Merseyside’s Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) said her relationship with Merseyside Police ’s chief constable remains positive despite the pair clashing over alleged institutional racism.
Earlier this month, Emily Spurrell seemingly caught officers and chief constable Serena Kennedy by surprise when she told Policing TV she accepted the force was institutionally racist. Those remarks were flatly denied by Chief Con Kennedy who said in a statement she “categorically” did not believe the force was racist.
Speaking to the ECHO, Mrs Spurrell said her relationship with Merseyside’s most senior officer remained in good standing despite the remarks. She said: “It’s positive, it’s good. I wouldn’t be doing my job as PCC if I agreed with her 100% of the time.
READ MORE: Liverpool Council avoids another expensive contract mix-up at the last minute
“We are both professionals, I’ve got a job to do to challenge her, she’s got a job to do to in leading the force in tackling crime. We both agree that there are clearly issues in the system around racial disparity and the College of Policing’s Race Action Plan that came out on Tuesday, she’s looking at what the local response will be and I’m happy to support her in holding her to account on how she does it.”
Mrs Spurrell, who has been in her role for 12 months, acknowledged the comments - which were met with short shrift from the Merseyside Police Federation and former officers - had been “very controversial” but said it has moved the conversation along. She said: “I think when I made the comment, it was obviously very controversial and a very emotional subject and it was divisive but I think it demonstrates what an important conversation it is for us to have.
“I think you can see the racial disparities across the system and when I made the comments there were a lot of people who were disagreeing with me but the overarching response was ‘what are you going to do about it?’ and that’s the conversation I’ve had with Serena (Kennedy) about it in terms of we both acknowledge there are problems across the system, black people are overrepresented in the whole criminal justice system. It’s not even just one force, this goes far beyond Merseyside, it’s all of our public institutions so what we’re really trying to do is acknowledge that the system is not working properly, how are we going to fix it and that’s where I think the conversation is now.”
During the discussion with Policing TV, Mrs Spurrell said the issues were not about individual officers and accepted there would be differences of opinion about her position. She added that alongside Chief Con Kennedy, she wanted to work to tackle the issue in communities where it was felt policing was failing.
She said: “It’s an emotional subject and I think the term has been used by certain groups in years gone by to be quite attacking to the police so they hear it as quite a critical thing, whereas I think a lot of people see it as something that is meant to be describing a problem that wants to be tackled. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, there are split opinions within policing, within communities, that’s fine, we’re allowed to have that discussion, the important thing is we’re talking about it and we’re talking about the experiences of black communities and black officers and staff, and we’re looking to see what we can do to improve it.
“The dialogue is there and I think people are keen to support the Chief and I in terms of how we get this right so I think we’ll definitely keep speaking to communities about this.”
