Constabulary powers in the UK derive from the principle of policing by consent. Articulated by the first commissioners of the Metropolitan police in 1829, it is the principle that the power of the police is granted not through the instruments of the state but by the consent of the public. Police derive their legitimacy solely through the approval and respect of the communities they serve.
The publication of the Macpherson inquiry report into the Met’s handling of the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993 was a seminal moment for British policing. It exposed just how far its biggest police force had strayed from the principle of policing by consent and the extent of the appalling levels of institutional racism that had allowed the investigation into a racist murder to be so comprehensively bungled.
The report’s findings should have led to a fundamental reset but, in recent years, the full extent of the institutional prejudices that live on in the Met have revealed themselves. Today, black people are nine times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police, up from five times more likely at the time the report was published in 1999. There have been yet more terrible failings. The rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met officer, jokingly dubbed “the rapist” by colleagues. The convictions of officers for sharing images of two murdered black women, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, and using “degrading and sexist” language about them. The failure of Met officers to take seriously the drugging and murder of men lured, using an online dating platform, by Stephen Port, which a jury found allowed more killings to proceed. The undercover Met officers who lied to women and conducted long-term sexual relationships with them. The misogyny, bullying and sexual harassment revealed in a police watchdog inquiry into Charing Cross police station, dismissed as “banter” by officers.
Many were hopeful that Cressida Dick would bring a change in culture at the Met when she was appointed as the first female and openly gay commissioner five years ago. However, Dick has been a poor and defensive leader, putting loyalty to her rank and file – even when there is serious wrongdoing – far above her responsibility to win the consent of the public for policing in London. She has denied there is still institutional racism in the police and dismissed the findings of institutional corruption made by the independent panel that looked into the murder of Daniel Morgan. Rather than engage with the criticism of the police, she has depicted opponents as “armchair critics”. She has failed to grapple with the fact that policing attracts recruits with unsavoury motives who can take the opportunity to abuse power that a police uniform creates. And she has failed to reform a culture in which loyalty to fellow officers is prized above all else, including professional standards. There are insufficient incentives for officers to build positive relations with local communities and whistleblowing is too often career-ending. Little wonder, then, that she has overseen a decline in trust in policing in the capital, particularly among women.
Dick’s resignation, announced last week, is therefore long overdue. However, it would be a mistake to think replacing her is sufficient to reform the problems we see in policing, not just in London but across the country. The public inquiry into the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust helped set in train a series of reforms to improve patient safety; policing desperately needs a similar light to be shone on its toxic cultures. There must be a statutory inquiry into the state of policing by public consent in England and Wales.
