EXCLUSIVE: AS Police given more training following Kill the Bill controversies
We can reveal the news as trust in officers increasingly becomes an issue
Last updated 25th Oct 2021
Officers at Avon and Somerset Police have been given extra training on managing protests after the controversy of Bristol's Kill the Bill demonstrations earlier this year.
We can reveal the news today, seven months on from the demonstrations in which police were accused of being untruthful about injuries and manhandling the press and peaceful protestors.
As trust in the police increasingly becomes an issue, we've sat down for an exclusive chat with Superintendent Mark Runacres about how the force is trying to learn from what happened in March and April 2021.
"It became apparent to me (during the period of demonstrations), we were making decisions operationally, in relation to policing protests and disorder, that weren't fully understood because we weren't telling people around the rational that sat behind the decisions," he said.
"We'd go from a start point, 'there's a protest, we know that's going to happen', and then there'd be an end point.
Supt Runacres goes on to describe one of the protests, which took place on Saturday 3 April, in which hours of peaceful protest ended in several arrests when a small group of people, still blocking the road by the Hippodrome in the early hours, refused to move.
"We facilitated a march around the centre for about 10 hours that day," he says.
"in the end we ended up with 80 to 100 people on the city centre at around midnight, they weren't protesting then.
"They were just engaging in anti-social behaviour.
"Most of them had been drinking all day, they were blocking the road by the Hippodrome...
"We made a number of arrests that day and that became the headline...there had been 10 or 11 hours of stories to tell between that time."
Lessons learnt
Already by that point, two weeks after the initial riot outside Bridewell Police Station, Supt Runacres tells us he had began sending hourly updates by email to Bristol's leaders including our MP's and the city council, explaining the tactics being used by officers at that particular time.
"By sending them an hourly update of what was happening from the two o'clock start time through to one o'clock in the morning, they were able to gain insight into what we were doing and why we were doing it."
Supt Runacres suggests they will continue to do this during future events.
Asked if the police would do that with the protestors themselves and not just community leaders Supt Runacres said they would be keen to, but at the time protesting was illegal under the coronavirus guidelines and so no one had identified themselves as the protest organisers.
Working with the press
At protests prior to 3 April several incidents had occurred in which members of the media were either physically attacked by officers or had their press identification questioned.
Several meetings have taken place since to try and ensure such incidents don't happen again, but while Supt Runacres says the police must learn, he suggests some members of the media must also be smarter.
"If you're going to report on a rugby match you don't stand on the pitch," he says.
"I understand the need to get that insight from being on the ground, but I do think as an operational police officer with 26 years experience, if your expectations of me, as I'm running up the Haymarket in a shielded cordon, with my public order kit doing dispersal tactics, if you expect me to be able to stop and engage with an individual who hasn't made any attempt to identify themselves to me as a member of the press prior to that, that's an unreasonable expectation."
Despite that point, Supt Runacres says meetings have taken place with the National Union of Journalists to try and address identification issues and ensure confusion doesn't arise again.
"A local senior representative from the National Union of Journalists came into our briefings over the subsequent weeks to talk about the role of the press, to show, we had a photo of the ID card that members of the press should be carrying with them, to help officers with that issue of identification where we can, to talk about the objectives of the media and citizen journalists as well and what people might want to get and how we might facilitate that, but kind of where the lines are...
"The briefings that we had for subsequent protests were really well attended, lots of officers because we couldn't take the chance of something happening as it did on that initial Sunday."
The All Party Parliamentary Report
Several months later in July, an All Party Parliamentary Report into the police response to both a vigil marking the death of Sarah Everard and Bristol's Kill the Bill demonstrations found that in both instances officers committed "multiple failings" and "failed to understand their legal duties in respect of protest".
Supt Runacres says he was "really disappointed" when that was published.
"We were provided fairly little opportunity to respond to that report before it was then published," he tells us.
"We disagreed with some of the content of that because of the basis on which the comments within it were made, not reflecting the feedback that we would've wanted to provide."
Supt Runacres tells us he discussed the matter with some of Bristol's MPs, who were not involved in the forming of the report.
"My understanding is that they hadn't been inclined to become involved in that," he says.
"There were some councillors who'd been supportive of the sentiments that were included in the report but I think it was unhelpful to our wider efforts to built trust, because it took us back to a place that we had moved on from.
"In terms of Bristol...I think we became an issue that was being used to obtain some leverage around the wider national perspectives (on the Police and Crime Bill) and for the city that wasn't helpful for our community cohesion here."
The police, he tells us, had "good engagement" with Bristol's elected representatives including councillors and MPs in the days immediately after the 21 March riot including through the hourly update emails mentioned above.
Can police change everyone's minds on trust?
"Reluctantly, being honest with you I probably accept that there is always going to be a cohort that we'll never convince," Supt Runacres says.
"I'll never give up trying to convince and persuade people of our commitment to policing fairly and proportionately.
"But some of the things you hear, some of the conspiracy theories you hear around corruption that's alleged, the intentions they feel that we have, are so far from how I feel and how I operate as a police officer and what I've seen in my 26 years in this organisation that it's just alien to me, what's alleged.
He adds though that it's "so important" that the police have these conversations to try and build trust.
"I absolutely am wholly committed to improving and increasing our transparency."