Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has said it is ‘nonsensical’ that he lacks the power to sack officers.
He told a BBC radio phone in today (6 April): “In all cases, I don’t have the final say on who’s in the Metropolitan Police. I know that sounds mad, I’m the commissioner,” he said.
Rowley went on to criticise the Met’s disciplinary process, pointing out that independent legal tribunals could decide the Met had to retain officers even though the force wanted to sack them. This was one of the powers that had to be changed, he added.
His remarks came in response to Louise Casey’s review of the Met which branded the organisation as institutionally sexist, racist and homophobic, with a “boys’ club” culture.
The review has seen 90 Met Police officers taken away from tackling serious crime and terrorism and join Directorate of Professional Standards teams investigating wrongdoing in the force.
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Rowley told the BBC that vetting rules in recruiting staff had been toughened up, and in the next six months about 100 officers could well be pushed out of the organisation. Many had previously faced sex or domestic abuse charges.
Nearly 700 individuals, officers and civilian support staff, are also having old allegations against them re-examined to see if they pose a continuing risk.
“We have hundreds of people who shouldn’t be here and the tens of thousands of good men and women here are as embarrassed and angered by that as anybody, and they’re helping us sort them out,” he added.
Some “complex” police regulations meant some officers under investigation had already been sacked by the Met, he told the BBC, but they had later been reinstated by an independent lawyer.
Rowley had previously said he was considering banning anyone with convictions, other than the most minor, from the force.
He said four in five of the original inquiries into officers accused of domestic and sexual violence over the past decade had not resulted in the correct action and should be reassessed.
In the past two years the Met has been has been embroiled in a wave of scandals, including a sex murder by PC Wayne Couzens and multiple rapes by PC David Carrick. In December 2021 two officers were jailed for two years nine months after sharing phone photographs of murdered sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry. The following February, sexist, violent, racist and abusive text messages between officers were revealed by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, which had launched an investigation in March 2018 into allegations an officer had sex with a drunk person in a police station.
The IOPC said many officers had dismissed the text exchanges as “laddish banter” when challenged.
The Met said that a new anonymous Crimestoppers hotline for the public to report officers’ corrupt or abusive behaviour received more than 1,000 calls and triggered 325 investigations. More staff, too, were being encouraged to report their colleagues for bad behaviour.
London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan said Londoners would “appalled to hear that 161 serving police officers in the Met have a criminal conviction and it is right that every single one of those cases will be reviewed by the Met’s Professional Standards team”.
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