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Priyanka Raval 0:34
Welcome to this episode of the debrief, where Cable journalists take us behind the headlines of their latest investigations. I'm Priyanka Raval, and this week, I'm sitting down with Sean Morrison to talk through his recent reporting around a leaked document, which details the reality of Avon and Somerset Police force's use of stop and search, in particular, how it disproportionately targets young black men. You can read Sean's article black children and adults strip search 25 times more than their white peers in Avon and Somerset at the Bristol cable.org
Good morning Sean Morrison, how are you?
Sean Morrison 1:14
Not bad. Halloween fever around the corner. Went to get my vape this morning, had to queue for about 20 minutes while people were picking up their colored contact lenses.
Priyanka Raval 1:25
Oh god, did you not say excuse me It's an emergency?
Sean Morrison 1:28
I thought that at the beginning, but then I just got into looking at the contact lenses, these nice ones with crosses on, which looked really spooky.
Priyanka Raval 1:36
Would you pick up a pair for yourself?
Sean Morrison 1:38
No, I didn't.
Priyanka Raval 1:39
Yeah, that's probably for the best. I am a little bit distracted by the pumpkin that George has put on our desk. I wish listeners could see George has carved a sad face into a pumpkin, put it on our desk and put a captain's hat on it.
Sean Morrison 1:54
It's quite creepy. Actually.
Priyanka Raval 1:55
It does kind of capture the mood of the office. I don't know why.
Sean Morrison 1:59
What.. really sad?
Priyanka Raval 2:02
but still kind of pioneering. George, what were you thinking?
Sean Morrison 2:07
Why didn't you hollow it out?
George 2:09
I did.
Sean 2:12
No, you didn't. Shoddy job.
Priyanka Raval 2:18
No shade on your craftsmanship. George
Sean Morrison 2:22
some shade…
Priyanka Raval 2:23
Sean, you've been on the warpath lately with your section 60 reporting. People who have listened to past podcasts will have heard you talking with Matty about your reporting into the suspicionless stop and search power called Section 60. Through your reporting, you are arguing that the power should be repealed because it leads to racial profiling and disproportionately affects black people and it's ineffective. We held an event last week on Thursday in the Eastern community center that went well
Sean Morrison 2:56
it did. Yeah, it was good to hold an event on it. And you know, have people come and talk about their experience of stop and search and kind of rally behind the campaign, yeah. So it was good progress, really
Priyanka Raval 3:08
and a good mix of sources and voices on the panel, right?
Sean Morrison 3:13
Yeah. We had John Pegram from cop watch, who was talking about what people can do if they're stopped and searched, or if you see someone being stopped and searched. So I'm thinking about how we can turn that into an article, actually, because there's a lot to be said about that.
Priyanka Raval 3:27
And Jodie was there from stop watch, the national organization. She was really useful in giving an insight into the evolution of policy around stop and search powers.
Sean Morrison 3:37
Yeah, exactly like the political history of it, how, over time, use of it has changed.
Priyanka Raval 3:41
Because it used to be for football hooligans, right?
Sean Morrison 3: 43
Yeah, that's how it started off, and then it slowly evolved into tackling knife violence, or that was the narrative that the police gave.
Priyanka Raval 3:52
And I thought Lee, who was a youth worker, was really powerful in talking about the effects of stop and search on young people, young black boys in particular, and how it really erodes trust with the police, which I know is something that you've been talking about in your reporting a lot.
Sean Morrison 4:12
Yeah. I mean, that's like the real big impact here with section 60. And Lee works with young people. He works with one kid who was stop and searched under a section 60 operation in February, and he was just talking about how, you know, to be stopped, especially in such a dehumanizing and humiliating way when you're when you're young, you know, it can have a real lasting impact on you, yeah,
Priyanka Raval 4:36
and you've called it a radicalizing event in your reporting,
Sean Morrison 4:39
Yeah, that's, well, that was quote from Lee, actually. But you know, if you look at how it impacts people, you can see how that happens. You know, it's obviously going to damage trust in the police, but also just wider society. If you're just walking down the street and you're being criminalized for nothing, then, yeah, it's going to have a big impact.
Priyanka Raval 5:07
So last Thursday, on the day of our event, you had just published an exclusive story... for people who haven't read it, I highly recommend you do it was called black children and adults strip searched 25 times more than white peers in Avon and Somerset leaked report. Before we go into what that report revealed and your reporting on it, let's go back to how you got leaked that report in the first place.
Sean Morrison 5:33
So it was a couple of weeks ago. Now, it's a very big report, so it took a while to go through, but basically, I think it come off the back of the reporting on Section 60 and on disproportionality and institutional racism in the police force. A source of mine just gave me a call, pretty much randomly, to be honest, and said, You know, I've got this and I’m thinking of sharing it. We spoke about it, they sent the report, and we went from there, really.
