The commissioner of the Metropolitan police says his force has “been too permissive” in allowing officers to serve with serious criminal records and that legislation is needed to make it easier to dismiss them.
Commenting in the wake of a review which found 161 officers in his force have criminal convictions, including for sex offences, Sir Mark Rowley, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think we’ve been too permissive. That’s very, very clear.”
Scotland Yard has been reviewing its handling of serious allegations against its own force after the scandal of David Carrick, who raped and assaulted at least 12 women.
Rowley revealed on Thursday that the force had found that four out of five past allegations of violence against women by officers and staff did not result in the correct action and should be rechecked. In all, 1,131 cases were examined in the decade to April 2022 and hundreds of officers are likely to lose their jobs.
Rowley said he had been shocked by the seriousness of the offences committed by serving officers. “There’s certainly some people when I looked at the list, I thought, crikey, that’s not right.” When asked to give examples, he said, “some sex offence cases, some serious partner violence cases”.
Disciplinary issues in the police are dealt with under regulations that operate outside normal employment law, which Rowley said meant it was hard to dismiss problematic officers. He said the police regulations meant some sacked officers had been reinstated after legal action and that it was hard to dismiss staff who had been re-vetted.
“I think those regulations over time have become byzantine and complex and so not having clear provision to dismiss people who have failed a re-vetting process is crazy,” he said.
“People will be shocked. Some of the people on that list of criminal convictions are people that the Met has sacked, and an independent lawyer has reinstated … The commissioner doesn’t have the final say on who’s in his or her organisation.”
The commissioner said legislation was needed to speed up and simplify a disciplinary process that allowed Carrick to stay in his job despite multiple allegations of misogynistic abuse over two decades. The home secretary launched a review of the Met’s dismissal processes in January that Rowley said he hoped would result in urgent change.
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“I’m hoping they will put in place pretty urgently some more rapid mechanisms,” he said. “Because whilst we’re doubling down and doubling the impact we’re having, this is taking much longer than I would like and it’s much more difficult than I would like and if they can move the regulations in a way that, of course is still fair for officers but helps us go faster, that’ll be in everyone’s interest.”
Rowley also said police needed to lower the threshold for taking disciplinary action against officers with problematic behaviour, as they were preoccupied with whether an allegation was criminal.
“I think the issue for policing is to not get drawn into whether the only test is whether someone reaches a criminal standard, because we’re involved in a criminal investigation, which other employers aren’t,” he said. Giving the example of domestic violence, he said that just because the Crown Prosecution Service did not think there was merit in a case, “that doesn’t mean we should assume therefore that there isn’t material in the file which still gives a level of concern which might need to lead to action”.
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