Sputnik: In a major u-turn, front-line Met Police officers will be given spit guards as part of their equipment. Commissioner Cressida Dick previously resisted the move, saying the guards should only be used in custody suites, where they are currently deployed. Kirsty how significant is this announcement for Britain's met police?
Kirsty Brimelow: It's significant for both the Met police and the general public that the Met police are protecting and policing and it's for this reason that we are very used to in society having a policing where we don't have suspects who are controlled and restrained in a manner where a hood or spit hood is put over their heads.
However, the studies have shown that the majority of those people are either people who have mental health issues or people who are drunk with drink issues on drugs. Now dealing with mental health issues it is extremely claustrophobic for somebody who has a mental health issue for her to be put over their head. Now that can result in danger to that person themselves and also a further danger to the officer.
Similarly, with those on the type of drugs, depending on whatever the drug is, and drink, it can have an effect of provoking more violence. Now, this is a reason or part of the reason undoubtedly why the commission of the Metropolitan Police after a pilot looking at the use of spit hoods, she decided that in fact it would not be greater protection for offices will be more likely to cause harm to officers if they were introduced.
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Sputnik: These spit hoods are very controversial pieces of equipment, with commentators drawing upon similarities between them and the hoods used on prisoners in Guantanamo Bay as well as citing numerous human rights violations. Should these concerns take priority over the usefulness of the Spit hoods?
Kirsty Brimelow: Yes, it's all a balancing exercise but the fundamental point where people are making comparisons with Guantanamo is you are also dealing with a piece of dealing with a suspects are not even somebody who have necessarily committed an offense and there are many examples we have seen of where somebody is a suspect and that have been treated to treatment which is not at all commensurate with their behaviour.
So there's a real concern that those spit hoods could be overused. Currently, there's no guidance as to when to use them. They have been used previously within a more controlled environment in a custody suite and that is under supervision on the direction of a custody officer and it's a very different environment to supply them to frontline officers and allowing them the sort of discretion that they would have this.
The problem that the pilots have discovered and researchers discovered is that if you have an officer who is engaged on a level, which might be received as a more violent level by a suspect, what it does is it up the ante, in that the suspect may then become more violent by a perceived threat.
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Sputnik: Are there any alternatives to making sure police are protected in a better way than simply using the spit hoods and how effective are they?
Kirsty Brimelow: If you look at the medical evidence, the doctors would say that it's a very small risk of contracting Hepatitis C, for example. So it also needs to be put within that context in terms of damage to health. Undoubtedly, it's extremely unpleasant, however, to be spat out. I think it will be interesting to look at how the medical profession deals with it.
Views and opinions, expressed in the article are those of Kirsty Brimelow and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik
