Insights from a Career in Policing: An Interview with Rob Beckley
In this wide-ranging and engaging conversation, retired British police officer Rob Beckley reflects on nearly 40 years in service — from community policing in Brixton after the 1980s riots, to leading the investigation into the Hillsborough Disaster, and later serving as High Sheriff of Somerset.
🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or on YouTube.
We explore:
The misunderstood role of policing: “Policing is about being there in a crisis — when someone needs action, and needs it now.”
Rob’s early career in Brixton and how his experiences in Sudan shaped his views on culture and policing.
Honest reflections on institutional racism and sexism: “Institutional racism isn’t about bad people — it’s about systems and processes that have disproportionate impacts.”
Hillsborough: what really went wrong, the persistence of false narratives, and why “we can never afford complacency in disaster preparedness.”
The evolution of crime, the importance of community policing: “Community policing works because people trust officers who know their area and take ownership of local problems.”
Rob’s year as High Sheriff of Somerset, his advocacy for volunteering, and the civic glue that holds communities together.
Advice for aspiring public servants: “In public service, you may never know the lives you’ve touched — but the impact is real.”
This episode provides deep insights into policing, society, and civic responsibility — offering lessons not only for those in public service but for anyone interested in how communities can thrive.
Summary contents, transcript, and podcast links below. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to pods. Watch the video above or on YouTube.
Contents:
00:00 – Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:32 – Misunderstandings in Policing
01:57 – Early Career and Reflections on Brixton
05:18 – Experiences in Sudan and Cultural Insights
08:51 – Institutional Racism and Sexism in Policing
18:14 – Hillsborough Disaster: A Deep Dive
33:30 – The Evolution of Crime and Policing
37:20 – Community Policing: A Proven Strategy
41:30 – Challenges of Modern Policing
51:05 – The Role and History of the High Sheriff
54:06 – The Importance of Volunteering
58:16 – Advice for Aspiring Public Servants
Transcript (helped by AI so mistakes possible)
Rob Beckley
Ben: Hey everyone. I'm super excited to be speaking to Rob Beckley. Rob has been a distinguished British police officer for almost 40 years, working across, amongst other things, the London Metropolitan Police, the Met, the Avon and Somerset Police, as well as leading the investigation to the Hillsborough Disaster and advocating for citizens in policing.
After retiring from the police force, he has been the high sheriff of Somerset. Rob, welcome. Thank you, Ben. It's a real pleasure to be here. In terms of policing, what do you think is the most misunderstood thing about being a police officer? I,
Rob: well, there's a range of things where people don't always fully appreciate what's going on and why is it going on.
But the most misunderstood, I think, I would say, is that policing Is there, when somebody faces a crisis and somebody in authority needs to do something about it now and that goes back, that's a philosophy of policing that goes back many years. A fellow called Egon Bitner thought that one up.
But it is, it captures really what people really want the police to be there. They want them there when they face a crisis and they need something of done about it. Now that's misunderstood, not just outside of policing, but inside of policing as well, because I very much do think that if we have, if we fail to respond to that crisis, it actually affects confidence.
A lot in policing. And we need to be geared up to meeting people's real anxieties in an urgent situation. Whether it be shoplifting or a car accident or somebody with mental health problems on the street. We can't just say that's somebody else's responsibility, that somebody's facing a crisis, somebody needs to do something and needs to do it now.
Ben: And I think you started off in your early days of policing around South London in Brixton and went on from there. What are your reflections about your time in Brixton, in policing, and did that shape your kind of overall philosophy and thinking about police?
Rob: I joined the police having worked a few years overseas, in fact, in Sudan.
And I was really anxious about joining the police because I was worried it would be a. Both a sexist and a racist organization. I was worried about the cultures, but I also felt policing needed to be done well in our community. It's really important that you have good people do difficult jobs serving our public.
So I was anxious about joining the police. Actually, I joined, there were very many good people in it that there, there were some dreadful people as well at the, at that time, and as there always will be in every profession. But in Brixton in particular, it was quite. Tense a lot of the time because it was just after the riots.
It, in the 1980s, it was difficult. But a lot of effort was going into bridging communities and getting to know the communities well, community policing listening, responding, because, that a lot of lessons had been learn because of the, those riots back in 1981. And I saw a lot of real effort going into that community rootedness, a lot more people of color joining the police, which made a difference.
And you could feel that bad behaviors being challenged within the police. And there were a lot of attitudes then that I didn't like. Thankfully many of them are even rarer now. But, cultures have changed a lot. But on the whole though, it was still an organization where many people cared about what they did and tried to do their best.
And Brixton itself, goodness I go back now. I just wish I'd bought some of those houses, right? Yeah. That were for sale when I was a. Constable and sergeant there, because my goodness, I would've done well out of it there. There were places where that you could buy places there that the council couldn't give away.
Now, they're beautiful Georgian houses worth millions. I've been curiously, Brixton is so much more diverse. Even when I was there, there was very much an African Caribbean community and a white community. Not a lot in between. Now it's so diverse. It's so mixed. It's such an interesting place.
It was an interesting place then. But now when I go back and I have been back a few times for different things I really, it's got a real buzz. I, but I do worry. Where do people live?
Ben: Yeah. There was so much in that answer, which I wanna reflect on it and come back to. So one is. On Sudan.
The second is this some of the criticisms about sexism and racism and I guess Brixton talking about its wealth. The opposite side of that is, is I was just looking up, crime rates have really fallen and in Brixton crime rates actually over 20, 30 years have really fallen. And I don't think the public really really see that.
