Burnham is urged to go as top cop quits failing force
THE chief constable of England’s second largest police force quit last night after a report found a fifth of crimes weren’t logged.
Less than 24 hours after Greater Manchester Police (GMP) was placed in special measures over the findings, chief constable Ian Hopkins announced he was leaving his £200,000-a-year post.
The sanction was introduced after the damning study revealed GMP had failed to record 80,000 crimes in 12 months.
Mr Hopkins’ position then became untenable after Boris Johnson described the scandal as ‘ incredibly disappointing’, adding: ‘Those responsible obviously must be held to account.’
Last night, Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Manchester, who has responsibilities for the force’s governance and budgets, also faced calls to resign.
Asked why he hadn’t stepped down, too, Mr Burnham said: ‘Because I do not run Greater Manchester Police. The police service is operationally independent from politicians, and rightly so. My job is different.’
He said that f ollowing the force’s inadequate response to last week’s report it had been ‘clear that it was time to act, time for new leadership’, accusing
GMP of an ‘overly defensive culture’ which ‘needs to change’.
The former Cabinet minister, 50, added that Mr Hopkins had led the force during ‘one of the most difficult periods in its history’, dealing with budget cuts and ‘complex threats’ such as the 2017 Manchester Arena terror attack.
In what Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services described last week as a ‘serious cause of concern’, it found the force was not recording around one in five of all crimes reported to it. This rose to one in four violent crimes and represented more than 80,000 alleged offences in total, or around 220 a day.
Demanding an immediate action plan, Home Secretary Priti Patel wrote to GMP and Mr Burnham saying she was ‘deeply concerned’, particularly as failures on recording crime had been flagged up before. After days of media silence followi ng t he r eport, Mr Hopkins announced on Wednesday that he had gone on sick leave, saying he had been suffering from labyrinthitis – an inner-ear infection affecting balance – since the end of October.
The following day it was revealed that GMP had become only the second force ever to be placed in a ‘national oversight’ process.
Yesterday, Mr Hopkins – who has been with the force for 12 years – said these were ‘challenging times’ for the force and its long-term plan should be led by someone ‘who can oversee it from start to finish’.
He added: ‘Considering what is best for GMP and the communities we serve, and given my current ill health, I have decided to stand down from the post of chief constable with immediate effect.’
A Home Office source said: ‘It’s no surprise that Andy Burnham has thrown a senior police officer under the bus to save his own skin.
‘This will not distract from his years of failure, and most disturbingly his inability to deliver justice for victims and survivors of the most abhorrent crimes.’
Chris Green, Tory MP for Bolton West, said: ‘I find it extraordinary that Andy Burnham, as policing and crime commissioner, took no responsibility upon himself today.
‘I wonder what he’s been doing all these years and why he thinks it’s sufficient that he just throws Ian Hopkins under a bus?
‘He can’t allow all the blame to fall on the chief constable, and he should consider his position.’
Chris Clarkson, Conservative MP for Heywood and Middleton, said Mr Burnham ‘should spend less time touring TV studios and more time touring the police stations’.
Last year, Mr Hopkins said if the theft of a bicycle or a shed break-in was reported, the odds of an officer turning up if there was no CCTV or witness was ‘almost non-existent’.
Deputy chief constable Ian Pilling will assume Mr Hopkins’ duties while a replacement is recruited.
‘He just throws Ian Hopkins under a bus’