Dialogue, Legitimacy, and the 'Power Few': An Exploratory Analysis of Citizen Complaints Against Counter-Terrorism Policing in London

Citizen complaints against counter-terrorism (CT) policing remain an under-researched dimension of police accountability, despite sustained public and academic scrutiny of legitimacy in policing more broadly. This article reports an exploratory, descriptive analysis of 455 allegations arising from 144 complaints lodged against 158 officers of London's Counter-Terrorism Command (SO15) between February 2017 and December 2019. Drawing on a dialogic model of police legitimacy, the study examines the demographic profile of complainants and complainees, the nature and location of alleged misconduct, the duration and outcome of investigations, and the existence of a 'power few' of complaint-attracting officers. Findings show unlawfulness as the dominant complaint category, a marked power-few effect, low substantiation rates, and a near-total absence of two-way dialogue between investigators and complainants. Appeal rates did not differ significantly by conduct type (p = 0.22), but complainant ethnicity, where recorded, diverged significantly from the resident population of London (p < 0.001), with Asian complainants over-represented by a factor of approximately two. The article closes with practice-oriented recommendations for reforming CT complaint handling to strengthen dialogic legitimacy.