Policing: crisis at the Met
“There is something rotten in the state of British policing,” said Camilla Cavendish in the FT. Last week, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary took the unprecedented step of placing the Metropolitan Police force in “special measures”. Many of its failings were already well-publicised, such as the racist messages and even pictures of murder victims sent by officers on WhatsApp; the botched investigation into the killings of four gay men by the serial killer Stephen Port; and the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving officer, Wayne Couzens. But the watchdog also unearthed a litany of “systemic” problems at the Met, such as the failure to record reasons for stop-and-search, a vast backlog of online child-abuse referrals, and its “barely adequate” documenting of crime: some 69,000 crimes go unrecorded each year. Five other forces are in special measures, including Greater Manchester, Cleveland and Gloucestershire. “What has gone wrong with forces which used to command such public respect?” The rank and file are clearly struggling to cope, while senior officers seem “aloof” and defensive.
The former Met officer Iain Donnelly recently wrote a book about the force called Tango Juliet Foxtrot, said Duncan Campbell in The Guardian. That’s police code for “the job’s f***ed”, and it sums up what many serving officers feel. “Warning signs” have been flashing for years. Policing across England and Wales is still reeling from Theresa May’s time as home secretary and PM, when 20,000 police officers were lost (out of a total of around 144,000); about half of all police stations have closed since 2010. Inevitably, “officers have disappeared from the streets”. Other social services have suffered, while the courts and the prisons are in chaos. All this increases the pressure on police.
The Met has also faced specific problems of its own, said The Daily Telegraph. It is, arguably, too unwieldy: it’s responsible not just for fighting crime in the capital, but also for national counterterrorism, and for protecting the Government. Political leadership is shared between mayor Sadiq Khan and Home Secretary Priti Patel. There’s a case for splitting the Met into “different command structures” and even hiving off counterterrorism. What it needs most, however, is an effective new head, to replace Cressida Dick, who left earlier this year. In the 1970s, Sir Robert Mark cleaned up a corrupt Met with a robust approach, which led to the resignation or dismissal of nearly 500 officers from Scotland Yard. The next commissioner will need similar “resolve and determination”.