Yeah. But perhaps circling back to that first one. Your time in Sudan and your time in Africa, how did that shape your kind of thinking? 'cause Sudan, obviously now, back then, I guess still much poorer than this country has conflicts and has things like that, did that shape your outlook on how to think about Britain?
Rob: It did. I think everyone should go and work for a few years abroad in, in a very different culture. It forces not for, but it helps people realize that the norms and behaviors and attitudes we all hold, many of them are shaped by the culture we are in. And it's important to see people think differently and recognize that sometimes the words we put on it.
Are not sufficient to describe what we are experiencing. So for example, in Sudan, a lot of people who visit Sudan fresh visit will say, people are so generous and open. They are, but it's not quite generosity as we understand it, or openness as we understand. There's lots of cultural norms around that of behaviors and expectations.
And you know what it did, it really gave me an insight into the fact that the world is very diverse, very mixed that people's. Behaviors and attitudes can be seen in lot through lots of different lenses and prisms. And I think that helped me actually going into a policing world because I'm very interested in different races, faiths, backgrounds and people's views and attitudes of policing, but also norms and laws and things.
It's, there's, it's never. Always a very clear right or wrong, there's lots of grays in between. And while, the law tends to be fairly right or wrong at least understanding where people are coming from helps you manage the situation, the problem the concerns better. So I, I think my time in Sudan definitely gave me that sort of international perspective, which is why I spoke a bit of Arabic.
So it got me involved eventually in counter-terrorism and issues around that. I genuinely, I'm interested in different communities and cultures. So I ended up becoming when I was an inspector, the lead in the Metropolitan Police for Race and Minority matters. And that was before Stephen Lawrence.
It was just me and a couple of other staff. Now it. Much bigger departments dealing with all those issues, quite rightly, because they're very complex. But in those days, I was a bit of a pioneer actually of trying to consider how policing can adapt to different communities and to the modern world.
Ben:
I was speaking with a friend.
Recently, and she was interested in policing. But she was worried about a couple of comments that you mentioned that you were worried about all those decades ago around these criticisms that the police force is potentially racist, institutionally racist, sexist or, looking at the, the primary stats of the balance on that.
But there have been other people saying wherever you put the bar, it's definitely improved. You obviously need good people to improve it. It's complicated. And actually there were a lot of good people trying to do good things as, as well as bad apples. From where you've been all the way from the beginning to that and obviously trying to grapple with these issues what do you see as the problems are?
Where maybe are some of those criticisms? Correct, or maybe where they overstated and do you really think at its heart the these are racist or sexist organizations?
Rob: I'm going to qualify. What I'm now next going to say with the fact that the vast majority of people in any organization, the police included, and very much in the police are well motivated, a good mean want to do their best.
That the workforce itself is an extremely well motivated and positive workforce, but institutional racism and sexism exists. It is, if you take the description of what institutional racism is from McPherson the McPherson report into the Stephen Lawrence death it is about institutional ways of operating that the, it's ways of process, of doing things that has a negative impact upon different communities or different races or people.
That absolutely is the case. That it isn't that people in the organization were going around with a racist bent themselves, and that's where there's it's a very difficult phrase, institutional racism because it, the people within the organization feels, they feel they're all being tainted by it, and they feel hurt by that.
The reality of it is, it's not about them as individuals, it's about the way the organization has set itself up and runs itself. And, and an example I used to be when I was at Brixton, a good big example of institutional racism in a way was the way that policing mostly focused on street level dealing, which was mostly done.
Certainly when I was there by young black men, and so the focus of our efforts and activity was on young black men. The reality of it is, 'cause I know this for a fact, there was a range of dealing that was done by white people to white middle class houses. That was almost like a milk round going around Briston.
We never touched that. We didn't even look at it. It wasn't on our radar. Nobody ever complained about it to us, so we didn't bother with it. The reality of it is that organizational focus. Has the impact of puts of, in effect criminalizing more black young lads than white people who are doing a very similar role in the community.
But when noticed that is institutional racism, it's not, nobody's consciously sat there and thought this is what we're gonna do. It's just that we've responded to calls about bit of street dealing. We've decided we would focus on it. We'd put in a, a an, an operation. But the bit that wasn't, didn't seem to bother anybody.
We weren't getting any complaints about, we didn't really bother about. And so that's an example for me of institutional racism and the way it has a disproportionate impact on a certain group of people who, who are predominantly black in, in, in that example. So I think institutional racism.
Definitely sexism when I first joined was writ large. In fact, that was the thing that shocked me most. I think it was a much more sexist organization than it was actually racist. I the curiously in terms of help for victims and support for communities. Many of my colleagues were very colorblind. But there was a little bit of a sort of sexist, very male or organ organization, very macho in its own way.
And the way it treated women in those days I think was really dreadful at times. But. We've, we now have a position where getting close to half the chief constables in the UK are women. That's unheard of. We just wouldn't have been dreamt of when I first joined. At one point, the head of the Met was a woman, the head of the Association of Chief Police Officers or the National Police Chief's Council was a woman.
And the head of the National Crime Agency was a woman. It's, it the tone of nature eternally to women has just changed beyond all recognition, which is a real positive,
Ben: it is a problem, but it has got better over the decades and it's important to understand that it's around the system of which society, culture, everything into place With that, I think it was a very adjacent example, 30 years ago, hardly any buildings would've been adapted for wheelchair use, right?
You think well. We can't understand why that is. In another context, you could just say that that institutionally discriminates against disabled people who need a wheelchair. You wouldn't have thought any building owner, particularly individually, was gonna be against disabled people. But the system was not set up to think about, oh, there are these people who for very minor adjustments, we could include them into that.
