Aftermath of the Anti-Terrorism Police Raids in Forest Gate on 2 June 2006
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Scrutiny by the Metropolitan Police Authority of communication and media at the Metropolitan Police Service with particular reference to the handling of media and communications during the Forest Gate incident of June 2006 Aftermath of the Anti-Terrorism Police Raids in Forest Gate on 2 June 2006 Submission of Newham Monitoring Project 27 September 2006 Aftermath of the Police Raids in Forest Gate on 2 June 2006 1. Terms of Reference 1.1. On Friday 2 June, 2006 police carried out raids on 46 and 48 Lansdown Road, Forest Gate, London. In the weeks following these raids the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) amended its existing scrutiny programme of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) for 2006/7 to include the media and communications strategy of the MPS. 1.2. The stated objectives of this amendment to the MPA’s scrutiny programme is to : a) Assess the extent to which the MPS has the strategies, policies, protocols and processes in place to ensure efficient and effective communication, media and reputation management, particularly in the context of the 24 hour news environment. b) Undertake a detailed analysis of the handling of the media and communication during the Forest Gate incident in June 2006. c) Assess how effectively the MPS engages internally to manage communication to the media, Londoners and stakeholders, particularly during sensitive operations. d) Understand the culture of the MPS towards communication and media management and the impact this has on the delivery of an effective service. e) Evaluate the use of resources available to the MPS to deliver this key function, including understanding the division of resources and lines of accountability between central and local directorates. f) Understand the legal context within which the MPS operates and the implications this has for the organisation. 1.3. The submission of Newham Monitoring Project is primarily focused upon providing the MPS with our perspective as it relates to 1.2(b), though indirectly, our submission may touch upon the wider remit of the MPA’s scrutiny 2. About Newham Monitoring Project 2.1. Newham Monitoring Project (NMP) is a community-based civil liberties organisation that has worked with black communities in east London for 25 years. It provides advice and support to local people suffering racial harassment or who have complaints about police misconduct, through a casework service and a 24-hour emergency telephone help line. NMP has developed a particular expertise on the impact of rapidly changing anti-terrorism legislation, providing training and advice to voluntary, community and faith sector organisations on the implications for their members. 2.2. In the aftermath of the raids in Forest Gate, NMP has provided practical and emotional support to the families from both 46 and 48 Lansdown Road, including arranging doctor’s appointments and hospital visits, assistance with rehousing and advice on the legal process. Aftermath of the Police Raids in Forest Gate on 2 June 2006 3. Executive Summary 3.1. Immediately following the raids on 46 and 48 Lansdown Road, an ‘information vacuum’ was created by the Metropolitan Police Service’s refusal to provide any meaningful information to local people, coupled with repeated and unattributed leaks to the media. At best, the MPS condoned selective briefings and leaks to the print and broadcast media, but at worst, was responsible for orchestrating them. Such a strategy inevitably – and perhaps deliberately – led to rumours and speculation within Forest Gate. The strategy directly fuelled a process of character assassination of the two brothers that were arrested and by implication other family members. 3.2. Much of the responsibility for the media strategy following the raids must rest with members of the senior management team in New Scotland Yard. Amongst this group of officers were personnel who had virtually total control of the operational information finding its way into the media and credited as police sources. 3.3. Local Newham police were to all intents and purposes sidelined and excluded from details of the police investigations, the reasons for the raids themselves and the policing of the public in their aftermath. Very soon after the raids it was apparent to NMP, other community organisations and many local residents and that Newham police could offer nothing in terms of concrete and useful information. Attempts by senior local officers to stay ‘loyal’ to Scotland Yard in public even as the grounds being used by the MPS in justification of the raids began to unravel was highly damaging to the credibility of the local force. 3.4. The MPS media strategy in this respect has contributed further to growing scepticism about the reliability and veracity of ‘intelligence’ acquired as part of general anti- terrorism operations and increased the likelihood that members of local communities are less likely to believe the information they are given about the nature and extent of ‘terrorist threats’. 