Priyanka Raval 6:02
So this was two weeks ago. I remember that you also had one of the kickoff task force meetings of together for change,
Sean Morrison 6:10
yeah. So that was, yeah, it was a busy week, actually, because obviously that leak and that event at the same time, and with a section 60 event coming up as well... The event went really well. It's been a long time coming. We obviously launched this campaign earlier on in the year as a way of trying to build a united voice around changing the narrative on knife violence and looking for solutions to it in the city. Yeah, and a group of stakeholders, the signatories of the campaign, will come together to talk about ideas to move this task force forward that we're putting together, yeah, and there was just lots of good conversations about who's, you know, who can bring what to the table. We're talking about the impact of school exclusions, looking at laws around knife possession and how that's kind of portrayed in the media as well, and accountability for the police and the council and other services is a big part as well, because they all say that they're tackling knife violence, but they need to be held to account on how they're doing that, and section 60 in particular is a proof that it's not always good what they're doing. Yeah,
Priyanka Raval 7:12
I thought it was really interesting actually, that these two things happened in the same week, because you're reporting on knife violence and participating in together for change is what led you to looking into section 60 in the first place, because you were looking at how police powers had been stepped up in response to a spate of fatal stabbings, and you were scrutinizing the way in which they were using that power. So in the same week that you have this task force, you get a call from a source who says that they have a report, an internal report, so that means it was never supposed to be made public, was it?
Sean Morrison 7:52
Yeah, well, I mean, certainly the sense I got is that the police were trying to bury this report, right? It was commissioned, and it was showed to, you know, there, there are lots of people who had seen it like it had gone to scrutiny panels and things like that. The report is a, it's a big one, and it goes into lots of different aspects of stop and search. Strip searches, teams of officers who disproportionately stop black people, even individual officers as well. You know, obviously I it raised a lot of questions, as I say, but you know, and I asked that of the police, and I also asked, you know, what they wanted to do with the data, and it's not clear, but the sense I got was that it was never meant to see the light of day
Priyanka Raval 8:34
For investigative journalists. When you get leaks like these, it's kind of exciting, or it's really what fuels a lot of really important investigations, because you can compare and contrast what people or organizations are saying publicly and what is the reality internally. So going back to that moment between when you got the call and when you received the report, what were you expecting, or how did you feel while you were waiting for this report to come through?
Sean Morrison 9:05
Yeah, that's a tough thing to answer, actually, because the source gave me a rundown of the report so I knew what to expect. But it's quite tricky to decode these things, I think, because I'm not really a numbers person, so just mapping it out.. it took a while to, you know, to work out what's really going on, but it was just really shocking because, you know, these were figures that we hadn't seen before, but in terms of, like, the fact that disproportionality existed in all those areas, it wasn't shocking. It was more that, you know, I just couldn't believe that they had tried to not publish this with their narrative of transparency.
Priyanka Raval 9:45
Well, that's exactly, I think, what I was getting at, because when we sat down to interview Sarah crew over the summer, Sarah Crew, the police chief constable, you grilled her in a great video that people can see online about the Race matters Action Plan which was about the police claiming publicly to have made huge strides in tackling systemic racism in the police, and one of the things that she kept saying was the importance of transparency. And I know for conversations we've had in the office that you always had a hunch that they weren't being as transparent as they maybe claimed. You must have felt quite validated.
Sean Morrison 10:27
Yeah, I don't know about validated. I think just Yeah. I mean, the race matters report didn't have much data in it. It just had, you know, poems from people, you know, it was fluffy. It really was.
Priyanka Raval 10:48
Okay, let's get into what the report said. You printed it out, and as you said, it had a lot of data, which took a while to number crunch. What did it say?
Sean Morrison 11:00
It said a lot of things. And I think, you know, as the report shows, the headline figure was about strip searching, which is the, you know, the most intrusive police power in the stop and search rule book, basically, and the disproportionality in that over the seven years that this report covered, showed that black adults and children were subjected to full strip searches almost 25 times more frequently than white people.
Priyanka Raval 11:26
Can I just ask; strip searches? I'm sure it's a term that a lot of people have heard. What does it actually involve? Is it as awful as it sounds?
Sean Morrison 11:33
Yeah. I mean, it's clearly a really humiliating and, you know, traumatizing experience for people who are subjected to them. But there are different kinds of strip searches, right? There's a full strip search, also known as an EIP search, is when the person being searched is asked to take off all of their clothes, basically exposing intimate parts..