I think it's obviously a lot more complicated with communities and race, but it shows just an example that it's a systems thinking rather than an individual.
Rob: It is. You've got to, you've got to lift yourself up above, above pointing blame at individuals and to say, what is it about the organization that encourages it?
For example, in the police world, we're it, you can't have somebody going out and dealing, say with a car accident on the street and say and have a nice facilitative discussion. You, they've got to be quite directive, quite controlling, and controlling in a positive way. Control a crisis, a situation put order on chaos.
That's what people look to the police to do. But it means that you tend to get people who are more directive, people who are more who have that command about them. Which you want them but you don't want them to be like that all the time. And that's the challenge.
Trying to find a balance between what you need for the role, but also you can't have them going. Into some communities and just being directive to them all the time. And hence sometimes, cops can rub other people up the wrong way because they do go and do that. It and one thing I wouldn't, there, there are still far too many instances of racism or sexism in the organization that are actually very personal.
There are people doing it but I would say compared to when I joined it's such a different world and a positive world. I'm pleased about the progress, but there's more to be done.
Ben: And. What do you think we could do about it Now given all of these programs and things in it, is there, I guess there's never any kind of magic bullet around it, but what are your observations about the things which need to improve?
Rob: Very interesting this because people have heard, perhaps of Louise Cases report. She wrote a report recently that talked about the misogyny and the homophobia and the racism in, in, in the organization. But her, what's worth reading in her report is the first third analyzes the systemic managerial issues.
That create more problems. So bit of like your example about how if people putting up buildings are actually required to, to address these points, then actually it would make life so much better for somebody with disabilities. And her point was, and I wholly agree with this, that actually there's a lot going on in the way policing is organized and run.
For example, those people who deal with the crisis, those response officers are often the newest people. In the organization, the least experienced, and yet they do the most critical job when somebody needs it. And she quite rightly reports that leads to sometimes bad or certainly inadvertently bad behaviors that could be prevented if you just had more experience there.
But we take the more experienced officers off and put them off to counter-terrorism or to serious and organized crime because, they've, they're experienced, they can deal with it. But actually the most critical stuff for the public. At the ground floor and needs, that needs to be done really well.
And she, she made the point that if you do the basics really well, if you've got the experienced officers doing that, then a lot of the rest will fall into place. And if you've got good, experienced supervisors dealing with those response calls and those day-to-day grind of things, actually they'll make sure that behaviors are right and that police officers don't feel beleaguered and therefore start behaving in ways that cause more problems than they solve.
So I think it's, it, there's a lot in. Valuing those who did the most difficult role in policing, which actually is the response role.
Ben: I guess there's an issue there in terms of money and experience. 'cause you see the same in, in doctoring and nursing actually junior doctors need that senior doctor for quite a while.
So 1, 2, 3 years. So they can look at all of these cases and incidences in the same as the nursing, but senior doctor's time, they're more expensive. Do they wanna do the ward rounds rather than the con consultation? Yes. No, that's a good parallel and where that is. But I take that point that maybe if we could draw for some time some of the, those really experienced a police to then mentor the more junior ones to see some of these, because you don't have those incidents so often that they're not necessarily happening every day, but over a month you have a handful, which then you could go.
I think coming back to the systems piece, I'd be interested in your observations about all of the work you did around Hillsborough. So obviously you learned a lot and there was a systemic failure around that. I'd be interested in your reflections about perhaps what the public should know and what perhaps the public has missed from that, the learnings and the reflections over that time that you saw and maybe for those who you know are listening outside of Britain who might not know of of Hillsborough that much, you can offer a little reflection of how it came about and what we've learned.
Rob: Hillsborough was a dreadful football disaster where 97 people. Lost their lives back on the 15th of April, 1989. It it was at a football match at semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest Shefield Wednesday, football ground, Shefield Wednesday being a neutral venue where the two teams could meet for that semifinal.
And and it was held a lovely sunny April day. There were there, there's a lot of issues that weren't dealt with at the time that caused much grievance to the relatives and friends of those who died and wholly justifiable grievance. And at the time. After the disaster, which was had, was multifactorial in its causes.
And I'll come back to that in a second, but I'll just say what happened after the event where 97 people died through crushing. The very early on the narrative was that the fans had exacerbated or caused it themselves. The one thing I can say and that narrative well partly dispelled over many years because it's been very well reviewed, very well looked at by inquiries and investigations.
What I can say though is while there's absolutely no evidence to show that fans contributed to the disaster, and I'll explain a bit about that in a second. Then that narrative still persists and so unfairly persists. I think it's dreadful but even today, despite everything, I will sometimes meet people and they'll say, oh, what were, what were you doing?
And I'll say then towards the end of my time as a career in the police, I've investigated and followed up all the Hillsborough things. And they'll say, oh yeah. But it was the fans, wasn't it? And I still get that even today all those years later 36 years later, where when it's been gone through with the tooth comb.
But the causes were as I say, multifactorial, the main one was a failure of policing. It was a failure of command, a failure of knowing about what, what had gone on in previous years and managing that. A failure of recognizing some of the risks and the issues a failure of experience.
The person put in charge had virtually no experience of doing it. And a deep complacency. South Yorkshire Police who were policing it. Felt that they were experts in policing football. Frankly, they weren't, they were fairly poor at it in, in, even by the standards of the day. And it was a number of turnstiles had been closed, and this is, the club had did this, had done that.
They hadn't properly talked about it through it with the police. The police recognized those turns, styles had been closed but didn't do anything about it. And what happened, because those turns styles were not open that year, and they had been the previous year, you had thousands of people trying to get in.
