Manchester Police

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gra­cious, the Most Merciful.

As-salā­mu ‘alaykum wa-rah­mat­ul­lāhi wa-barakā­tuh (Peace, Bless­ings & Mer­cy of Allah be upon You).

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Assistant Chief Commissioner Garry Shewan

Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Branch (PSB)

GMP Force HQ
Open­shaw Complex
Law­ton St, Openshaw
Man­ches­ter M11 2NS

We would like to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to wel­come the efforts and resources invest­ed by Greater Man­ches­ter Police in pro­tect­ing our soci­ety and keep­ing our neigh­bour­hoods safe. As part of this effort, we also wel­come your spe­cif­ic efforts in ensur­ing that the GMP can respond effec­tive­ly to any ter­ror­ist threats.

It is there­fore unfor­tu­nate that fol­low­ing the exe­cu­tion of an anti-ter­ror­ism exer­cise, media and police atten­tion and resource has been divert­ed from applaud­ing an oth­er­wise suc­cess­ful exer­cise, to explain­ing why ter­mi­nol­o­gy was used, which is asso­ci­at­ed by Mus­lims with peace and prayer, in this drill. Such use has offend­ed the wider Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty and raised exist­ing con­cerns about the hijack­ing of such an exer­cise with the use of this ter­mi­nol­o­gy by right wing extrem­ists poten­tial­ly adding to an increas­ing Islam­o­pho­bia with­in our society.

It is there­fore very wel­com­ing that integri­ty was demon­strat­ed and indi­vid­ual own­er­ship tak­en by your apol­o­gy on behalf of the GMP. More so in light of the recent rev­e­la­tions sur­round­ing the Hills­bor­ough affair which have result­ed in dam­ag­ing both the rep­u­ta­tion of the Police Ser­vices and jeop­ar­dised local com­mu­ni­ty trust in polic­ing. Your apol­o­gy was swift and sin­cere and will reduce any risk of fur­ther jeop­ar­dis­ing com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions between the Police Ser­vices and wider Mus­lim community.

We are con­fi­dent that lessons will be learned and any rel­e­vant process­es which could pre­vent a cor­ro­sion in trust between local com­mu­ni­ties and the Police will be reviewed with mea­sures being put in place to pre­vent risk of a reoc­cur­rence in future.

We also recog­nise the time, effort, com­mit­ment and the often com­plex envi­ron­ment in which our Police Ser­vices must oper­ate. There­fore we would also like to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to invite Greater Man­ches­ter Police force in work­ing with our com­mu­ni­ty by con­sult­ing the views of Mus­lims in such exer­cis­es and events.

We look for­ward to your writ­ten acknowl­edge­ment of this cor­re­spon­dence and your pro­pos­al in writ­ing as to the action being tak­en to both iden­ti­fy and imple­ment all nec­es­sary pre­ven­ta­tive measures.