Some Personal Reflections on the Review of the by Baroness Casey of Standards of Behaviour and Internal Culture of the Metropolitan Police

PART ONE

There is no substitute for actually reading Lady Casey’s report into the Met.?The media reports do not do it justice.?There has been considerable commentary on the report.?Some of it seemingly produced by people that have not read it.?However I readily acknowledge that they are many people better qualified than I am to discuss this report and my comments should be read in this context.

Some of the reaction to the Casey Report into the Metropolitan Police reminds me of an incident I attended many years ago.?A man had been seriously injured and one of his legs was very badly damaged.?As the merciful effects of medic supplied morphine kicked in he proclaimed that although he was likely to lose his leg the majority of his body was fine.?Repeatedly we have heard people say ‘let’s remember the majority of police officers who do a good job for the right reasons’.?It is a fair point.?The shame of the Met bears heavily on the majority that are good people, it makes their difficult job harder.?They deserve support. ?Casey makes the point herself at the beginning of her report and she praises the daily heroism shown by police officers.?Her review is not, as one social media commentator described it, ?‘anti-police’.?But the integrity of the majority cannot obscure the horror of what has happened, and what the Metropolitan Police and the Home Secretary have allowed to happen.?It cannot hide the persistent nature of the problem. ??At the time of Macpherson and Scarman the majority of police officers were also sound, honest and dedicated.?But the organisation has failed to truly reform.?The argument moved on from a ‘few bad apples’ a long while ago.?Casey has examined the standards and culture of the Met, not individual cases of misconduct.?One of the biggest inhibitors to bringing about change is denial and there are signs that some in the police service are definitely in denial.

The Metropolitan Police is the largest force in the UK.?Other forces are not immune to the same problems and any that are quick to suggest that this is a problem that is exclusive to the Metropolis need to take a good look at themselves. The Met do have more specialist departments than other forces and such departments produce what one colleague has described as an abundance of dark corners. ??I note that the Fire Service has also been exposed (HMICFRS Report 2023) as a place where negative cultures and sub-cultures continue to flourish.

My first impression of the Lady Casey’s Review is that it is well written and evidenced based.?For an investigation of this scale it was produced quickly.???The style and presentation of the report is economical and every key point is sustained by the use of data.?I have heard some police officers express a reluctance to accept her conclusions, but I haven’t seen anyone provide any evidence that undermines them.?Her recommendation are, if anything, rather understated.?She holds back on the suggestion that the Met needs to be disbanded but she leaves it on the table for later consideration.?No organisation can be allowed to consider itself too big to fail.

I do not have space or the skill to analyse in any depth the whole review, but in a series of posts I want to draw attention to some of her findings, especially those that have not received the headlines that they perhaps deserve.

Casey lays out the problem in a straightforward way:

Every report, review or inspection of the police starts with the positive side. Their bravery and courage. Their readiness to run towards danger when everyone else is running from it, putting their own lives at risk to protect others. Their day-to-day willingness to deal with people who break the law. They deserve our support and respect. But the management and leadership of the Met and those who hold them to account let down those officers and staff if they obfuscate, deny, cover up or fail to learn from mistakes, failures and wrong-doing. 29 We know many Met officers and staff uphold high professional standards and good conduct. We know that some of what they do is world-beating. But in order to support them and enable them to stay world-class we have to look at and accept what is wrong, learn from it, change and move forwards. That is the intent of this Review. If we do not identify and change what is wrong with the Met, we put community safety in jeopardy (p29)

The phrase that struck me here was ”….enable them to stay world class”?I, like virtually everybody else I know, strongly believes that British policing is the best in the world.?I have never questioned the divine right of the GB policing to be a the top of the international tree.?Nor have I questioned what makes it the leader of free world policing.?Surely it is the concept of policing by consent, the idea of balancing rights and freedoms and the mantra of equality before the law??Imperfect of course, highly influenced in the public mind by media portrayal, but fundamentally a tale of good over evil.?Perhaps I have allowed my knowledge of police wrongdoing throughout the last 200 years to sit in a separate box to my pride in what we have achieved in these islands.?Looking at UK policing from the outside, from across the seas even, it is now a jaded and tainted brand.?Corruption and misconduct is nothing new, but it has been allowed to continue and in some places even flourish.?The Peelian principles (which of course had nothing to do with Robert Peel) now seem as realistic as Dixon of Dock Green.??Internationally it will take a long while before the reputation of Scotland Yard (as a piece of shorthand for policing UK) recovers.

