Alex Murray grew up around the world as an army child and graduated from Birmingham University. His partner is a sign language interpreter, and they have three mischievous children. Initially in West Midlands Police he worked in CID and uniform roles in the cities of Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton.
He has been a senior investigating officer for homicide and has extensive experience within Counter Terrorism and Intelligence. In 2008 he graduated from Cambridge University with a thesis that developed the understanding of police legitimacy within Muslim communities. He is a firearms and public order commander. He was temporary ACC Crime in West Midlands for three years leading crime investigations, forensics, criminal justice and intelligence. He then became Commander, Specialist Crime in the Met, London. In 2021/2022 he led on violence in London in response to heightened levels of teenage homicide. He has previously been attached to the Home Office and is now the Chief Constable (Temp) in West Mercia Police. He is also the UK Police lead for Artificial Intelligence.
He is the founder of the Society of Evidence Based Policing (SEBP) which seeks to use, communicate and produce high quality evidence of what is effective. SEBPs now operate around the world. He has collaborated with the Behavioural Insights Team to improve policing outcomes and has worked on police training programmes in India, Cambodia and Europe. He has received several national and international awards and in 2017 he was awarded an OBE.
Presentation
EBP in an operational environment – Targeting, testing and tracking … and trials and tribulations. The what and how of EBP.
It is relatively easy to understand EBP – just talk about ‘scared straight’ as an intervention that sounds good but ends up bad. Talk about correlation does not mean causation. But EBP, and definitely the Societies of Evidence Based Policing, are all about changing what we do in the workplace. This is where the rubber hits the road and its not always pretty. Alex Murray will talk about interventions he has been involved in – some nice, with great results, some less so. People involved in EBP will always experience a moment of suspense when you look at the impact and discover that the intervention has worked or it has not – and because we are evidence based, there is no place to hide. In conventional policing you don’t really have to worry about this – you can always make something look good, particularly if you reflect the Hippo (highest paid person’s opinion). But this is at the heart of the evidence based policing movement – some things will work, some will backfire and some are simply ineffective. Failure is a good thing – including trying to evaluate something but seeing that you can’t. Ultimately, it’s about integrity – wanting to make a difference and being honest that the journey will be rocky, with ups and downs, but always heading in the right direction of having a constantly improving, professional policing service.