First job is to fix behaviour of officers, Patel tells Met chief

PRITI PATEL has told the new head of Scotland Yard that tackling officers’ bad behaviour must be his first priority.

The Home Secretary met Sir Mark Rowley, the incoming Metropolitan Police Commissioner, on Monday to spell out the need to restore trust in officers by cracking down on declining standards of behaviour and driving down neighbourhood crime.

Sir Mark is to take charge of the Met at the start of next month when he will institute a 100-day plan to start turning round the force, which was placed in special measures by HM inspectorate of police last month.

When his appointment was announced, the former head of UK counter-terrorism pledged to be “ruthless” in removing police officers “corrupting our integrity” and to restore neighbourhood policing, “fighting crime with communities – not unilaterally dispensing tactics”.

A Home Office source said that at the meeting, their first since his appointment, Ms Patel “impressed the importance of restoring integrity in policing and policing by consent”.

While praising the “good majority” of officers who risked their lives to keep the streets safe, she told Sir Mark that they could not “shy away from the need to drastically improve professional standards”.

She made clear that “those police officers who are damaging the trust of the British public and tarnishing the hard work of the majority need to know that their behaviour will not be accepted any longer,” said the source.

“The Home Secretary was clear that central to this reform is driving down neighbourhood crime, and delivering on the Beating Crime Plan.

“This government has put nearly £17 billion into funding police and are putting 20,000 police officers on the street – the people of London rightly expect results,” the source added.

Sir Mark is expected to not only increase neighbourhood policing, but to also promote a more targeted approach to stop and search focused on arresting high-profile offenders, and greater efforts to divert children away from gangs.

He signalled his vision just nine months ago in a Policy Exchange paper where he criticised the Met’s “highly suppressive” approach to knife crime, involving a “disproportionate” stop and search rate and too few resources invested in community policing and proactive prosecution of drug gangs.

He returns from the private sector to the force he left four years ago.