Priyanka Raval 11:59
and this is supposedly to check for weapons, drugs?
Sean Morrison 12:03
Yeah, it can be for different things, and then the officers should be clear, or should know, and have you know, strong grounds to carry out such an intrusive search. But as this report showed as well, that wasn't always the case.
Priyanka Raval 12:16
I think the most shocking thing was about the prevalence of the strip searching of children, right?
Sean Morrison 12:23
Yeah, which obviously is, you know, even more controversial if you look at the 25 times more likely data, if you separated the children in that it was that black kids are 10 times more likely to experience a full strip search than white children over the same period. And also with that, looking at the stop and search data more generally as well, including other kinds of searches, there was so many missed opportunities to safeguard the kids that they were searching just one in 10. 11% of stop searches on children were accompanied by a risk assessment, as they should be.
Priyanka Raval 12:59
And am I right in thinking that often it was the case that there weren't even strong grounds for carrying out a strip search?
Sean Morrison 13:08
Yeah, it highlighted several instances where there was a lack of clear grounds for such a search.
Priyanka Raval 13:14
And the problem with strip searching is also like where it happens, right? When you're talking about safeguarding I know it came up in the panel discussion that sometimes, you know it wasn't always conducted in the right place or in a police station. It could even be, you could be asked to remove layers of clothing in the back of police cars, right?
Sean Morrison 13:32
Yeah. I mean there's quite strict guidance on where strip searches should happen. Obviously, people argue that they shouldn't happen at all, especially on children. It's always been a controversial police power, like all stop and search powers are, but in 2020 it was really thrown under the spotlight, after the case of child Q, who's a 15 year old black girl who was strip searched at a school in London after police officers wrongly suspected her of being in possession of cannabis, and her parents weren't contacted, and there wasn't an appropriate adult present, so guidance wasn't followed. And if you look at this data leak, and also, the Children's Commissioner published a report on the national trends on strip searches and other things as well this year, it's clear that there are lessons still to be learned.
Priyanka Raval 14:26
So that was the report by Children's Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza. I think you mentioned that in your report that it was, I mean, it was pretty damning. It found evidence of widespread non compliance with statutory safeguards to protect children. Her report showed that between 2018 and mid 2023, forces in England and Wales carried out more than 3300 strip searches on children, and one in 20 of those did not comply with strict rules for practice in that same period. You go on to say that even in Somerset, according to this leak of yours. That rate of compliance was even lower?
Sean Morrison 15:02
Yeah. I mean, the report suggests that it is. It said there was “occasionally third party observation related to the potential concealment of drugs.”
Priyanka Raval 15:10
Yeah, that does not sound stringent at all. We'll be right back after this break.
Adam Quarshie 15:28
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Priyanka Raval 16:09
Essentially, Avon and Somerset Police are super users of this power in the region. So it is a particular problem with our police force?
Sean Morrison 16:17
Yeah, I mean, the report identified the super users of state search powers within the region, and it broke down teams of officers where these teams and the individual officers within them were disproportionately and prolifically stopping, particularly black kids. For instance, there was a team in based in East Bristol, that was singled out as, you know, super users of stop and search, and who does prolifically and disproportionately stop black people. And I think one of the key things in the report, for me, is that publicly, we've never seen this data. You know, I'm not sure if this was compiled before, but also, obviously, after receiving the report, before I published it, I went to Avon and Somerset Police to ask, one, what their response is to these findings, but also what's been done? They said that the report is being used to inform their stop and search training that's being rolled out as part of their plans to address institutional racism, but they didn't say anything specific. Like, and I asked very specific questions like, have these teams of officers been disbanded? If so, where too? Has anyone faced disciplinary action? But they didn't respond to that.
Priyanka Raval 17:36
And just to highlight, when we're talking about children, we're talking about people from the ages of 10 to 17, that's so young. Do any of these searches yield anything? Do they lead to arrests? Is anything found?
Sean Morrison 17:52
Sometimes, but the arrest rate is very low. The report showed that just over 70% of strip searches on children over this time period resulted in no further action being taken or no recorded outcome. So the police can't be clear so, and that's one in 17 full strip searches on children resulted in an item being found.
Priyanka Raval 18:13
And what can we conclude from that? I mean, I think you also mentioned that the arrest rate is just 18% so surely that's pretty clear evidence that this is ineffective.
Sean Morrison 18:25
Yeah, and also, I think it just needs to be considered in the context that these kinds of searches are so intrusive, can be so humiliating, can have long term consequences for the people subjected to them. And you know, the police has to take this seriously, and it has to change. Even though the report covered a long period of time, the last seven years, there's clear indication that in many cases, they're going backwards. Like it showed that last year, black people were just under six times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people, and so far this year, almost seven times more likely.
