The sad humbling of a great police force
WHAT a humiliation for the most renowned policing organisation in the world.
The Metropolitan Police, home to Scotland Yard and the benchmark by which all other forces were once measured, has collapsed into special measures.
Citing a string of scandals and chronic mismanagement, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary has effectively declared it a failing force.
Met officers now face the indignity of being closely monitored by inspectors scrutinising their every move. It’s like Ofsted stepping in to rescue a defective school.
The litany of failures makes painful reading. The cruel hounding of elderly public servants over the grotesque VIP paedophile hoax. Sarah Everard murdered by a serving officer known to colleagues as ‘the rapist’. Rampant racism and sexism at Charing Cross police station. Officers sharing vile jokes and pictures of dead women. Botched murder inquiries.
This was not something that happened overnight. It was a culture of skewed priorities, unacceptable behaviour and managerial incompetence which grew like a virus over the years.
Its origins predated hapless excommissioner Cressida Dick. But on her watch, the infection spread out of control.
So the most damning question for Boris Johnson, London mayor Sadiq Khan and successive home secretaries is, why on earth didn’t they remove her sooner?
That she became commissioner at all, after leading the catastrophic operation which culminated in the fatal police shooting of innocent Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, is shocking.
That she served five scandal-ridden years and was at one stage going to have her contract extended simply beggars belief.
This vertiginous fall from grace must be a watershed. Lessons have to be learned.
The new Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Andy Cooke, is making the right noises. He wants to stop the drift of the police service towards wokery and posturing and drag chief constables back to the first principles – the prevention and detection of real crime. Not spurious internet thought crimes but burglary, fraud and street robbery.
There are thousands of dedicated officers in the Met, working tirelessly to keep us safe. With the right leadership, the force can again be the envy of the world.