witnesses and no leads). There is also a good report from Civitas (pdf) that questions the value of the Macpherson definition of 'institutional racism'.

In my quiet advocate's way, I want to work with the police on facing these real issues. They come from the stories of actual people, and they cannot be resolved through traditional policing methods which rely on objective evidence that can be judged in court.

'Quiet?' I hear some of my readers asking... I think I have been writing in a quiet way. Maybe not the headlines: I wanted people to read, but perhaps in retrospect the headlines prevented them from paying proper attention to what they were reading. But the stories themselves are quiet: a young man is quietly taken into custody, records quietly fail to appear, he quietly declines to complain, Shaun and I quietly try to speak in court and are quietly ushered out, Ronelle quietly says 'I used to think the Police were here to help us, but now... now I don't know... I don't think they're very helpful really'.

For years I've been hearing complaints about the police, and usually I'm left trying to help people address problems they can do something about, maintaining the quiet.

These stories remain a quiet protest, a quiet call to action, because I am not shouting about the deaths in police custody, I'm not shouting about the weapons the UK police have issued that international law bans armies from using (CS Gas is a chemical weapon banned under the Geneva Convention), I'm not shouting about the discriminatory record of local police forces around the UK (this report has already been quoted, there's the MacPherson report, Racism still blights police despite post-Lawrence improvements, Police 'frozen solid' in addressing racism, report finds, and many others).

The stories I hear are usually too quiet to get anywhere, but I write them here because I think these quiet and relatively uncontroversial stories are the place to start to make positive changes.

I'm not shouting, and when the original story that started all this (for this blog at least) is republished with the relevant follow up, when the current fuss has died down, I am still hopeful that most people will be thankful that the issues are being raised in this simple way.

More police racism

This is my friend Shaun (on the left) with Maxi Jazz from the dance group Faithless. I doubt I'll get such a nice photo this Wednesday – I'm going to Court to be a character witness for him. He appears to be in Court because he's black (and allegedly because a brake light on his car wasn't working).

First of all, I've also been stopped because my brake light wasn't working. I was also breathalised at the same time. It was quite a nice experience really - I'd never been stopped by the police in 12 years of driving and I was interested to see what would happen. They were friendly and polite, the breathaliser was green, they asked me to fix my brake light, they didn't ask for any information about my driving license, MOT or insurance, and that was that. I haven't been stopped since that incident 2 or 3 years ago despite my car being quite old and beaten up.

Shaun is not so lucky. In the last three months he has been stopped by the police on average once a week. Every time they stop him he is given a producer, which means an hour of his time the next day. He is often searched. He has lots of shocking stories. I should point out at this point that he is a musician, performer, dancer, and youth worker. I met him in 1997 when I was more involved in Unity Day and he was working for Pyramid of Arts and setting up Breakers Unify. He's a quiet and unassuming man, but he has a lot of respect from a lot of people and he gets a lot done in the community.

I want to mention some of the stories. I think it's bad enough that he is stopped every week as he is going about doing his community work, but the stories of what happens when he is stopped are much worse.

One time he was stopped in Leeds City Centre in front of loads of people and his whole car was searched for about 30 mins. A take-away meal was emptied out of its packaging onto the passenger seat and left there, and all the while a woman police officer was telling Shaun to 'calm down' and in his words 'grabbing me by the elbow' - as he was calmly trying to say the search was unnecessary. Shaun is such a calm person he wasn't in much danger, but he felt like the woman was trying to provoke him, her partner tipping his food out on his car seat was trying to provoke him, and the fact that this search was carried out in front of a crowd of people was also provocative. Of course they didn't find anything - and of course he was given a producer. This is extreme because it happened in the city centre and his food was searched, but in every other way it is what always happens, including the apparent attempts to provoke.

One time he got away without being given a producer, but it wasn't that cool. Shortly after he was pulled over a second police car arrived, blue lights flashing - it appeared the original officers had called for back-up, fearing this black man might be dangerous. One officer, getting out of the back-up car looked over at Shaun and recognised him ('Aren't you that youth worker?') They still followed procedure and searched him, presumably 'just in case', but he didn't have to go to the police station the next day.

Another time he was recognised again. The officer asked 'Didn't I stop you a couple of weeks ago?' Shaun: 'Yes, you gave me a producer and everything was ok.' The officer: 'Well, these documents could still be false so I'm going to have to give you another producer.' This was last year, back in the time when he used to always carry his documents around with him because he was stopped so often. But what's the point if you're not going to be believed anyway? Another officer said that 75% of the criminals they caught were black, so it's not surprising Shaun was being stopped.

They also used to claim that he had no insurance. He would show them his insurance certificate - and they still wouldn't believe him! They would say they had called the insurance company and they had no record of him. But he is and always has been insured - you have to be if you're stopped by the police every week.

Earlier this year Shaun was in court for failing to produce his documents. In fact he had produced his documents, but the police had failed to record that he had produced them. He went to Court with a pile of producers, counted them up in front of the magistrate, pointed out that he had always produced and everything had always been in order, and within 10 minutes the case was dismissed.

Since then he has been trying to collect evidence. He has a video recording of him going into the police station and the desk officer saying 'Not you again. I'm not even going to look at your documents - I know they're ok.'

But here we are in Court again...

• This is a terrible waste of public money...
• A waste of the Court's time...
• A waste of Police time...
• Most importantly, it can only be described as police harassment, and is a terrible way for anyone to have to live their life.

Surely a stop can be put to this. Can't the Police see from their records that this car has been stopped (several times) already and everything is in order? Shouldn't a quick check of the registration number on the police computer say 'do not stop this person again'? Can the Court be of some help to identify this misjustice and ensure it doesn't continue?

We'll have to see on Wednesday. I'll let you know.

Follow-ups: Undressed, humiliated and lied to (about our experience in Court, and about state violence), and Rather they convict me than abase myself (about our preparations for the next hearing). Also see my comments on Racism and discrimination which do relate. (This update, 15 May).

Racist police actions

Update, Monday 15 January 2007

This is a very old post but people are still finding it through Google searches and it needs an update. A group of people working with the council supported a Kurdish youth group. Something happened to one of the young people and issues were raised on this blog. A lot of positive work was done as a result - threats of legal action by the police have a tendency to motivate a blogger! By June the issues with the police were resolved (do look at this post).

The situations described are now well in the past. Readers of this blog are advised to click on the title (Advocacy Blog) and concentrate on more recent posts.

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Update, Thursday 20 April, 11:50 PM

This post has been temporarily removed while the Advocacy Action Committee considers threats of potential legal action by West Yorkshire Police.

Please see the Disclaimer for further information about the relationship between this blog and Advocacy Action.

There have been some positive discussions today about how to move forward on the issues that have been raised, and it has always been my intention to move forward positively. I would like to stress that I have never suggested that any individual officers are racist - the post refers to racist actions. (Just as I believe in my work with vulnerable people we cannot call any individual 'stupid', but we all do stupid things occasionally.)

There was one particular officer who was identified personally in a comment I attached to the original post. I have heard today that this officer was upset about being identified in this way and felt that they were thereby associated with the alleged racist actions. I am sorry for any upset caused by this misunderstanding, and can clearly say that after several years of working with this officer the thought would never cross my mind that they were themselves racist.

There will be further updates after due deliberation on the issues.