The Metropolitan Police Force, London: Random Observations on the Policing of a Major Law Enforcement Agency
On 10 February 2022, despite the Prime Minister’s “complete confidence” in her abilities, Dame Cressida Dick, first female and first openly gay Metropolitan Police (Met) Commissioner, declined to meet Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, to discuss plans for reforming her force and resigned instead. She had earlier been put “on notice” by the Mayor, in the aftermath of an Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) report of an investigation into allegations of misogyny, discrimination, and sexual harassment, involving fourteen former Met police officers at Charing Cross Police Station between 2016 and 2018. The beleaguered Commissioner had also been criticised for her tardy intervention into the ongoing Partygate investigation of various social events and “meetings” at Number 10 Downing Street. Some welcomed her resignation and saw this as a new opportunity for the Met to move forward, while others bemoaned both her departure and the somewhat undignified manner in which this took place.
Dame Cressida graduated from Balliol College, Oxford (also Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s alma mater) in 1982 with a degree in agriculture and forest sciences, probably not directly relevant to a career in the metropolitan human jungle, and joined the Met as a constable in 1983. She became a Commander in 2001, a Deputy Assistant Commissioner in 2006, and Assistant Commissioner in 2009. Having retired in 2015, she was recalled to active duty and appointed Commissioner by the Home Secretary in April 2017. This made her the Met’s highest-serving police officer, the rank of Commissioner equating to that of the Chief Constable of a provincial police force. Her career was, however, not without its darker moments. For example, as Gold Commander, she led the Met operation during which Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician, was mistakenly shot dead as a terrorist suspect at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July 2005. The following year, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute any police officer in connection with the killing-a decision that was upheld by the European Court of Human Rights in 2016. During Dame Cressida’s truncated term of office, originally due to end in April 2022 but extended last year until April 2024, a number of incidents undermined public trust in the Met, an organisation that claims to be “Keeping London safe for everyone”. These unwelcome events included various unacceptable behaviours (bullying of suspects, witness tampering) and criminal actions (theft, fraud, drug crime, covert photography of murder victims, sexual misconduct, murder) committed by a small number of police officers. The force’s failings under previous Commissioners, and the Met’s subsequent watered-down responses to these occurrences, further compromised her position. Among the more high-profile incidents were the incompetent investigation into the March 1987 murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan, and the wasted time, effort, and money (£2.5 million) invested in Operation Midland, an 18-month-long investigation into an alleged VIP paedophile ring at the behest of the fraudster “Nick” (Charles Beech).
Notwithstanding the bad publicity, the Metropolitan Police Force, for long a model for police forces around the world, is the largest police force in the UK, with 33, 128 police officers, 9,804 police staff, 1,179 police community support officers, and 1, 838 special officers, as of 31 January 2021. According to its own website, “The Met is by no means a law unto itself”, with the Commissioner accountable for policing to both the Home Secretary and the Mayor of London. The force has patrolled the streets of London ever since 6 pm on 30 September 1829, when what were then known as the “Peelers”, and soon thereafter as “Bobbies, first began policing an area covering a radius of 15 miles, extending outwards from Charing Cross in all directions: from Cheshunt to Chipstead (north-south), and from Chadwell Heath to Staines (east-west). The first full-time, professional, salaried, and centrally-organised police force in England (police forces had already been established in Scotland in 1800 and Ireland in 1824) was the result of the Metropolitan Police Act 1829, which became law while its founder, Sir Robert Peel, was Home Secretary. At the outset, it was in the charge of Joint Commissioners, the first pair being the duo of Colonel Sir Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne. The original police station opened at Great Scotland Yard, a street backing on to 4 Whitehall Place, on 6 October 1829. During the years that followed, the name of Scotland Yard became synonymous with law enforcement and spawned many fictional crime stories, novels, dramas, films, and television series, thereby creating a distinct identity in popular culture.
Since its inception, the force has gradually spread to include all 32 boroughs of Greater London, while leaving out the City of London, which has its own dedicated police force. The administrative structure consists of four “business groups”, supported by both a headquarters that provides strategic services and by “Shared Support Services”. In addition to its role in policing London, it also has certain important national responsibilities (Diplomatic and Royal Protection, counter-terrorism).
The Metropolitan Police has faced many allegations of corruption over its history. The activities of the Obscene Publications Squad (‘Dirty Squad’) in London during the 1960s and 1970s are an oft-cited example of organised police corruption, where police officers protected the interests of Soho pornographers while claiming to enforce the Obscene Publications Act 1959. Operation Countryman, conducted from 1978 to 1982, investigated the complicity of corrupt police officers, bribed by villains, in tampering with evidence in criminal cases. In recent years, investigative journalists and whistleblowers have drawn attention to what has been termed “institutional corruption”- a tendency to suppress failings in policing procedures that have led to miscarriages of justice.
Allegations of racism in the Met can be traced back to reports of differential treatment of Black and Asian police recruits, the selective targeting of people from ethnic minorities in public spaces, and a perceived reluctance to deal with crimes that victimise people of colour. So-called “sus laws”, enabling arrest of reputed thieves or suspected persons “loitering with intent to commit an arrestable offence” under Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act 1824 were abolished by he Criminal Attempts Act 1981, after a spike of arrests targeting Blacks in the late 1970s was followed by inner-city race riots in England in 1981. The ensuing Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984, however, reinstated a modified version of the sus laws in the form of stop and search. Then in 1998, a public inquiry chaired by Sir William Macpherson concluded in The Stephen Lawrence Report, published in February 1999, that the Met’s investigation of the Stephen Lawrence’s murder in Eltham on 22 April 1993 was inherently flawed and that the force was “institutionally racist”.
The majority of serving Met police officers are widely, and rightly, considered to be hard-working and fair-minded upholders of law and order. The current problems of racism, misogyny, and sexual harassment that afflict a small minority of “bad eggs” may originate in a corporate subculture, or so-called “canteen culture”, of racially charged and misogynistic “laddish banter”, supposedly to encourage bonding and help relieve stress. Superimposed upon these sentiments are particular viewpoints prevalent within certain communities as well as a reported far-right infiltration of the police rank-and-file. In the meantime, the Met has continued to tighten up its governance, through the enhanced vetting of entrants, rigorous selection and training of recruits, and continued professional development of police officers, but there is, without doubt, scope for improvement. Whoever succeeds Dame Cressida Dick as Met Police Commissioner will have the unenviable task of establishing firm control over a large and complex organisation, currently facing many challenges and obstacles yet to be overcome.
Ashis Banerjee