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.
Security guards do not have any legal powers above those of a regular civilian. They cannot make an arrest (other than a citizen’s arrest, where someone is detained until police arrive), and have no powers to question suspects. But the average person might not know this. The way that pseudo-police present themselves – stab vests, radios, body-cams, walking in pairs – can blur the boundaries between police officers and private security, endowing pseudo-police with a level of authority that they do not merit. This effect is compounded by their increased presence and the way they behave. The effect is intimidation: a recent report highlighted a trend of bailiffs dressing like police to scare tenants out of their homes.
Like the Chichester BID, there are many spaces in the UK that appear to be public space but are actually privately owned or managed – in London alone these include the 13 acres of the South Bank and Granary Square in King’s Cross. In these areas, private security guards enforce rules imposed by landlords, rather than those set by the local authority. This means they have little accountability; a 2017 Guardian investigation found that landowners typically do not even reveal what these rules are, so people in these spaces could unwittingly break rules and be removed.
Increasingly, pseudo-police are not only hired by landlords. Residents of some local areas have gone so far as to hire private security to patrol the streets and investigate petty crimes. My Local Bobby, founded in 2018 by two ex-Metropolitan police officers, brand itself as a quasi-police force for hire. The company works on a subscription model. Individual uniformed “officers” cover beats of up to 250 houses; each home partaking in the subscription pays a fee of around £100 to £200 a month. In return, their streets are patrolled, and they have direct access to their “bobby” in the event of a crime. It currently works in 12 residential areas and four “public realm beats” in BIDs. It is one of a number of private security firms offering such services to communities, from London to Birmingham to Liverpool. One firm, 1st Class Protection, says on its website: “As well as acting as a visible deterrent against a range of crimes and antisocial behaviours, our responsive mobile patrol security officers have extensive policing and military backgrounds and can de-escalate situations quickly and safely.”
The context for this trend is massive cuts to policing since 2010, which means that many of the most high-volume crimes – burglary, mugging, car theft, assault – are barely investigated at all. Figures released recently show that more than 99% of thefts from a person between April and December last year didn’t end in a charge, even when the victim tracked their stolen phone. This should come as no surprise: in 2017 the Metropolitan police actually announced that due to funding cuts it would no longer look into reports of crimes such as burglaries, thefts and assaults, where there was judged to be little prospect of identifying a suspect. Many other police forces have been similarly affected; in November last year it was reported that half of English police forces inspected were failing to meet required standards of investigating crime.
This has an impact on people’s faith in the state to protect them. A YouGov poll last year found that more than 70% of people don’t think the police would properly investigate high volume crimes such as bike theft, mobile phone theft or phone scams. The proportion of people who believe the police are doing a good job dropped from 75% in 2020 to 53% in 2022. This loss of faith has been accelerated by a series of high-profile scandals, including the sentencing of police officers Wayne Couzens and David Carrick, and a recent review of the Metropolitan police that detailed harrowing sexism, racism and organisational dysfunction.
The rise of private pseudo-police shows landlords, retailers and residents trying to take control of this situation. But private pseudo-police risk replicating the same damaging power dynamics as the actual police with even less scrutiny, oversight and accountability.
So, what is the solution? The government’s response to public outrage about the police is to hire more police officers. But this falls far short. The target of 20,000 officers simply replaces those lost to funding cuts since 2010, and besides, any effective solution must focus on serious reform and investment, emphasising quality rather than quantity. The rise of pseudo-police is yet another symptom of the status quo in policing breaking down, and yet more evidence that we need urgent overhaul. Statements from the Home Office calling for police to ignore “political correctness” and making arbitrary demands about cutting crime are not evidence of a department taking seriously the need for reform. We may see more and more pseudo-police in the months and years to come.
Samira Shackle is a freelance journalist and a regular contributor to the Guardian long read. She is the author of Karachi Vice
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