Chief Constable Stephen Watson has trumpeted major improvements in the performance of Greater Manchester Police as part of a huge effort to lift the force out of special measures.
He spoke to the media more than a year after he was installed as chief constable, replacing predecessor Ian Hopkins who was f orced out in December 2020 after a damning policing inspectorate report which revealed major failings including that GMP had failed to record an estimated 80,000 crimes in a year.
Chief Constable Watson, who officially started as the chief on June 1 last year, has replaced almost all of his senior leadership team and now has ten new chief superintendents in charge of each district across the force. It is part of a 'back to basics' drive to turn around the failing force, which remains in special measures.
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The force has halved the time it takes to answer the most serious 999 calls, which last month was 29 seconds on average compared to 66 seconds in June 2021 following a £1m investment in call-handling, including 40 new call handlers. In June it was taking the force an average of ten minutes and 12 seconds to respond to the most serious 'grade 1' calls, well below the 15 minute target, while the average time to respond to 'grade 2 call was just under the 60 minute target, according to the force. The 'grade 2' response time was almost 21 hours in May 2021, said GMP.
The number of arrests has almost doubled to 4.527 in May this year compared to 2,881 in May 2021, prompting GMP to re-open its custody suite in Bolton and it plans to do the same at Longsight police station. It has recruited an extra 43 custody sergeants. While GMP was simply absent from many national crime recording statistics because of its troubled new computer system, iOPS, force bosses say they are now 94 per cent 'compliant' with government crime figure requirements.
The force has previously announced it will replace a key part of iOPS, the failed records management system known as PoliceWorks, although it will cost millions.
Speaking to the M.E.N. on Tuesday, Mr Watson said he was seeing 'green shoots' of recovery as he repeated a promise to step aside if he failed to get GMP out of special measures.
"These figures are genuinely dramatic and really impressive. In describing the delivery of our plan, I don't think frankly the public are interested in some sort of high-flown rhetoric about our strategic intent or anything of the sort," said the chief constable.
"I think what the public are interested in is the core basics of policing, picking up the telephone, making accurate records, getting to them more quickly, investigating crimes that are important to us, bringing people to justice, looking after our victims, and working in such a way that the public can see visibly what it is we are doing to be satisfied their perfectly legitimate requirements are met."
The Police Performance Oversight Group of the policing inspectorate, which monitors forces in special measures, meets every three months and Mr Watson said GMP 'was working really hard to ensure' its current status changes. One area of concern, over the recording of crime, has already been 'rescinded', he said.
Mr Watson said he stood by an assertion he made at the start of his tenure that he would bring GMP out of special measures within two years or step aside
"I will bring this force out of special measures or I won't be here. I just don't know when that will happen. I don't know what will come first but I'm quite confident we will bring this force out of special measures. I'm entirely confident of that," he said.
He said he was 'already able to evidence tangible substantial improvement but the big one is that we still sit in special measures'. "If we cannot bring this force out of special measures then you'll be in pursuit of a new chief constable," he said.
The force would imminently appoint an IT director ahead of an invitation to tender for a system to replace PoliceWorks, said the chief. He said some 'patches' had been applied to PoliceWorks 'to make sure it's not dangerous' but it was 'not fit for purpose' and deeply unpopular amongst police officers, he admitted.
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