4. Selective leaks to the media 4.1. Individual responsibility for selective leaking of misinformation is difficult to pin down or prove, particularly in an organisation like the Metropolitan Police Service that has shown a great reluctance to explain its actions following the raids in Forest Gate, choosing instead to hide behind the generalised comments about not wishing to compromise an ongoing investigation or ‘intelligence sources’. Nevertheless, NMP would argue that the ‘corporate’ media strategy implemented after the Forest Gate raids further illustrates a much broader shift towards undermining one of the prime objectives of a public body - providing meaningful, understandable, accurate and timely information for the benefit of the public. A key objective of the MPS ‘news management’ process after the raids appeared to focus on reducing and or eliminating any cause for members of the public to pass informed and perhaps even critical comment on police performance or its operational priorities, which the MPS seems to see as its exclusive preserve. 4.2. NMP has little doubt that the MPS will deny that it has deliberately set out to obscure or mislead the public about the Forest Gate incident. However, we note from Aftermath of the Police Raids in Forest Gate on 2 June 2006 experience that the MPS media strategy when it is seeking information from the public related to say, a child abduction or a major robbery is very different from its overall strategy for anti-terrorism raids, a death in police custody or allegations of police officers assaulting members of the public. Where there is a high degree of interest into the conduct of MPS personnel, one can identify an organised and consistent practice of misinformation that is clearly differentiated from and far more damaging than a maverick ‘off the record’ briefing to the press by an individual officer. Journalists have long had their individual contacts within the force – this is not going to change and it is not the chief concern of this submission. 4.3. If the constant stream of unofficial briefings that appeared in the press following the Forest Gate raids as ‘police sources’ were not officially orchestrated, then the MPS has by allowing them condoned the actions of a small group of police officers who have anonymously fed information to the media in return either for cash, the conducting of inter-agency feuding between the Met and the security services over apportioning blame or simply in order to undermine the accountability of a public service. In either scenario, police officers based at Scotland Yard have been responsible for misconduct and this needs to be investigated urgently. 4.4. Whatever the actual reason for these leaks, one outcome in terms of public perception was the widespread assumption that silence on the part of the MPS was an admission that leaked information attributed to police sources was the official view of the MPS. That some of these details were known to be false from the outset by local communities and others later ‘proved’ to be false did nothing to engender confidence and trust in the MPS and significantly undermined local policing initiatives to build such trust. 4.5. A further outcome of the selective leaking of misinformation, half truths and unrelated associations was to place further strain on the slender strands of public accountability over the MPS by the Metropolitan Police Authority. Those with a role in holding the MPS to account appear to have no effective means of rescuing a media strategy that is seemingly out of control. Moreover, after the Forest Gate raids, there does not seem to be mechanisms available to the MPA to effectively evaluate the basis of what MPS ‘thought was true’, even when the police’s presentation of information contradicted common sense and the reality of physical evidence. 4.6. Appendix A of this submission contains a brief sample of several media reports that we maintain were based on unofficial briefings by serving police officers. Regrettably, this was the only information available to local people urgently wanting to know more in the fortnight that followed the raids. 5. A failure to inform 5.1. It has now been nearly four months since an ‘anti-terror’ raid on two homes in Lansdown Road in Forest Gate led to the closure of streets, the shooting of an innocent Forest Gate resident and two families found their lives turned upside down. However, despite admitting that they need to ‘learn the lessons’ of the failure to communicate with local people, the Metropolitan Police at both a central and local level have continued to fail to provide answers to the concerns that have been raised about both the raids themselves and their aftermath. Aftermath of the Police Raids in Forest Gate on 2 June 2006 5.2. The Metropolitan Police say they have spoken to ‘community leaders’ but no efforts were made to communicate with residents whose roads were suddenly closed.