The Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP) is a Manchester-based independent grassroots organisation, which not only monitors levels and types of police harassment, and provides advice and support for those affected by it, but also unites the various community campaigns working to build resistance against police repression, racism and criminalisation.
One such campaign is End Police Pursuits (EPP), which came about after NPMP noticed a trend of young people, disproportionately Black, brown, and working class, being killed in police pursuits in Greater Manchester- which reflects wider patterns in policing.
Northern Police Monitoring Project: End Police Pursuits campaign
The EPP campaign aims to not only bring attention to this under researched and under considered form of police violence, but also bring about much needed change.
NPMP’s Siobhan O’Neill said:
We’ve been tracking the deaths in the area, as the data isn’t transparent from the state, and we’ve reached out and supported those families and loved ones, and brought them together. They lead the campaign, as they are obviously most affected by the violence of police pursuits. We’ve sat through inquests, and waited for the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) reports. It’s not just the harm and violence of police pursuits, and the death of a loved one which obviously is traumatic, but everything that surrounds it. There’s harms long after the pursuit itself. Not only are the families and loved ones grieving their son or brother, but they also end up being over policed, and so do their communities.
According to the College of Policing, a police driver is deemed to be in pursuit when a driver or motorcyclist:
indicates by their actions or continuance of their manner of driving that they have no intention of stopping for the police, and the police driver believes that the driver of the subject vehicle is aware of the requirement to stop, and so decides to continue behind the subject vehicle with a view to either reporting its progress or stopping it.
But police are always required to respond to a given situation in a ‘reasonable and proportionate’ way, and the College of Policing website acknowledges police pursuits are:
likely to place members of the public and police officers under a significant degree of risk
So, wherever possible:
trying to prevent a pursuit from taking place must be a primary consideration.
Police pursuits: not proportionate
But those campaigning to End Police Pursuits are demanding change, claiming the current guidelines are too vague, and give too much power to individual police officers to make the decision whether to initiate a pursuit.
O’Neill said:
We’ve often sat in inquests, where the pursuing drivers have said they justify their pursuit and have done an ongoing risk assessment as they go. But the stories they’re telling us suggest it was high risk and disproportionate, and the speed they’re going at is ever increasing. In some cases they know it’s a young person behind the wheel yet they make this assessment that yes, it is a proportionate response even though they say it was proportionate when it was happening at these speeds and then, when the speeds increase and the car might go on a motorway-which is obviously riskier, they will still say it was proportionate. So we question how their actions can be proportionate at both of these times.
Studies have confirmed that the most common reasons for police initiating pursuits are traffic violations or general concerns about the manner in which the pursued driver was driving, rather than suspicions of any other crimes. EPP campaigners question how these actions can be thought of as proportionate when carried out in response to a non-violent offence, or when they lead to the death of a member of the public, whom police have a duty of care toward- whether passers-by, or those in vehicles.
They claim these pursuits are unnecessary, disproportionate, and unjustified, so are calling for their prohibition when alleged less serious and non-violent offences are involved. There are also other demands being made by the campaign group, which are commonsense, and would be extremely easy to implement, such as changing signs on a motorway as soon as a pursuit takes place on it. These changes could take place immediately and would save lives.
Police causing fatalities
According to the IOPC 2023/24 report on deaths during or following police contact, nationally there were 32 fatalities from 29 police-related road traffic incidents, and of these 32 deaths, 24 fatalities arose from 22 police pursuit-related incidents. 18 of these fatalities were the driver or passenger in the pursued vehicle, and four were the drivers or passenger of an unrelated vehicle hit by the pursued car.
Although we know there were eight fatalities between September 2020 and May 2021, due to road traffic accidents involving Greater Manchester Police (GMP) officers, more recent figures for the force are not publicly available, as there is not the same level of transparent reporting as with Stop and Search.
Road traffic officers have the power to stop drivers without reasonable suspicion that they have done anything wrong, and these stops are not routinely recorded. This means the public have no idea as to how often this power is used, or why, and who it is being used against, so EPP is calling for the recording and transparent publication of all traffic stop data by Greater Manchester Police.
