Dame Cressida Dick handed in her notice having been advised that a plan she had submitted to Sadiq Khan in his role as police commissioner for London was insufficiently detailed and robust to address the Met policing crisis. Khan has stated that his priority is that Dick’s successor has a grasp of the scale of the reform needed and the will to ensure necessary changes are instituted.
The Met response to the murder of Sara Everard
In October 2021 following the murder of Sara Everard by Wayne Couzens, the Met hoped to regain public trust by “putting more police officers on the streets, making the police more accessible and increased specialisation in tackling crimes against women and girls”. At the time, Dick also suggested that if women were concerned about a police officer approaching them they “should wave down a bus”.
This showed that Dick understood that, for many women, the police were a source of risk and fear, rather than a route to protection. Yet, even then, Dick was unwilling to acknowledge that the Met’s problem with racism and misogyny is largely one of the behaviour of white male officers. Without acknowledging the source of the evil, she was unable to plan to eradicate it.
IOPC report
Earlier this month the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) published a report into the Met’s culture following nine separate investigations relating to racism and misogyny, and bullying and harassment within and between the ranks. It enumerates dozens of racist and sexist behaviours designed to intimidate and harass members of the public and police staff.
The IOPC report makes a number of recommendations, many of which focus on addressing problems seriously when they occur and enabling staff within the service to be able to complain about behaviour more easily and to be better protected when they do. The report identifies lax monitoring of behaviour, ineffective inquiries into behaviour and lack of robust measures to censure offenders. While it is critical of a culture of ‘toxic masculinity’, its recommendations are gender neutral, as though women and black people may also be contributory rather than victims of this unhealthy culture.
The report deals with the problems as technical issues that can be resolved solely through managerial processes. Yet, the accounts of social media communications reported by IOPC reveal an astonishing depth and breadth of hatred towards those most at risk from crime, vulnerable people who need the police most. A level of hatred that is totally irreconcilable with policing and one that cannot be ‘managed’ away. The use of the word ‘banter’ by the IOPC, not to condone but to explain, still has the effect of giving some legitimacy to the expression of abhorrent views.
The investigation uncovered police officer hatred towards vulnerable people
The investigation found celebrations of, or boasts of, criminal attacks by the officers themselves, on black people, people with disabilities, Muslims, gay people, refugees, victims of sexual assault (including children) and women. There is almost no group the officers did not insult or boast about abusing – other than white men like themselves.
The report attributes the behaviour to ‘toxic masculinity’ but offers no suggestions as to why the police force should be so attractive to men with these views. All services that work with vulnerable people are at risk of attracting staff who may wish to harm those they should be helping, but the number of police officers reported to the IOPC (recorded on its website) gives an indication of the scale of the problem the police faces from within its ranks.
Efforts to recruit more women and black people suggest that police chiefs understand that there may be something about the dominant white male composition of the force that is not conducive to a healthy respectful culture and desired behaviours. But, employing more women and black people without ensuring they will not be bullied by white male colleagues, exacerbates rather than resolves the problem. It confirms the power of the abusers and furthers the poor reputation of the police.
Transforming the Met
Some police chiefs and Dick in particular, supported by Home Secretary Priti Patel, have failed to construct the policing task as one that meets the citizens’ needs. For example, the Met has prioritised stop and search as a measure to tackle crime in spite of its ineffectiveness and its impact on community relations. It has also constructed knife crime as a law-breaking activity to be stopped by enforcement measures rather than working with communities to establish how the police can better protect young people from the risks they face on the street – and negate the need to carry knives. Consequently, many London citizens view the police as the problem, not the solution to their anxieties about crime.
The murder of (white) Sara Everard, prior to it being known that it was a police officer who attacked her, received much coverage in the national press and immediate police attention. The murders of (black) sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman received much less attention from both the press and the police. With cases like these, policing priorities appear, correctly or not, to be determined by a hierarchy of victim ‘respectability’. Policing is not and should not be a public service just for those who the police consider to be deserving.
Transformation will take time, money and political will
The characteristics the police value in their officers also needs to change. Policing is no longer (if it ever was) about strength and use of force. Good policing requires intelligence, an understanding of risk, empathy and excellent communication skills. It requires putting victims and citizens at the centre and rewarding behaviours that meet their needs. Rewarding clear-up rates encourages gaming (corruption) of the system, and prosecuting ‘low hanging fruit’ such as young people or the most inadequate offenders for minor crimes.
Transforming the police will require disciplining and sacking more officers than at present – too many who have been found guilty of misconduct have been able to remain in the service. It will also require recruiting higher-quality entrants. Police services are already finding it very difficult to recruit staff and to retain them. The starting pay is comparatively poor. The work is stressful. The hours are unsocial. Police chiefs are concerned about the quality of some recruits but it is difficult to reject poorer recruits when there are so many vacancies.
All this will take time, money and political will. The new commissioner, Sadiq Khan and Priti Patel will all need to acknowledge the scale of the task and find the resources to meet the challenge.