If policing is a consensual activity then there is a problem in London

“Two in five Londoners (41%) think the Met’s reputation is poor, compared to a third (34%) who think it is good. This varies, with over half of LGBTQ+ Londoners (54%) and Black Londoners (53%) saying the Met’s reputation is poor (compared to 40% of non-LGBTQ+ Londoners and 40% of White Londoners) · Those on higher incomes (over ￡100k a year) (53%); men (42%); those living in inner London (42%) and from White ethnic groups (40%) are more likely to think the Met’s reputation is good” (p52)

The above is an extract from Casey’s wider examination of this issue but it is enough to illustrate the depth of the problem.?Confidence has been falling.?The reasons behind this are, like everything else in policing, complex.?But the battle to win back the people of London extends far beyond current scandals and the employment by the Met of dangerous criminals.?There is much work to be done.

The austerity and cuts in central government funding has had a huge impact on the provision of public services.?Casey describes the increase in demand on the Met caused by the parlous state of mental health provision but somehow the public have been largely blind to the direct effect of the cuts on policing and the impact on the decreases in police pay on those that actually provide the service:

“The Met has been challenged significantly during a period of financial austerity. Its spending levels are now around ￡700 million, or 18%, lower in real terms than they were ten years ago, enough to recruit 9,600 extra officers. While better protected than some other public services, austerity has forced the Met to make difficult decisions. It has prioritised officer numbers, but even these fell below 30,000 for several years during the last decade. The cost of maintaining officer numbers has been significant reductions in PCSOs, civilian staff, Special Constables and closure of police stations. Other steps taken to deliver efficiencies have weakened the management and delivery of frontline policing in the capital and its connection to Londoners. A nationwide Policing Uplift Programme to restore officer numbers is an opportunity to re-strengthen the Met but has not yet been properly planned” (p59).

These are big numbers.?Cuts of this size come at a price.?A price that is largely paid by victims of crime and by police officers themselves.?The national ‘uplift’ will not replace the officers lost, but is a beginning.?The question of resources does not explain police misconduct (although the lesson of the 1970s is that if you pay police officers badly don’t be surprised is corruption flourishes) but it does contribute to a siege like police culture that sees the outside world as ungrateful and down values community policing and long term engagement.?The old phrase was ‘fire brigade policing”.?We will come when called approach that now itself seems rather optimistic.?Policing that is starved of resources becomes inward looking and is less, rather than more, likely to work closely with partners to tackle problems.?

Police forces have a responsibility to manage their resources and, perhaps as importantly to understand the demands being placed upon them.??

Casey found that the Met are not good at tasks such as workforce planning:

“ We saw no evidence that the Met had an evidence-based approach to its workforce planning that took account of past, existing or predicted demand. We found this particularly strange given the strength of views expressed by front line officers and the senior leadership of the Met that demand was changing, becoming increasingly complex, and that more time was being consumed dealing with wider societal and mental health issues.” (p73)

She also found that the claims that the ‘front line’ had been protected hid the fact that visibility of police officers in London had declined.?Moreover the fact that the Met were receiving 30% of the national ‘uplift’ of new officers was not itself evidence based:

“We asked the Met for an explanation of how the figure of 6,000 had been calculated and which parts of the Met would benefit, but were only provided with limited information on where new recruits had been allocated to date. This lack of foresight and planning is a feature of the Met. The Review team observed this first hand at a meeting in June 2022. A senior officer was asked what the Met’s requirement was for detectives, to which they replied: “I don’t have a crystal ball.” (p74)

“It is also evident that, while the Met regularly declares its intention to improve the diversity of its workforce, it has no credible plan to do so to a point where it genuinely reflects the diversity of London’s population. We return to this point in chapter 9. We found it worrying that such planning was absent when considering the amount of money spent by the Met on human resources, and its heavy and growing use of and expenditure on contracted out services and consultants: · The total estimated cost of in-house and contracted HR services has nearly doubled from ￡35.4 million in 2015-16 to ￡68.5 million in 2021-22 · Spending on contracted services more than doubled from ￡24m in 2017-18 to ￡54.5 million in 2021-22 · Spending on external consultants, excluding HR, finance, and commercial services, more than tripled from ￡10.4 million in 2015-16 to ￡32.1 million in 2021-22. For the years 2017-18 to 2020-21 it was spending circa ￡50 million each year on consultants.” (p74)

How can the Met not have credible plan to improve the diversity of its workforce?

The growth in HR costs in an organisation that is resource starved is not, in my experience, unusual– but it is still very difficult to understand.

One of the good things about this review is that it places issues in context.?Casey points out:

“This shrinking of the visible ‘blue line’ in London has coincided with, and in part, been exacerbated by, the London Boroughs having to reduce their spending on community safety by 42% between 2010 and 2016. To date, this has not fully recovered. London Boroughs’ spending on crime reduction within this fell even more dramatically – by 58%....” (P72)

TO BE CONTINUED (maybe)……………………….

Note: these comments do not represent the views of my clients or employers. They are mine alone.