In 2021, Ronaldo Johnson was killed in a police pursuit, when he was just 17 years old. He was a rear passenger in a car involved in a high-speed pursuit by Greater Manchester Police, after it failed to stop at a red light. Ronaldo died six days later, from multiple organ failure due to the crash. His sister, Keshia Johnson, is an active member of the End Police Pursuits campaign, and says the family has had no form of justice.
She said that:
The pursuing officer said on multiple occasions that he didn’t have first aid training, so justice would have been that officers are made to do first aid, or that there would at least be some thought for people that are bystanders. But at the inquest, which took place three years after Ronaldo’s death, and did not allow for any of the evidence to be explored, the police legal team said this training would be too costly to provide. Nothing will bring Ron back, but prevention is a form of justice, an it needs to happen.
Ronaldo Johnson: Greater Manchester Police responsible for his death
According to Keshia, after the car went through the red light, the officer followed it, putting his siren on in a 20mph zone. When he saw the car was not slowing down, he sped up. They reached speeds of 63 mph in the 20mph zone, and the car in which Ronaldo was a passenger ended up going round a roundabout the wrong way, and then jumping another set of lights, before crashing. By this time, knowing the car was going too fast to stop at the lights, the officer had turned his siren off to protect himself from any potential blame.
The driver crashed and fled the scene and, rather than focusing his attention on the two passengers in the car Ronaldo was in and the taxi they crashed into, the police officer instead chased after the driver, with one of his dogs. He called no backup or ambulance, and had not carried out a PNC check. Keshia also said a witness at the scene claimed Ronaldo was left unattended for more than 20 minutes after the crash. Officers often prioritise the apprehension of suspects over the safety of the people inside a vehicle involved in a collision because of a police pursuit. The EPP campaign is calling for the guidelines to be reinforced, to ensure the safety and well-being of the public takes priority over the apprehension of a suspect.
Ronaldo’s family were left feeling angry and saddened by the complete lack of sensitivity shown to them by GMP, and the apparent lack of interest in their case at this difficult time. Keshia argued:
The driver, who my brother didn’t know, and the other passenger, were both white. My brother was the only Black guy, and the youngest person in the vehicle, and the only one that died. The crash was at 3.45am, but we weren’t notified until after 8.30am. Within an hour, we had three different versions of what happened from just one officer, and it made us start wondering what the hell was going on. When Ron died, we were a confused family. Why did he die, when the hospital was hopeful he was going to recover? We were told all sorts, to be honest. When his postmortem came back, an inspector said the results showed his lung damage was likely to be caused by crack cocaine. I was so confused, and rang the coroner’s office straight away. She was furious and said the damage was not caused by drugs but by the heavy impact of the crash. Also, although the driver handed himself in the day after the crash, it still took the police 18 months to charge him, even though he had confessed and they had a DNA match within the first week.
EPP there for families to losing loved ones to police pursuits
End Police Pursuits is a powerful campaign, which has come out of something really tragic and traumatic, out of the deaths of young people, which should never have happened. It has brought together families who would otherwise be isolated in their grief, and has meant that people, who know how it feels to have their loved ones killed by police during a pursuit, have been there to support each other.
Keshia said:
Other families who face the same situation as us can come and find strength and guidance from us, who have walked that path before them.
Those involved with the End Police Pursuits campaign claim they have also made various attempts to contact and speak with Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, about the behaviour of those officers involved in police pursuits but have, as yet, received no response.
Things you can do to help End Police Pursuits and other forms of police violence and repression:
- Sign the petition here
- Find out more about the End Police Pursuits campaign demands here
- Those of you in Greater Manchester affected by policing can attend NPMP monthly solidarity meetings. See social media for more info
- Subscribe to Northern Police Monitoring Project’s mailing list
- Join the annual United Families and Friends (UFFC) rally which takes place on the last Saturday of October each year, to remember all those who have died at the hands of the state, including those killed by the police, in the prison system, and in immigration detention.
Featured image via the Canary
