The Metropolitan Police has dismissed 100 officers for gross misconduct in the past 12 months, an increase of 66% compared with previous years, as it continues to build a healthier culture.
An update on its largest reform of culture and standards in decades revealed that it has taken significant steps to root out hundreds of officers who have fallen short of expected behaviours.
In addition to those that have been dismissed, 183 are currently suspended, a 165% increase compared with September 2022, while 275 are currently waiting for a gross misconduct hearing, including those facing allegations of discrimination and violence against women and girls.
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Reporting of alleged misconduct has soared from 876 to 1,668 over the past 12 months, with the number of reports by staff and officers increasing by a third.
Deputy assistant commissioner Stuart Cundy said: “There is much more work to do and we are not complacent. We are heartened by how the overwhelming majority of officers and staff are stepping forward to build a better Met.
“We hope that the progress set out today reassures Londoners that we are doing all we can deliver an organisation they deserve and our people are proud of.”
Speaking at Scotland Yard, Cundy said the Met expected to hold 30 misconduct hearings and 30 gross incompetence hearings a month for “one, two or more years”.
He said: “The more we do and the better we do, the more difficult cases are going to come to the fore. We have officers under investigation for rape. There are some of the most abhorrent cases I have seen in my policing career because it’s not just the fact it’s an awful offence but they are police officers.”
The Home Office has outlined plans for the automatic dismissal of police officers who are found guilty of gross misconduct or who fail vetting checks.
Earlier this year, Baroness Casey’s review into culture at the Met found that a “boys’ club culture is rife” at the London police force, and identified an unhealthy work culture arising from a lack of diversity and minimal officer supervision in some areas.
The Met’s culture and standards update said its work to improve standards fell into four strands: uncovering more cases of misconduct, increasing its assertiveness in investigations, increasing the pipeline of people awaiting misconduct hearings and removing more people from the organisation who cannot uphold its standards.
It has introduced several new principles (communities-first, frontline-focused, inclusive, collaborative, precise) and values (respect, integrity empathy, courage, accountable), which will be included in its training, reward, recruitment, development and promotion materials. It said these values “represent what our people want to be and reflect how the majority of our workforce want to see a reformed MPS”.
The Met has also:
- begun to review supervisory ratios so that supervisors can more effectively support individuals’ development and ensure that those with the least experience have the highest levels of supervision and support
- embedded new HR support and tasking processes into basic command units, to help them manage resources
- refreshed its management board, bringing in several individuals from outside the police force
- revamped promotion processes to improve outcomes for under-represented groups
- celebrated the positive impact the majority of its staff make through long-service awards, commendation events and management board-led communications
- taken first steps towards a strategic workforce plan that matches future resource against demand
- launched a new LMS and development review process to ensure all officers are supported with a personal development plan and that their performance is being properly scrutinised
- introduced a first-line leaders programme to improve the leadership skills of all existing and newly promoted sergeants and police staff equivalents. A similar programme is being prepared for mid-level and senior leaders
- increased ethnic minority representation across the force to 20.5%
- launched a trauma support service and increased the number of counsellors and the number of officers it puts through psychological screening.
The Met has also published the outcome of Operation Leven, a review into culture and standards in the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Command (PaDP) – the unit where both Wayne Couzens and David Carrick served.
It has brought new faces into the PaDP, so that a third of the unit are new, and its senior leadership team has been replaced. By 2025 over two-thirds of officers in the PaDP will be new.
It has strengthened how it approaches vetting, complaints and conduct in the unit, improved supervision and carried out checks on all PaDP officers. An independent professional standards team is now in place.
The Met is also working towards 20% female representation in PaDP and aims to achieve 20% ethnic minority representation.
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