Police “Guidelines” Are A Hoax
Bedfordshire Police are aware there is information circulating on the internet which falsely purports to be our guidelines on entering Muslim homes. This information is maliciously incorrect and should be ignored.
Bedfordshire Police follows the guidance for entering all households issued by ACPO’s National Community Tension Team (NCTT), this has been adopted by many police forces and is not therefore peculiar to our force.
The NCTT’s national advice covers all faith communities and was issued in 2005 at the time of the increased tensions following the 7/7 bombings and applies in the main to Counter Terrorism operations. Bedfordshire Police took these onboard as advice, not as a fixed and rigid practice. The most current version of these covers Baha’i, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism and is contained in an annex to the National Policing Improvement Agency publication “Working With Faith Communities”.
All our documents make it clear that any advice should not impinge on or supersede the objectives of any police action. The guidance aims to ensure officers are culturally sensitive and maintain the confidence of the wider Muslim community.
With over 40,000 Muslims in Luton alone this is a substantial community with whom Bedfordshire Police interacts ever day and with whom it is important to maintain a good working relationship. The guidelines are designed to prevent officers from inadvertently causing distress and offence but in the event of an operational necessity officers will override them to take whatever effective action is required to do their job and achieve their objectives.
These guidelines are only advisory and would not be of primary importance if there were good operation reasons for surprising occupants such as the protection of evidence, preventing flight or the safety of occupants and officers. However if we were interviewing someone about a minor offence our officers would be sensitive to people’s cultural differences and this applies equally to Christians, Muslims, Hindus and other faiths and cultures. They have been changed maliciously to stir up the exact community tensions they are intended to defuse.