Dame Cressida Dick and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan
(Picture: PA Wire)The crisis in the Metropolitan Police should be blamed on politicians and not senior officers, according to independent advisers to the force.
In a new twist on the events that led to the resignation of Met Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick, three lay chairs of borough advisory groups warned that years of “political meddling” have made policing London a near-impossible job.
Their intervention comes as the focus on preventing violence against women and girls will again take centre stage, with Thursday being the anniversary of the kidnapping, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met officer.
Last week Met deputy commissioner Sir Stephen House accused Mayor Sadiq Khan of ousting Dame Cressida — in the wake of revelations about sexism, misogyny and racism at Charing Cross police station — without “due process”.
The advisers, who describe themselves as “critical friends” of the Met, say Dame Cressida was “incredibly popular” with officers and her ousting was “like a football club ditching a manager in the hope of better results without addressing the underlying problems”.
They each represent a borough in the Met’s central west London BCU (basic command unit) that covers Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham.
As prominent residents, they are regularly consulted by borough commanders and often asked to help with community liaison after a major incident such as a murder or terror incident.
In a joint submission to the Standard, they pointed to a series of structural problems that they say has undermined the Met’s ability to focus on traditional neighbourhood beat policing, including:
- Selling off police stations, with Notting Hill and Teddington latest at risk.
- Scrapping of the 20-week residential training course at Hendon for cadets.
- A lack of senior officers to mentor new recruits to the force, and poorer vetting and supervision of new recruits.
- The scrapping of borough policing and its replacement with BCUs, which often lead to officers being “extracted” from communities to hotspots such as the West End.
Claire van Helfteren, of the independent advisory group in Kensington & Chelsea, said:Claire van Helfteren, chair of the independent advisory group in Kensington and Chelsea, said: “I’m furious about the way the Met is being treated.
“While the Met is not perfect, it’s hamstrung by having two bosses – the mayor and the Home Secretary.
“What is not being talked about are the short-term political decisions that have left the Met in its current state.
“The senior leadership team is unbelievably hard-working. They’re incredibly good officers but they’re ‘fighting fires’ all the time.
“Yes, there are problems, but you have to look at where these problems have come from. I think they have been created by the politicians. The Met is being set up to fail.”
Latest figures from the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, the City Hall quango that funds and oversees the Met, show that last December 51 per cent of Londoners believed the Met did a good job in the local area – down on 57 per cent a year earlier.
The number of Met officers has increased from 31,601 in May 2016, when Mr Khan became mayor, to 33,128 in January this year.
The Met’s total strength – including civilians and police community support officers – has also increased over the same period, from 42,578 to 44,111.
Mr Khan, who also holds the role of police and crime commissioner, is increasing Mopac’s annual budget to £4.3 billion from April, of which £1.4bn is for “frontline policing”, with a further £1.3bn for “operations”.
Ms van Helfteren said there was a need for politicians to be realistic about what the Met could achieve while facing increasing demands on its time.
She said the axing of the residential course at Hendon, which used to instill “pride and discipline” in new recruits, had caused long-term damage.
New officers may now only see their sergeant “once a fortnight”, meaning that inexperienced officers were having to take difficult decisions. “It’s like getting a Year Seven to run the school,” she said.
There were too few senior officers and many only lasted two or three years in a BCU before moving elsewhere within the Met.
“When the public cry ‘where are the police on our streets?’ ask the politicians not the Met,” she said.
A spokesperson for Mr Khan said: “Trust in the police among Londoners has plummeted over the last two years following a series of devastating scandals involving police officers, including evidence of misogyny, racism, sexism, homophobia and bullying.
“This has highlighted deep cultural issues within the Met, and the mayor has been clear that urgent change is needed. Downplaying the scale of the challenge is only going to hinder, not help, the vital process of restoring Londoners’ trust in the police.
“We have a long-standing tradition in this country of policing by consent. This means that for policing to be effective, public approval, respect and confidence in the service is paramount. When this trust is eroded, our model of policing, and therefore public safety, is put at risk.
“The Mayor is democratically elected by millions of Londoners and it is his job to hold the police to account – and he will continue to do so.”
Scotland Yard declined to comment.
