Scrutiny panel members from JPS panel covering Herts, Cambs and Beds reflect

Panel members from the counties best known independent police scrutiny panel, The Joint Protective Services (JPS) Scrutiny Panel, managed by Att10tive Social Enterprise which covers Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, is calling on more community members to join its ranks and help ensure that local policing continues to meet the highest standards of fairness, transparency, and accountability.

The JPS Scrutiny Panel is a vital community initiative that oversees the use of force by the specialist police divisions in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Hertfordshire. These divisions are the armed policing, roads policing, and dog units. The panel’s role is to act with impartiality, ensuring that police actions are fair and balanced, and that they meet the guidelines set by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS), the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), and the College of Policing.

The panel is chaired by Montell Neufville, a nationally recognised policing advisor and ethics expert. Montell brings a wealth of experience to the role, having served as a police ethics advisor and managing director of Att10tive. His leadership has been instrumental in establishing the panel’s credibility and effectiveness. Montell’s innovative approach including devising a scrutiny panel framework for all panels called PLANTER has been adapted and shared by the College of Policing.

https://www.college.police.uk/support-forces/practices/planter-reducing-disproportionality-police-use-force

Why Join the JPS Scrutiny Panel?

Joining the JPS Scrutiny Panel offers a unique opportunity to contribute to your community by ensuring that local policing is conducted with integrity and respect. Panel members come from diverse backgrounds, representing various ages, ethnicities, and professions. This diversity ensures that the panel’s feedback is comprehensive and reflective of the community it serves.

Your Contribution Matters

As a panel member, you will review police data and body-worn video footage, providing critical feedback to police leaders. Your insights will help shape policing practices, ensuring they are proportionate, necessary, and reasonable.

This role is crucial in building trust and confidence between the police and the communities they serve.

Here is what current JPS scrutiny panel members said;

Melissa Rees Howell: “Being involved in the JPS scrutiny panel gives me confidence that the police are being ‘policed’ and held to account for any unfair, unjust and/or unlawful actions. With this we can expect better practices in policing. Aspects of the JPS panel I like in particular are that our panel is made up of a very broad variety of people with differing ages, backgrounds and occupations. It's encouraging to see a diverse group of panel members working together to help build trust between the police and our communities.”

Phil Dickson Earl said “We will only trust ‘the process’ when we understand what it is and are assured it is being applied fairly and without bias. Scrutiny, which requires true transparency, places ethics, training, and personal responsibility at the centre of developing best practice. Scrutiny panel members act as the eyes and ears of the community. We demand reasonable accountability for the actions and personal decisions made by individual police officers. The challenge is to improve relations between the public and police and to facilitate better professionalism in our police force

Amber Aziz said; “Scrutiny panels are extremely important in order to make sure powerful figures such as the police are held to account for their actions in order to uphold the rule of law. That being said it is extremely important to have young people like myself sitting on such panels in order to add diversity and variety of opinions to be able to judge the scenarios adequately. Although scrutiny panels are empowering and can help build confidence they aren’t always positive. If panels don’t have inclusivity then some argue that they aren’t effective as 1) they don’t accurately represent wider public opinions and 2) they tend to have like-minded people don’t scrutinise actions as adequately as they need to be.

How to Get Involved

We are looking for passionate individuals who are committed to social justice and community service. If you live or study in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, or Hertfordshire and are over the age of 16, we encourage you to apply. Your participation will help deliver a police service that truly meets local needs.

For more information and to apply, please contact [email protected].