Through a lot less turns stars and actually physically they couldn't have gotten in time. It wouldn't have turned through and turned around quick enough for people to get through the maximum rate's, about 700 an hour. And it would've required towards about two o'clock. It would've still taken almost two hours to get everyone in.
So from two o'clock onwards, the. The crowd built up at that end of the ground, which was called Leins Lane. It was it was a problem growing in plain sight and nobody did anything about it. It was ignored. There were assumptions made that it's it's just Liverpool fans coming late. It's their fault in effect.
And no consideration and no planning was done before or at the time to manage that. And eventually it got so bad. The crush outside the ground got so bad they just opened the gates and let everyone in again, taking no. Plan or contingency to do it. They went in, there was structural failures in the ground.
Again, another factor that was beyond the police, but the police had a bit of engagement in that, that exacerbated those problems. The sign signage in the ground was dreadful, so everyone who comes in, rushes in when they opened all the gates, let them all rush in, and everyone went straight down the tunnel, straight onto the stands.
And there was a significant crush where people died. The response afterwards was. As poor as the management of the game. And the the, it was headless chickens, in effect. Nobody took command. And that ran throughout the night when the loved ones were looking for their, the people who had passed away and were trying to find them and going to the hospitals and heading back.
And it was it's heartrending, absolutely heartrending to hear the stories of the families and what they went through. And so in effect, it was a multiple failures, the ambulance service didn't cover themselves in glory. The the fire service did very well. The but the police service in particular failed the structural engineers for the for the stadium.
There were some significant failures there, and the club itself were failure. There were failures. And but the complacency and then the force narrative and the lack of command and ownership and accountability for it has exacerbated that cri, that disaster for many years. And the fact in effect, the establishment doubled in on itself.
And I don't believe there's an entity such as the establishment, but what. But it was a time, 10, 20 years earlier, you had the avan disaster and nobody was held to account and there was no, there was an inquiry, but it was, there was no accountability there at all.
By the time this disaster happened in the late eighties, there was a lot more accountability, but it wasn't ingrained in the system. And generally because it was seen as Liverpool's Liverpool problem happened in Sheffield, I don't think it was dealt with particularly well. Certainly not by the coroner, certainly not by the some of the people who had to investigate it, and at the end of the day, it wasn't dealt with.
And the wounds remained for many years with the families who campaigned to reopen the inquests, which they did. And that happened. And then I got engaged back in 2016 after the new inquest gave a unlawful killing verdict and they needed an a senior officer to lead the investigation into the unlawful killing.
And that's when I came on board.
Ben: So it seems very fair that Liverpool still to this day, really ban I think it's the Sun newspaper, but certain newspapers for peddling that false narrative for where it is today. And I'm intrigued, obviously with all of those failures and then your investigation.
Do you think today we have learned from it and what are those learnings which are maybe part embedded or maybe if there are any learnings that we could take to heart more than we do? Interesting.
Rob: You, you say this is what I've been, I'm still engaged a bit in trying to shape up a document that, that that we put back to policing to, to say, look, these problems could, might still exist.
Let's be clear. An awful lot has changed since 1989. All the disaster. Issues have and now so much more sophisticated and organized the football, if you go and command a football match, you have to be accredited, you have to have a lot of experience and have done it and been tested for it.
There's a lot that's moved on since then. But I think one of the dangers as we saw, so there'd been two recent, relatively recent instance that ring the alarm bells. One was the Manchester Arena bombing where frankly the response was seen was dire uncoordinated no real command and control.
And many. Mistakes that you saw at Hillsborough reemerging after the Manchester Arena. And the other one was the Euro Cup final. Back in, was it 2020 when there was a near miss that was a near miss at Wembley That could have been a similar Hillsborough type event with crushing and death.
And actually for that matter, people say it was in France and it's the way the French do it. But of course, the French game where the Liverpool crowds were treated dreadfully as well was another example. I think there's still a danger of complacency. There is a challenge. That because events where there are deaths of say, up to a hundred or even more, are so vanishingly rare.
We don't practice it, we don't try it out. And I think we need better peer review and inspection of our ability to respond. It's like pandemics, you have to prepare for a pandemic because if you don't, as we discovered you're right, you can be right on the back. Foot.
And so that investment seems like lost investment. But when you need it, it's ideal. The same with disaster management. You've got to try it out. You've got to test your procedures. And I think we need better ways of testing our procedures for big disasters, because one day it will happen.
Ben: I think that's your point, that it is rare, but it is going to happen. As opposed to some things where you can think, okay, there's vanishingly rare. Yeah, but like you say, we're still seeing. Near misses. And the magnitude of when it does happen is not only for the people involved, which might be in the hundreds, but these, all these follow on facts both to sort of society and how we think about that.
So I think that seems really right, that we maybe should test the procedures more. And again, when he hasn't happened for a while, that sense of complacency, which is probably a human nature thing, but we need to perhaps build in against that. So I'm interested so that plus perhaps some of the public perception on crime, even though as we noted the large crime statistics are down in London, there is an issue on knife crime and the things has called in recent years.
Critics, which have called for a kind of defund the police type narrative. I'd be interested in what you think is maybe fair about that and what do you think people get wrong? I think at the very high level, obviously if police have less resources, you're gonna get less policing, which is actually not the intention.
But it does hint at some of these things around maybe complacency or problems with the system, or some of it is perception because actually if crime's down, why do the public not feel safer? They actually, if they were more say, rational or the news was different, they perhaps should feel safer. So I'm interested in what you think of that of those critics and what we should do and what we could learn from it.
Rob: Going back to what, where I started about policing actually from my perspective, hinges on a good response to somebody's crisis. Now that can be a crime, but it might not be a crime. And. Police while they have an impact on crime, if you arrest the right people, that takes 'em away and it stops 'em committing crime.
