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HeadlineHackney ‘Build Up’ scheme hiring to repair youth-police relationship

Short HeadlineHackney scheme hiring to repair youth-police relationship

StandfirstScheme to help reduce growing number of police searches on young people

A scheme in Hackney is hiring five 18-24-year-olds to improve relations between young people and the police.

Successful candidates on the ‘Build Up’ scheme will be paid the London Living Wage. They’ll also be trained by Young Hackney, the project’s founders and Hackney Council’s single service for 6-19-year-olds.

Successful candidates will get the chance to:

• Take part in meetings with Hackney Police and other police units
• Deliver ‘know your rights’ training sessions to young people
• Take part in workshops with academics, campaigners, artists and other professionals
• Organise joint events with local police
• Organise and take part in creative workshops such as an art exhibition or a documentary film
• Conduct a small historical research project launched at a community event
• Conduct research to help produce a report into the experience of policing in the borough
• Present research findings at meetings, public events and conferences
• Take part in an exchange programme

‘Feeling alienated by the police’

Build Up started in 2012 as a stop-and-search monitoring group for the borough.

Now with funding from the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC),  Build Up’s founders believe the project will ease tensions between young residents and the police.

“The five people we are recruiting – we want to train them to be leaders in their community, to be the bridging point between local people and the police,” said Tim Head, co-leader of the Build Up project.

“Anecdotally, hearing stuff from young people, there is a conflation out there across London. It’s a conflation of knife crime, youth violence and gang violence. Perpetuated by the media and government proposals, it’s created unwarranted stereotypes.

“I think a lot of people in Hackney, in particular, young black men, feel like they’re being stereotyped because of all these things.”

Tim Head, who’s an Essex University PhD student specialising in urban disorder, is fully aware of the problems facing the successful applicants.

“Hackney historically has had a problem with the police. People here feel alienated by the police, so the project is designed to fix that.

“Historical instances, such as the death of Colin Roach in Stoke Newington, perpetuate these stereotypes within Hackney. We don’t want to drag up nasty parts of the past, but it’s important to remember it.

“History shapes what young people today feel about the police, so it’s important that [Build Up] plays a part in young people’s views of the police,” explained Head.

Stop-and-search on the rise

Statistics produced by the Metropolitan Police suggest young people in Hackney are more likely to face stop-and-search.

In November 2018, 619 people were stopped and searched by the police, up from 292 people in July. This is the second highest number of stop and searches carried out in Hackney in the past two years.

In London as a whole, over 76,000 people aged 15-24 were stopped and searched by police between February and December 2018. This is more than all other age groups combined.

Diane Abbott, MP  for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, has warned against the widespread adoption of stop and search.

“Evidence-based stop and search will always be an important weapon against all types of crime,” she wrote in the Hackney Gazette.

“But random stop and search has poisoned relationships between the police and the community, and in the end, we need the cooperation of the community to deal with the issues.”