Earlier this year, a video of a black teenager being pinned to the ground and handcuffed in a Superdrug in Chichester went viral. The video, posted by the 15-year-old’s mother, shows the boy lying face down on the floor, two adult men kneeling on top of him and yanking his arms behind his back. The video brings to mind other such clips of force used against black people that have proliferated online in recent years; but in this case, things were different. The two men restraining the teenager were not police officers but private security guards.
Known as “rangers”, they are employed by a firm called Blayde Security, contracted by Chichester’s business improvement district (BID) to patrol the high street. Business improvement districts, introduced by New Labour and expanded by the coalition government, are defined areas where businesses pay into a fund to provide “additional or improved services” – such as extra cleaning or, as in this case, security. We do not yet have all the details of what happened in Chichester; the 15-year-old was arrested on suspicion of assault and a second teenager was arrested on suspicion of assault and other offences. Both were released on bail and the BID said it was cooperating with the police. But in the aftermath of the incident, the teenager’s mother Kirsty Buchanan – a former Downing Street aide – called for a review of private security guards to examine “what due diligence is carried out before rangers are hired, what training they receive and what their remit is”. These are reasonable questions that go far beyond this one locality. As trust in police collapses amid a series of scandals and years of sharp spending cuts, we are seeing a rise of what might be termed “pseudo-police” across the UK.
