Secret and Undercover Police

What pseudo-independent bodies like HMIC and one's county police authority do not tell one about the police is left to truly independent writers and journalists to reveal to the public. The most vivid of these revelations recently have been television productions, the BBC's The Secret Policeman and Channel 4's Undercover Copper.

Mark Daley, the secret policeman, spent seventh months working as a policeman in Manchester. Much of his material was collected at the Police National Training Centre in Warrington. Although Manchester police had acknowledged how serious a problem racism was in the force, and were trying to combat it, a significant minority of the officers studying at the Centre were still racist to a shocking degree.

For instance, Daley asked a fellow student his opinion of Stephen Lawrence, the brutal murder of whom in 1993 had become a landmark event in the struggle to combat racism: "He fucking deserved it and his mum and dad are a fucking pair of spongers – and they've fucking seen a good opportunity and sponged it for everything they can get their hands on – including their MBE."

What did this PC think of the murderers? "They fucking need fucking diplomatic immunity mate – they have, they've done for this country what others fucking should do. Macpherson report. I remember it as if it was yesterday. A fucking kick in the bollocks for any white man that was."

Although the tutors warned the students against the use of racist language, this seemed to have no effect on the students when they talked among themselves, forming a group with a shared culture. The PC quoted above must have been one of those who, thanks to Mark Daley, lost his warrant card and the ability to practise his philosophy on the streets.

Presumably it was publicity that prompted the dismissal of the most prejudiced of the students at the Police National Training Centre, because gross prejudice and unprofessional practices are evidently still tolerated in the police service.

Whereas Mark Daley was a journalist who joined the police to get an inside story, Nina Hobson returned to service with the police after a break. Her story, Undercover Copper, starts with a voice over telling us, "This is the story of police officers not helping you because they can't be bothered." In this programme, as in The Secret Policeman, the most striking illustrations of themes are provided by the police themselves. During the last football world cup, a policeman and his colleague were keen to see a match: "We were driving up over the flyover past the Matthew's on your left and there's this geezer . . . it must have been about five in the morning, and this geezer was crouching down on the floor and he had blood pouring out out of his fucking wrist (laughs). I says [name of colleague] 'You see that man over there?' He goes, 'What man?' I says, 'that man over there with that fucking injury to his wrist . . . sort of crouching down he looks like he's about to pass out.' He goes, 'No, I didn't see him.' [The speaker raises his hands as if holding a steering wheel and laughs.] Fucking drives on. 'Right, we're going on' [laughs].

Not only is dereliction of duty an acceptable way of behaviour to such police officers: it is something to boast about. Derelection of duty combined with another theme of the programme, sexism, features in the scene in which two officers who are supposed to be patrolling the M1 visit Nina, some twenty-five miles from the motorway, to have a cup of tea. One of these officers wanted Nina to look at a video on his mobile phone of a woman having sex with a horse, the yob alleging that the woman concerned had died three days later. Her Majesty's Inspectorate's Baseline Report 2005 - based to a large extent on self-assessment by the police - rated Leicestershire Roads Policing (category 5C) as Good.

The Baseline Report also suggests that rape is taken seriously: "A detective superintendent, from HQ crime support, oversees all rape investigations." A woman police officer, distressed by the failure of her colleagues to send a scene of crime officer to visit an alleged rape victim, gave us a different impression: "If I'm ever raped then, fucking hell, I'm not reporting it to the police. I'd rather do myself in because the help you get from these people is just ridiculous."

The Baseline Report also includes many figures and percentages accurate to one decimal place, reflecting the importance of targets and numbers in the assessment of individual officers and police forces. This is reflected in the programme by an inspector who approves of the idea of faking figures so that bonuses for good results can be shared among the conspirators, and by the contravention of Home Office rules for counting crime in order to inflate the figures.

The officers featured in the programme are not presented as typical of the Leicestershire force, but their behaviour causes conflict with hard-working officers who take pride in serving the public while their colleagues spend hours playing poker, and their example must demotivate some young recruits who joined the force for idealistic reasons. The HMIC Inspection of Leicestershire Constabulary Professional Standards of January 2006 has a relevant comment: "Whilst guidance on disciplinary procedures for police staff does exist there is no police staff suspension policy currently in being," though the strength of that statement is weakened by the addition of, "A policy is currently in the process of development."