50 Facts Everyone Should Know About the Police

Introduction - John Bahadur Lamb, Max Hart, James Treadwell, Adam Lynes and Craig Kelly


1. There is no definitive proof that Robert Peel ever developed the principles that underpin British policing - John Bahadur Lamb


2. 'Trust is the foundation upon which consent and legitimacy for policing is built' - Mark Manning and Nigel South


3. The police have acted as 'moral guardians' since the early 19th century - Peter Joyce and Wendy Laverick


4. The senior investigating officer role is not like you see on TV! - Stephen Tonks


5. The role of the custody sergeant is to be the guardian of an individual's rights and wellbeing - Martin Steventon


6. Crimes are classed as solved once someone is charged with an offence - Nick Mills


7. The Integrated Offender Management scheme has aided significant reductions in reoffending since its formulation in 2009 - Sacha Smith


8. Roads policing is key to saving lives, disrupting crime, and police legitimacy, but it has been routinely undervalued and is sometimes resisted - Helen Wells


9. The police investigate some crimes that occur inside prisons! - James Treadwell


10. The number of volunteer 'special' constables has reduced from 67,000 in the 1950s to under 10,000 in the last decade - Colin Rogers


11. Policing has now been 'professionalised' - Jacob Thandi and Nick Gibbs


12. Until 2020, police officers did not require formal education qualifications - Mark Lakey


13. The senior rank structures of the Metropolitan and City of London Police differ from every other force in England and Wales - Ron Winch


14. The chief constable is operationally independent and cannot act on unlawful orders or unduly intrusive political direction - Wendy Laverick and Peter Joyce


15. Policewomen had a separate department from that of their male colleagues until the 1970s - Charlotte Rigby and Em Temple-Malt


16. In the six months leading to March 2022, more than 1,500 police staff in England and Wales were accused of violence against women and girls - Laura Riley


17. A 2022 investigation highlighted 11,277 instances of internal misogyny and sexual misconduct in the police - Sarah Jones


18. Between 2011 and 2020 there were 173 suicides in the UK police force - Lauren Jane Gillespie


19. Over 100 police officers are assaulted every day - Michelle Clarke


20. The Independent Office for Police Conduct is independent and makes its decisions entirely independently of the police and government - Victoria Bell and Sarah Plimley


21. Police rank structures have remained relatively unchanged - Dom McVeigh


22. Helicopters assume a crucial role in contemporary policing - Adam Lynes


23. The Ministry of Defence Police has the highest number of Authorised Firearms Officers, secondly only to the Metropolitan Police Service - Steve Wadley


24. Violence is an essential tool in the vocation of policing - David Sausdal


25. Despite popular belief, a substantial proportion of the British Police is armed in England and Wales - Craig Kelly


26. Between 1987 and 2023, only one officer has been convicted for manslaughter following a death in which police used force in England and Wales - Abi Dymond and Brian Rappert


27. There is no automatic right to access body-worn video footage in England and Wales, even if the footage is about you - Sharda Murria


28. When the police refer to evidence, this doesn't just mean DNA and fingerprints - Laura Hammond


29. Criminal profiling of serial murderers has never worked - Craig Jackson


30. The perception of the police as being institutionally homophobic has hampered the ability to protect members of the gay community in England and Wales - Ben Colliver


31. The police uniform serves an important symbolic purpose - Camilla De Camargo


32. The majority of police investigations by 'uniformed officers' focus upon volume crime - Max Hart


33. In 2023, just 5.7 per cent of reported crimes led to a charge or summons - Keir Irwin-Rogers


34. In England and Wales, no suspect is Identified in 74.2% of residential burglary cases - Jack Greig Midlane, Briann Clifford and Mark Stokes


35. Only 1 per cent of fraud in England and Wales results in a criminal justice outcome - Max Hart


36. The state is overwhelmingly reliant on the private sector to effectively police art crime - Tereza Ostbo Kuldova


37. UK policing structures create an open goal for organised criminals in rural areas - Kate Tudor


38. The UK Serious Organised Crime Strategy (2018) aims to 'equip the whole of government, the private sector, communities and individual citizens to align their efforts in a single collective endeavour to rid our society of the harms of serious and organised crime' - Paul Andell and Kelly Gray


39. The current approach to policing drugs is hypocritical, harmful and ineffective - Tammy Ayres


40. The police often overestimate the value of the drugs they seize - Craig Ancrum and James Treadwell


41. Much of the police's current approaches to knife crime are wholly ineffective - Natasha Pope


42. In the pursuit of solving crimes against children, children are too often harmed - Sean Monaghan


43. Police in England and Wales were responsible for 55 fatal police shootings in the last 24 years, much lower than US counterparts - Nicholas Walrath


44. Worldwide, the increasing use of militarised policing has been employed against protestors - Kyla Bavin


45. Proscription under the Terrorism Act 2000 allows for arrest and prosecution, with 93 organisations listed to date - Leon Skerritt


46. The police have often attempted to pre-empt cases of political and religious violence through covert intelligence - Dylan Sears


47. Police in England and Wales have, for many decades, intervened more in street sex work than indoor sex work - Ian R. Cook


48. In 2021, only 1.6 per cent of rapes reported to police were prosecuted - Emma Williams


49. Contrary to popular belief, at the end of registered sexual offenders' prison and community sentences they are managed solely by specialist police officers - Sarah Pemberton and Stephanie Kewley


50. Rape is routinely used as a tool of war, however even in peacetime Military Service Police inadequately report and investigate sexual offences committed by army personnel - Sarah Kingston