The thin grey line
Met chief unveils plans for Dad’s Army of retired officers to plug shortages
BRITAIN’S largest police force unveiled plans to recruit a ‘Dad’s Army’ of retired officers to boost its ranks yesterday.
Scotland Yard will build a ‘thin grey line’ of up to 2,500 paid former officers to help tackle soaring violence, knife crime and complex inquiries.
Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick said she is deeply concerned at the expertise ‘walking out’ of the service.
She said the one-year scheme will be open to all officers up to the rank of inspector who left the police over the last two years.
The force faces a dire shortage of officers, with the total recently falling to around 29,500, the lowest for more than a decade.
Senior officers admit they are struggling to recruit new PCs because of low unemployment in London. Applicants are also shunning the £22,000 starting salary.
They have already temporarily moved more than 100 officers from traffic duties to areas hit hardest by violent crime.
Speaking at the Police Superintendents’ Association annual conference in Leicester, Miss Dick appealed to her former colleagues. ‘I hope it will attract officers and keep people in the service who may be leaving and do not wish to leave,’ she said.
The announcement came as Miss Dick described the Government’s refusal to grant a 3 per cent pay rise to police as a ‘punch on the nose’.
In some of her most politically charged public comments, the top officer said she is ‘extremely disappointed’ at the decision to impose a 2 per cent award instead.
She warned policing must not be left to ‘wait until we are struggling like the prison service with chronic under-staffing’.
Highlighting that officers are unable to go on strike, she argued that the Government should honour an independent pay review.
Answering questions on pay at the end of her speech, Miss Dick joked, ‘I’m not going on strike’, adding: ‘We just have to keep talking.’
The senior officer said she understands the pressure her frontline officers are under and ‘guards [them] like a terrier’.
‘I don’t want to be disrespectful to
‘Keep people in the service’
the political process or the Government, but I do feel disappointed by the decision and I will keep on saying so,’ she added.
‘Meanwhile I need to think, how can I recruit and how can I retain and how can I make my officers and staff feel that I really value them? Because I feel this is a punch on the nose.’
The sweeping offer to recently retired officers to return to the ranks with full police powers is unusual. Most forces recruit former officers but bring them back as relatively low-paid civilian staff in back-office roles.
The Metropolitan Police spends tens of millions of pounds each year on recruitment consultants.
Last year it sent letters to hundreds of detectives approaching retirement, asking them to consider staying on in an effort to fill more than 700 empty roles.
The force said anyone who takes up the offer will have to retire and stay off the books for at least one month before rejoining. Their pension will be also be put on hold.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: ‘They will be permitted to rejoin the service at the same rank and with the same level of financial reward as when they left.
‘The Met will be writing to eligible former officers to invite them to apply for the scheme which will be open for an initial period of one year.’
The force aims to recruit a further 2,000 new officers, to bring the number on the front line to 30,750.