But on the whole, the causes of crime are much more embedded in society than things the police can deal with. And I think I think crime, if you really want to deal with crime and reduce it, it's not just the police by any stretch. And it's not the criminal justice system. It's actually society, it's communities.
So going back you mentioned Brixton and you were dead, right? When you said to me a few minutes ago that Brixton crime levels have dropped dramatically in 30 years. They have, when I was there patrolling, we had about a hundred robberies, street robberies. A week. A hundred. Can you imagine street robberies?
That's people being robbed often at night, knife pointed their wallets and their less mobile phones in those days, of their goods. And and. Now it's a handful. It's, I dunno the exact figures now, but it's, at one point I did meet somebody from Brixton and asked him, I said, oh, we have about one or two a week, some, a maximum.
So it, the scale is different. What's gone on there? To a certain extent it's a slightly more affluent society, but it's also, schools are better now. Those schools in Brixton have improved dramatically in 30 years. Thankfully, inner city schools are better kids necessarily better behaved in general.
But I do think kids get a bad rap. I think generally kids as a whole, not a, not always a popular thing to say because people don't want to believe it, but kids are more respectful, they're more thoughtful, they're more polite than they were when I was a lot younger. I was probably contributory to it when I was a young person.
They, it's a, it's, I think we've gotta be really careful about demonizing young people, 'cause most of them are really good kids. And there is a problem with knife crime. There was a problem 30 years ago that wasn't recorded. Because when all those robberies were often involved in knives and we never ever recorded it as a knife crime we do now.
So you've gotta be very careful about saying, oh, it's got worse. It might, we forget how grimy the eighties and nineties were when I was, the graffiti, the fact that your car, if you left it anywhere, would be broken into, that the experience of the general public back in the eighties and nineties in inner city London was dreadful.
And fearful. It's actually a lot better now. Peop but I think it gets amplified and it gets amplified through social media. It gets amplified through newspapers, it gets amplified through people with. Agendas no pe that sort of dispassionate, thoughtful analysis is gone.
People want to shout from rooftops and create an agenda. So my, my, so crime, I think we've gotta be really careful. Crime on the whole. Certainly the crime we experience in a day-to-day level is so much less than it was when I was a junior police officer. That's not to say crime doesn't exist because of course it's gone onto different platforms.
It's gone on to the internet, it's gone on to fraud. There's a lot more of that around. But I, and that, we can discuss that further if you want, but because policing isn't well set up to deal with that. So there is a gap there. There is crime. It's actually not on as much in the public sphere as it used to be.
People believe it is, but I think that's a nature of some of the public discourse. And I do think we need to pause and ask ourselves what sort of society we live in. We live in quite a good society. In the decades I've been a police officer, some things have got better, some things have got worse.
But overall, I don't think we're any worse. The, as a society but people feel more anxious because I think it's being amplified so much.
Ben: Yes. I would go so fast to say versus the eighties and even the nineties, that things have got better, things have got worse, but on net things have actually got better.
And although there's been challenges, and I don't want to diminish them, but I think we see that in crime overall, it's down. We see that in health overall, we're living better. We even see that in poverty. Yes, there's still. A lot of poverty and far too much, but actually the rates have gone down. Education scores are up.
So I, I actually think there's that, and to your point, when I was growing up in London I was probably allowed out into the late eighties and the nineties. My parents would definitely have said, oh, like Shaw Ditch Hackney. Nope. Brixton Really? Maybe Nope as well, unless you had a really good reason.
It's unless you knew Brixton, I didn't grow up South London, then it's no reason to go there. You'd look obviously outta place and you'd be a target. I'm interested then maybe putting it all together a little bit over your 30, 40 years, what do you think has worked?
And why, and what do you think maybe today if you had an opportunity to change or improve what would you do? And maybe you could do this in the context partly of policing. Like what are the things which have worked to get actually those crime down? And where do we still have to go? And perhaps you could also bring in some of your work on.
Civil society or thinking about that, because that speaks to the point that you mentioned of well, policing can perhaps get better and needs to still a lot on the crisis part and we, we should address that. But the causes of that crisis are these other aspects. We can talk about mental health.
I dunno where you draw the line. Obviously if you've got something having a mental health crisis on the streets, then yes, the police probably should be involved at that level, but they're not gonna necessarily solve someone's chronic mental health issues over built up over decades. That's an example.
And I'm interested in that because there does seem to be at least in this country. A feeling still of civic pride, I think. And there is perhaps more engagement than the critics might say, but it is also a little bit disjointed and hard to bring together. So anyway, policing what's worked?
Rob: I think in, in describing what works and what could be better, in a way I'm reflecting trends in our society as well. That cause challenges for policing as much as everyone else. So what works for me is. And has a very strong academic evidence base is local community policing, neighborhood policing, that link with communities does work.
It's not cheap, hence it's been willow out in recent years.
Ben: How does neighborhood policing work?
Rob: Neighborhood policing is where you have police officers who own their patch they're there sufficiently consistently in order to deal with the problems, to pick up problem solving to pick up an issue, not less, let it lie.
So if you've got a shop that's constantly getting kids in nicking stuff, it can actually the local officer. Would feel sufficient ownership and be regular enough in that community to be able to say, yes, I'll do something about this. I'll know who it is. We'll deal with that. And and it, it, lots of people ask for this.
They say, we want to see a cop on the streets. They often don't quite know what they're asking for, but I think what they really want is somebody who knows their area, knows what the problems are and is doing something about it. And that seemed to work. That does work. It brings down crime. It increases confidence.
