Holding police to account – Luton campaigner sets out national guidelines for scrutiny of forces

Luton policing campaigner Montell Neufville has devised a new toolkit to help review the individual actions of police in controversial situations.

PLANTER, which is being adopted nationally, is a toolkit for use by community scrutiny panels when assessing body worn videos to establish if the correct level of force was used, providing officers with consistent and constructive feedback.

It sets out whether the action was proportionate, whether force was used correctly, and whether the action were ethical and reasonable.

Montell was chair of Bedfordshire's policing scrutiny panel between 2015 to 2021 and helped set the UK standard for overseeing police use of stop and search. Since 2021 he has chaired the joint police Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire community scrutiny panel which oversees police use of force across the three counties.

Planter has been shared across all UK policing bodies by the College of Policing.

Explaining his system Montell said: “Many police officers often feel that community members don’t understand the problems and challenges they have doing their jobs, what factors went into them making decisions and often feel that feedback from panels is inconsistent.

“Secondly, panels themselves can lack legitimacy if they do not represent not only the local population but those most likely to be stopped and searched. Many young people don’t want to be on scrutiny panels, feel their voice wouldn’t be listened to or the panels meet at times when they are in education. Many people from diverse communities lack trust and confidence in policing, they feel that their decisions won’t be listened to and there are those who don’t want to give their details to the police which is often necessary in particular for those police forces who want all panel members to be formally vetted.”

He added: “There are a lot of outstanding officers in our area at every rank level, we don’t get to hear their story and most people don’t see what they do on a day to day basis but being on a scrutiny panel you see this on a regular basis. Planter also helps to identify those areas which are training needs”