Responses to requests for comment from media outlets including the Observer, openDemocracy, the Independent, and Byline Times.
Police ‘enabling dangerous officers’ with high rate of complaint failures in England and Wales, The Observer, Nov 2023
“This is yet another stark example of why police forces should never be allowed to mark their own homework,” said Holly Bird, policy and research officer at policing reform group StopWatch.
“The police say they’re serious about rooting out so-called ‘bad apples’, but what this data tells us is that the system itself is enabling and facilitating the behaviour of dangerous officers.”
Opinion poll that ‘backed stop and search powers’ had no option to oppose them, openDemocracy, Nov 2023
Holly Bird, policy and research officer at the police monitoring group StopWatch, told openDemocracy that “at best, the government has taken some creative liberties in their interpretation of the SVRO consultation responses – at worst, their portrayal of public opinion on SVROs is dishonest and manipulative”.
Bird said the government’s claim to have “listened to the voice of the public” was “ridiculous” based on such a small sample size.
[…]
Bird said: “As the proposed legislation stands, it is far too easy for courts to grant an SVRO against an individual – even someone who has never carried or used an offensive weapon can be made subject to these invasive and punitive orders.
“As SVROs give police officers free licence to harass anyone subject to an SVRO on an unlimited and discretionary basis, it is likely that certain individuals and groups will be repeatedly targeted, fuelling distrust between police and communities, and causing significant mental, emotional, and possibly physical damage to individuals subject to an SVRO. We are particularly concerned about the effects of SVROs on already over-policed and over-criminalised groups, especially young Black men.”
[…]
While the government claims that SVROs are being introduced to reduce levels of knife crime, Bird said: “It’s clear to us that emboldening the police through the creation of new powers is not the way to tackle the important social issues that people care about. Rather, the introduction of SVROs and other powers is a tired political gesture with the aim of demonstrating the government’s ‘tough on crime’ credentials.
“If the government really cared about addressing real social issues and keeping people safe, they would explore the kinds of community-based solutions that have been proven to work, including investment in housing, healthcare, and other social services.”
Ministers urged to scrap knife-crime ‘ASBOs’ after Black men and boys disproportionately hit, The Independent, Oct 2023
Holly Bird, StopWatch’s policy and research officer, said: “The data tells us exactly what we had expected: that these orders disproportionately target young Black men and boys.
[…]
Ms Bird, of StopWatch, which obtained data from the pilot via a Freedom of Information request, said expanding KCPOs across England and Wales would be a “huge mistake”.
“These excessively punitive orders are extremely unlikely to be an effective tool when it comes to addressing ‘knife crime’,” she told The Independent.
“Instead, they will simply draw more young people (and especially young people of colour) into an already racist criminal justice system, and will do little to break cycles of violence and harm.”
She added: “Rolling out KCPOs nationwide would be a huge mistake – they should be scrapped entirely.
“As with so many other civil orders, it’s clear that the government want to roll out KCPOs not because these orders will be an effective, evidence-based, holistic way of dealing with youth violence or protecting victims, but rather so that the Conservatives can demonstrate their ‘tough on crime’ credentials and show voters that they’re ‘doing something’ about the issue.”
REVEALED: Nearly Half of Police Misconduct Trials Related to Extreme Misogyny, Sex Offences and Domestic Violence by Police Officers, Byline Times, May 2023
Holly Bird, research and policy officer at police reform group StopWatch, said: “This analysis is further evidence that the police are – as the recent Casey Review also found – institutionally misogynistic. Dozens of high-profile cases in the news, multiple official reviews over the past couple of years, and a constantly expanding body of research prove that, far from being able to protect women from harm, the police are themselves a threat to women’s safety and wellbeing.
“While the details of these misconduct trials are abhorrent, they represent just a tiny fraction of actual instances of police-perpetrated sexual violence. We know that the scale of the police’s misogyny problem is in fact far greater.”
Holly Bird 