Sir, The events in Forest Gate are part of a series of debacles sharing a common cause, going back through the cases of Jean Charles de Menezes, Stephen Lawrence and Damilola Taylor, to the Birmingham Six and even earlier causes célèbres.
The common origin of these disasters for policing lies in a decision made by the Home Office in the 19th century to impose the investigation and detection of crime on Robert Peel’s previously protective and patrolling, uniformed peacekeeping force. The effect was to create the present-day dual role for the police which requires officers to act both as protectors and befrienders of all citizens and, at the same time, as predators on those same citizens if or when they are suspected of committing, or being involved in, crime.
The problem this creates is no better shown than in the Forest Gate case. The errors, omissions or mistakes that are bound to occur in the investigation of crime constantly undermine or destroy the trust between the police and their communities on which effective peacekeeping, crime prevention and even counter- terrorism crucially depend.
With the growth of the power and influence of the Crown Prosecution Service the time has surely come to return the police to their originally intended peacekeeping and protective role, and transfer all responsibility for criminal investigation, detection and prosecution to an executive arm of the CPS, formed in the first instance, I suggest, from the existing body of police detectives.
With nothing else for them to do, we might then find uniformed police officers reappearing on our streets in force to deal with the plague of anti- social behaviour that is a direct consequence of the present police preoccupation with filling in forms for the CPS.
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LAWRENCE T. ROACH
Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police, 1990-96
Borehamwood, Herts