And it works effectively, not just with police, though. You, it works really well when all the other agencies. Are aligned similarly you, there's some, been some fantastic work over the years. Again, very evidence based where team, multidisciplinary teams, it sounds a bit medical, doesn't it?
But it is, you've got the housing officer as well as the police officer, as well as the the local council and others all working in an area and deal with. Both the police or the offenders or the different problems that might be developing. And one of the big real pluses, two of them actually, one was the Crime of Disorder Act in 19 80, 19 98 that gave a responsibility on all those different agencies to work together to prevent crime that was a sea change and made a big difference.
All the reduction in crime that was claimed by others in the two thousands in the late in the 2010 to 2015 period when crime was really seemed to be re, re reducing, I'm convinced, came about because of the work that was kicked off in the late nineties about local problem solving, community policing.
It, that made a big difference. Sure. Start the, which was a multi. Disciplinary response to young families and kids and helping people regardless of your background, regardless of where you are helping you in sort of your kids grow up in the community with lots of support. That was, that I think made a fantastic difference to communities.
You could feel it in communities where Shore start was operating, where there was good neighbor policing all of that. I think the lesson is that worked and the lesson is that was all dismantled just as it was about really kicking in where the results were starting to show. And politicians unfortunately have very short term agendas.
They have a, have look. I know it's a bit of a cliche, but it's true. They're not there thinking this investment will get crime down in 20 years time. But that's the way you do it. You get the kids now and you work with them positively, constructively. Not because they're troubled or problematic, but because as a society we want to bring them up.
And that will make a difference to crime because believe it or not, the peak offending age is 15. That's when most people will commit crime in the, in, in society. So get the kids at five, at three, at one and help them grow up well and you'll prevent crime. So that's the positive, which sadly has been a bit dismantled in recent years.
Budgets and other things. But the other reason it's been dismantled is because we are policing and this is where we could improve. But it's less about improvement is about us thinking differently. We I'll give you an example. When I was in, in Brixton, I was, I remember having to be supervise an investigation in the academy in Brixton, which is a large nightclub.
About 5,000 people go there. There was a rape there. And I arranged to have a an appeal. We had about 10 maximum witness statements. We had a VHS tape from the entrance to the to the academy. And we had the forensic medical examiner's report. And we did a bit of local inquiry. On foot in the area.
And that probably took me and a couple of other people a week or so of investigative effort. On and off we're doing some other things as well. A similar crime. Now, every single person in the academy might have a mobile phone, ev that's potentially 5,000 pieces of evidence to examine and to collect.
You won't, but you do need to, you need to assess and judge and work out how you're gonna manage all of that 5,000 pieces of evidence. There will be about 600 hours. Of video, DVD, footage to, to view potentially. You've got masses of information from oyster cards, from other digital information all in our, in the environment that could all help you with that investigation.
Now that's helpful because it's probably more chance of arresting somebody, but it's also deeply problematic because it would take, it does take many people, many hours of work, days and days to go through it. Now people say, oh, AI will do that. It's not doing it at the moment, and it's soaking up hundreds of hours of work.
So at the same crime today. Is exponentially more costly in time and effort and money than the one I dealt with all those years ago. And people don't realize that that when I say exponentially, I really mean it. It's by factors. Hundred. Of time and effort. And not just of the officers in Brixton, it'll be lots of other departments having to get involved.
Departments that never existed in my time. All those departments need staffing and need experts and people who can do stuff that we never had the forensic examination now so much more thorough and could, will involve many more hours of effort and time. And as for the interviewing, interviewing the victim is so much better but time consuming.
And it is better, people will be put through a better experience than they did when I did it, if I'm honest. But it's just costly. It's time. So when people say we don't see any officers and stuff, I can tell you they're all beavering away, but they're beavering away on stuff that didn't exist when I was a lot younger and.
We are not geared up yet to managing that deluge of digital evidence. We don't, we still struggle to wade through it. A simple shoplifter, people say, what's going on about shoplifting? I could deal with arrest and deal with a shoplifter in an hour and a half when I was a pc, arresting straightforward one.
But, do all the way through to charging and being out the cell. You'll be lucky to get it through in two days of one person's work. Lucky and probably longer of things. So when people say the police aren't dealing with shoplifters any longer, if you arrest a shoplifter, now the amount of work involved is again not exponentially, but certainly scale of 10 times what it was when I was a young officer and that.
Is costly, and we haven't increased the numbers of officers proportionately to that demand. And that's why when people say We don't see a cop, I can tell you why not. It is not that they're twiddling their thumbs. They are, they're chasing their tail often. You I believe me, and I've tried it, you try going to say what looks like a straightforward job, but actually it turn, you've got to chase down, say, an internet provider to get an email trail or something like that.
Ben: That’s a fascinating observation, which I wasn't aware of, but makes complete sense, I guess at the, that society level, putting your two observations together. A society has to ask a question as to where it wants to spend. Its limited. Time and money. If, maybe take the slightly easier example of the shot lifter versus the more, more serious Brixton crime you were there before.
If it's going from two hours to 40 hours of time, say something like that. Maybe some of that time is valuable, but certainly the extra 38, maybe not, maybe an extra two or three perhaps on that, and that extra money, it sounds would've been perhaps better spent over a longer term basis going into.
Community policing where those two police officers, rather than having to wade through all of this extra paperwork and evidence would be walking the shop speaking to people and being a presence. But we can't necessarily rebalance that. But that seems to be a very intriguing kind of double observation about where it's gone.