Priyanka Raval 19:08
In response to your reporting, Desmond Brown wrote an opinion piece which was very powerful, and he talked about how generations of people from marginalized communities are being gas lit. What did he mean by that? Yeah,
Sean Morrison 19:25
So I should start by saying that Desmond Brown, he led on a report a couple of years ago for the police in Avon and Somerset about identifying disproportionality across the criminal justice system in the region. He's also the CEO and founder of growing futures, which supports young people who have contact with the criminal justice system, are exposed to criminality or have contact with the police. I showed him this report, and his response is that the report shows what Bristol's black communities have been saying for a very long time; that disproportionality is high and police racism is there, and it's like the police in, you know, not admitting and addressing the issue, are just denying them acknowledgement of their lived experience.
Priyanka Raval 20:18
So anyone who hasn't read that piece, it's called We need to move the dials. Avon and Somerset Police must show real change on institutional racism. It's a really powerful piece, and as you said, the report, while it's shocking, it only proves what people have known for a very long time. For all the overtures about being anti racist that Avon and Somerset might make you can't deny people's lived experience.
Sean Morrison 20:45
Exactly. And you know what matters now is that it is addressed and that things change. And if the police don't, you know they're not responding, they said that this report is feeding into their stop and search training. I attended one of those sessions, and that training doesn't go far enough, and we're still seeing that they're going backwards on the issue in some areas.
Priyanka Raval 21:08
So to quote a line in that piece, which I thought was sort of ominous. It said “Within Avon and Somerset Constabulary, there are dark and vocal corners of people opposed to change, those who still believe that justice and equity means policing losing out.” I know from when you've talked about that training that you attended, and I think in your reporting in general, that there are police officers who felt that they've been thrown under the bus by Sarah Crew saying that Avon and Somerset Police were institutionally racist, they felt sort of personally singled out. Is there a tension in the police then between trying to address anti racism and yet being quite defensive about it at the same time?
Sean Morrison 21:52
There definitely is. And you know, from speaking to people like Desmond, who works very closely with the police, it's clear that any efforts that are made to address institutional racism, or even to acknowledge it, there was a backlash. And we saw that with the Police Federation, who, you know, pushed back at the time, and they represent rank and file officers. So yeah, it was clear, like I said in the training session, it was clear there was tension in the room when, when that was brought up, but it's clearly across the force. And Sarah crew, the Chief Constable, she said that herself, you know, so with all the goodwill in the world, it takes more than a Chief Constable saying that she wants to address this issue. There's a whole culture across the police force and across policing more generally across the country.
Priyanka Raval 22:53
Last week, the murder trial of the Firearms Officer Martyn Blake concluded he shot Chris Kaba, an unarmed black man, in the head, and he died in September 2022. Obviously, for some this was an example of blatant racist policing, but it's interesting how it was covered in the media. A lot of time was given to the fact that police officers were enraged that this ever went to trial in the first place.
Sean Morrison 23:24
Yeah, and this is the thing about, you know, narratives on policing and the prevailing one in the media and the mainstream media, but so much is made of his links to his involvement in gang crime. But does his involvement in that stuff mean that he should be executed by a police officer? No. So much was made of that in the media. And yeah, it's sad to see.
Priyanka Raval 23:52
I think that's why your reporting really does tie into the national conversation at the moment, and does do a very important thing, which is creating an alternative narrative about police powers and applying true scrutiny to how they're being used. What's next for your reporting Sean?
Sean Morrison 24:12
There's a lot coming up, actually. So the Together for Change campaign is continuing; we were establishing a task force, now we've got a meeting coming up. I've got a story coming out in the next print edition where I'm talking to signatories of that campaign. You know, it just interrogates whether the police are actually listening and if they should be calling the shots on taking this more holistic approach to knife violence. The section 60 campaign is by no means over. We still have a petition, still trying to get in traction on that, possibly working on another event. And as I said at the beginning, I'm going to think about putting an article together, a kind of explainer thing on how you should respond if you see someone being stopped and searched. And what could be useful.
Priyanka Raval 25:04
Where can people find the petition to sign?
Sean Morrison 25:08
They can find it via our website. And wherever you're listening to this, you'll find a link to it in the bio.
Priyanka Raval 25:14
Sean Morrison, thanks for joining us today.
Sean Morrison 25:16
See ya.
Priyanka Raval 25:24
This was The Debrief - the leaked report on racist policing, presented by me Priyanka Raval and produced by George Colwey for the Bristol cable. Head to the Bristol cable.org, forward slash, join to become a member of the cable and subscribe to the Bristol cable wherever you get your podcasts.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai