Chair Reacts To Tom Winsor's Statement on Wanting to Trawl Police Officer's Private Mobile Phones
6 November 2021
Mike Reed, Chair of The City of London Police Federation, said: “I have read with interest the ‘idea’ from Sir Tom Winsor in relation to dip sampling of officers personal mobiles…
“Although we encourage steps to improve confidence in policing, this is tokenism at its greatest because surely a man with the intelligence he has and experience he should have on tap in his role should know that this is both illegal and oppressive.
“To suggest inflicting this on the 99% of cops that do no more than go to work, give their all to protect others and then have the small ask to have a private life to defuse and decompress from the horrors that they see on a daily basis is scandalous in itself.
“If ‘they’ were serious about changing culture they should be looking at the rights of police officers to take forces to employment tribunals so that those that are responsible for the culture and able to effect the change, are held responsible.
“It’s incredulous to think that dealing with the effect of a culture and not the root cause will install change and return confidence from the public.”
Mike concluded: “This suggestion is about as useful as a 1990’s National Rail time table!
“Let’s end bang wagon’ing and punitive unworkable signalling on the majority. The vast majority of cops would welcome real measures that work. No one hates bad cops more than good cops.”
The Police Federation of England and Wales said: "Police officers are subject to the law, like anyone else. Random checks of their personal phones for nothing more than a fishing exercise would be excessive, disproportionate and unlawful.
“Police officers deserve to have a private life."
Original article in The Times here https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sir-tom-winsor-trawl-police-phones-to-weed-out-the-misogynists-x2s5cmm7b