And actually that reflects a lot of other things in society. Like you say, our paperwork and our trends of that, and we are not yet, and we may never get to the state where AI can actually do that for us. There will probably still need to be human judgment and maybe they can make it. 50% better. But if you've got a hundred times you are coming back down to 50 times, that's still quite a lot more effort.
Rob: And we've developed for understandable reasons, some quite complex legal processes. One that is very arcane to people not in the police, but is critical to what I've just been discussing is disclosure. You have to, because of things going wrong in the past, there's now a very strong requirement to.
Put as much give the defense as much evidence as both that, that has any bearing on the case. And to also to explain a little bit why they have, why you've done stuff and why you haven't done the stuff. Of course, why haven't you got all those 5,000 phones and tapped into them?
Because that would tell, find, you'll find out my client's innocent if you did that and that sort of thing. So you, you end up with this massive information with people spending days and days. I had in my team for Hillsborough, almost as many officers. Dealing with disclosure for court as I did, dealing with the investigation itself.
And these are experienced cops doing it. Now you could argue it's non, but you do need the investigative mindset to be able to work through what you disclose and what you don't disclose and understand the investigation well enough to make those choices. But they, they went through half a million documents and pieces of evidence to, to be able to say that you can have that and you can't.
It's got, again, as I, I use the word exponentially, but it's true, it's exponentially greater now with so much digital evidence and people having to wade through it and decide what's gonna be disclosed. You're right. There's that nirvana of ai. But I've yet to see it emerge. Lots of people say it will, and I think it will in some respects, but it'll create its own challenges.
Ben: Yeah. Actually that disclosure point's another really. Really hard one because we can see there's been miscarriages of justice. 'cause there weren't disclosure, I don't know what the number is. I'm gonna make a guess that it's that it was a small number, but obviously to any one individual case, it's extremely important to try and get it right.
But then the amount of disclosure that you've then had to do versus those numbers, miscarriages of justice. That's a very hard thing to balance. I can see, yes. And I can see how it's hard to roll back on some of that disclosure, but this is, I dunno what the economists would call it.
Not quite the opportunity cost of things, but. Those a hundred hours spent on disclosure for a little bit of benefit, maybe no benefit. If it was there if it had been spent on say, community policing, you'd actually get a lot more bang for your buck. But you can't do that because those are the missing.
Police hours, which we don't see any more
Rob: Yeah. And you say right, Ben, actually, that there's so much about our society where we wouldn't want to roll it back, but we undress, we, we fail. I think sometimes take into account just how much that costs us. There's no way you'd say that.
You just can't do vettings say of people. But the amount of vetting and the complexity of vetting at times can feel a bit overwhelming. And yet you do need some safeguards. Yeah, you need safeguards because of stuff that's happened but the safeguards can also paralyze. So it's finding that balance all the time.
Very difficult. Yeah.
Ben: And maybe there's some evidence that it's gone slightly too far the other way and in, in many domains. This is, like you say, it is interesting when we talk about the police, about its challenges and opportunities. 'cause actually that broadly reflects a lot of other things in society because actually policing reflects, the problems and challenges of society today.
Great. Maybe moving on to our last couple of questions. You spent the last year or so or a little bit further back as high sheriff, perhaps you'd like to comment on that, and I think your theme was around civic engagement, so you get a very intense year of doings and things around that.
Yeah. But would you like to reflect on that and then any other current projects that you'd want to highlight?
Rob: Thank you Ben. I'm what a great conversation, roved across so much and I feel we've only scratched the surface of some stuff. But yes, I've, I was very fortunate and honored to be invited to become the high sheriff of Somerset.
For those who've never heard of a high sheriff or just think it's something with Nottingham and Robin Hood. The high sheriff of sub set, the high sheriff in general, the, it goes back actually to King Alfred's days. The sheriff was the Shire Reeve, the representative in the Shire of the Monarch.
And that's where it started from. It's the oldest secular role, civic role in, in the uk. And as a sheriff in, back in the sort of late nine hundreds, thousands, 11 hundreds, 12 hundreds, in those times you were in effect, the kings. You acted for the king in the community. So you raise taxes.
You, you did law and order. You generally, often, the, in effect the police, the judge, jury and execution all in one. There's lots of it. It you exercise the king's power and. That ran for many years, albeit it gradually diminished because of course, the King, king Henry the second brought in juries and judges and things like that.
And so gradually over centuries, the role of high sheriff changed dramatically. That you weren't, that they brought in Lord, left tenants in 1585 in order to because actually the high sheriffs were meant to raise the army, but weren't doing a very good job of it. And so Lord left tenants were set up in effect to raise the army on behalf of the king.
Occasionally queen, and it was a queen then. So it's, it. So over, over the years, the role is much less. In fact, it was, and it was made a year only by Henry III in 1258 because he felt. High shares. Were getting a bit too powerful. In fact, in, in, in the Magna Carta 69 of the 121, I might be just slightly wrong on those numbers of clauses in the Magna Carta were about high sheriffs, and most of it was about their overreach and about using their powers arbitrarily and things like that. High sheriffs weren't always popular and certainly when they were collecting taxes, Stephanie weren't. Now it's a very honorific role.
All of that responsibility for law and order and tax collecting and everything else is long gone, but it's still, you're the monarchs representative for law and Order in the, in, in the county. But also you're asked to support civic society and volunteering in the community. And that's the thing I particularly focused on in my year was volunteering.
The people who give up their own time, particularly young people because we face in this country might not realize it, but a real crisis of volunteering. In there, there is, it's the lots of figures I could quote, but the stark one is, in the last decade, routine involvement in volunteering has gone down from 27% to 16%.
