ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a range of police operational developments which have reflected various dimensions of the legacy of Lawrence. It draws, from amongst other things, personal engagement with the immediate policing response to Lawrence, not just subsequent to the publication of the Inquiry Report but responses which emerged as the Inquiry was still deliberating. In particular, it addresses the menu of tactical options that was developed during the last weeks of part one of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (hereafter SLI) and the opening weeks of part two during the late summer and autumn of 1998. I attended several weeks of part one and five of the six travelling sessions for part two. Out of these tactics were developed elements of the new Metropolitan Police (hereafter MPS) Anti-Racist Policing Strategy (18 December 1998) and later elements of the Diversity Strategy at a Strategic Conference later in 1999. The argument here is one I have developed elsewhere (Grieve 2004: 26) and concerns the critical role of ‘street-level’ officers in generating police leadership. There is an old military adage that by and large ‘strategy is tactics talked through a brass hat’, or rather in the police case through silver braid. This is both an upward and downward flow of leadership ideas and experiences from the workers on the streets to senior staff in the boardroom. More specifically, police leadership comes within the sound of the click of the handcuffs.
