Appeal for people to join Bedfordshire Police stop and search panel

Can you help shape how Bedfordshire’s Police force continues to interact with the public?

The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Bedfordshire is looking for more people to get involved in its Stop and Search and Use of Force Panel.

The appeal comes after a former influential chair of the panel and Luton policing campaigner Montell Neufville announced her had devised a new toolkit to help scrutiny panels 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.

Katie Beaumont, Head of Governance and Transparency at the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Bedfordshire said: “We welcome Montell’s role leading this work across the country, with this approach and many of his ideas formulated during his long tenure as the chair of our own stop and search scrutiny panel here in Bedfordshire.

“His leadership alongside our officers helped make the Bedfordshire panel a national example of best practice, while Montell continues to play a crucial role leading the panel which scrutinises stop and search and use of force by collaborated police units across Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire.

“The sense of community involvement, diversity and transparency shaped by Montell on our panel has helped ensure Bedfordshire is one of the leading forces nationally around stop and search, with the force having among the highest rates of searches carried out on reasonable grounds as well as having among the lowest levels of disproportionality in how these powers are applied.

“We have recently welcomed a new deputy chair and six new panel members to our scrutiny panel, as well as establishing a specialist panel looking at our data and statistics around stop and search.

“The community scrutiny panel continues to be of vital importance to us and we would welcome any applications from people who are interested in its work and want to make a difference to their communities.”

For more information about Bedfordshire’s scrutiny panels visit https://www.bedfordshire.pcc.police.uk/stop-and-search-and-use-of-force-scrutiny-panel/ and find out how to apply.