People who would routinely volunteer as measured by the British Attitude Survey and British the through statistics. And on the whole, many counties like Somerset still do well because there's a lot, an elderly population who volunteer a lot, but a lot of the older people having to look after grandchildren or, bought dogs and having to walk their dogs and things and time, that time they used to spend volunteering has definitely diminished.
So we face a bit of a crisis in this country on volunteering and I I use my year to promote both awareness of that fact, but also what could we do in Somerset about it? And you, I convened a volunteers Faires. I convened a volunteers conference where Deborah Mead and the Dragons Den star, she came along and did a fantastic skit on how businesses can support volunteering.
And she and. Somerset has a strong approach to try and counter the trends in volunteering. But that's, it, I did my little bit for a year, but only a year because Henry iii limited my time. And but I've, I got enormous. I, it was a privilege but I got a lot out of it by just being able to know, you can, just saying thank you to volunteers and sometimes being able to give them a high sheriff's award for what they've done.
Lifts, lifts them. You can see such and it's glue in our community. There's it I'm still in awe of just how much people do in our community. The statistics can be a bit depression, depressing. I think they underestimate what people do. Because lots of people will say I don't volunteer.
And then you discover actually they go and clean the church every week or they or they go and help their local neighbor and take her or him to hospital. Every week and things like that lot, it's the glue that holds our society together. And long may it continue and I think we should really celebrate the fact people participate and do stuff in our community.
Not put up too many barriers. We talked about bureaucratic barriers. There's a few there as well in volunteering. People are worried about taking on young volunteers, sadly, and yet youngsters need to get the volunteering habit. And people get anxious about safeguarding and I say no.
Safeguarding should not be a barrier. It's something to be aware of, but you shouldn't prevent you from doing stuff with young people because young people are our future. We need them to volunteer and participate in our community. And I will continue. Post my high share of review, and I do continue to try and support that work.
I do a few other things as well. I've got a Bishop Tutu Foundation, I'm a trustee of I, I do some work in Northern Ireland with the Independent Commission on Reconciliation. And I've got I've now, because of the work I've been doing on with the high shares on the High Shares Association, council su trying to support this continue and roll out some of the thinking that we brought in Somerset more widely.
So I've got some great projects and work on the go now, not least all being able to come and talk to you, Ben, this is a real privilege and a joy actually. That sounds excellent. I,
Ben: I really concur. My, my mom volunteers and we try and do things and things, and it is one of those things, you can't really force it.
I guess that's the thing. There are some people say, oh, should we bring back national service and the like. And I don't think that really works. It's if you ever forced to read a book it never really works that way. But if there's things that we can do by engendering leadership and showing that actually the value that can bring, I think that's incredibly important.
Yeah. So last question, we can maybe split into two parts, and this would be around any sort of life advice. Thoughts that you have in your career, in life. And maybe one would be if you had any advice or thoughts to someone who was interested in joining the police or maybe has just joined the police.
What would you say thoughts to a young police officer or someone who was interested in joining? Or we could also widen that out to not just the police, but anyone a young person today, obviously we have the call to do volunteering, but any thoughts that you would want to share?
Rob: That's a big, an open, yeah, an open field there. Ben I think I have had a career that I've got so much out of, and I think policing is a really important public service. So to, is teaching, so to, is. Being a probation officer or a prison officer or a a, a nurse, a nursing assistant, or a doctor or, those public services are critical to our society.
I think public service itself it's important we honor it and respect it and encourage it. And I think in, it costs, that's the challenge. And people you've mentioned that a bit earlier. You've gotta cut your cloth a bit around stuff. But nevertheless, I think as a society, we've got to recognize that if we want good public services, we need good people doing it.
We need to encourage them in. And you can make a difference. You, there's, for me, a. There's loads of people I will have touched in my policing life, who I will never know. I will never know the impact I've had on them, but I've had enough people talk to me about things I've done to realize I have had a bit of impact on some lives, and probably many more than I'll ever know.
And I would say that about anybody in a public service, you make a difference in people's lives. Most people you'll never know you've done that. My dad was a teacher. It was only after he died that a number of people came to me and said, oh, he really turned me around. He got me to understand maths, which was no mean feat.
And and I think I, in a way, you need to be self-reliant. You need to be self-motivated and recognize that you're never gonna get patted on the head all the time. But actually just have that sense yourself of what you're doing is important and good, and do it to the best of your ability. And I think that's driven me in my career.
I've not really. Spin there thinking somebody must come and pat me on the head. Although when it happens, it's nice. I do very much think, I think that's a decent enough job. I've done my best there. And I think that's what should, you need a lot of that self actualization I think in, if you're going to succeed in many public service jobs because people aren't gonna come along and pat you on the head all the time.
But nevertheless, you can make a difference. And so that's driven me and I think could drive anybody else. And don't get put off by what you read in the papers. All organizations are much more complex and diverse than they appear in the way they're sometimes presented. Policings definitely like that.
It's a very. Interesting organization in so many ways, and you can make it better in your own way just by being there and part of it. So I would encourage anybody and also encourage anybody do recognize you're part of society and you have a responsibility in society. Pick up that responsibility and do something about it.
Ben: That makes a lot of sense. So public service, you may not be immediately rewarded, but you will touch a multitude of people. Those that you will never know. And organizations are complex, but by stepping up and being part of it, you can definitely make a difference.
Rob: Perfectly summarizing.
Thank you
Ben: On that, on that note, Rob, thank you very much.
Rob: Thank you Ben, and I've really enjoyed it and thank you for giving me the opportunity to give you a bit of my philosophy of life, but also I'd be very interested from anybody who listens to this, if they ever want to converse about any of this.
Very happy to get in touch. Always happy to discuss these things.