Can the Metropolitan Police rebuild public trust?

At the time, Dick said she recognised that “a precious bond of trust has been damaged” between the public and the police, and she would ensure that lessons were learned from the case. 

She faced pressure to resign then, and several “high-profile” figures wrote an open letter accusing her of “presiding over a culture of incompetence and cover-up”, said the BBC.

In the weeks following Everard’s murder, a YouGov survey for the End Violence Against Women coalition found 47% of women and 40% of men reported declining trust in the police. 

Home Secretary Priti Patel said at the time that “serious questions” needed to be answered by Scotland Yard, but ultimately backed Dick, whose contract as the head of London’s police force had been extended by another two years that month.

More recently, an Ipsos-Mori poll suggested that public trust in the police has been further eroded by their handling of lockdown-busting parties held in Downing Street, with fewer than a third of Britons confident that the investigation will be “independent or lead to disciplinary action”. 

The Met’s “foot-dragging reluctance to investigate” now looks like a “catastrophic misjudgment”, said The Guardian’s columnist Gaby Hinsliff, who suggested that distrust of the police had now gone “mainstream”.

Efforts to improve policing

Louisa Rolfe, an assistant commissioner at the Met, told the Financial Times in December that Everard’s murder was “a watershed moment” for the police, after which Dick launched a “wholesale review of culture and standards” of the force.

Other limited efforts to improve policing in other parts of the country have seen some success through the use of “evidence-based policing” where new methods “backed by data” are applied to police work, said the paper.

Avon and Somerset Police have taken part in a Home Office backed trial of of “pulse patrols”, where officers “embark on 15-minute foot patrols of places that generate the highest number of calls about crime at the busiest times”. Targeted areas have seen a 13% fall in street violence compared with previous years. 

Dal Babu, a former Metropolitan Police commander who now advises Khan, said culture change was needed to rebuild trust in the force.

“It’s about getting the culture of the organisation to change, understanding [public] confidence, engaging with the community and working more effectively in terms of partnerships,” he told the paper. “It’s not rocket science.”

Life after Dick

A Home Office source told The Times there are “no suitable candidates” to replace Dick and that the search for her replacement could therefore take some time. 

Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu was seen as a favourite, but has clashed with Priti Patel and Boris Johnson over the issue of race, prompting the source to state that “No. 10 would block Basu even if we wanted him, which we don’t”.

Home Secretary Patel is also “said to be unimpressed with the UK’s other police leaders, several of whom she clashed with over the Black Lives Matter protests”, the paper added. But she “might favour” Shaun Sawyer, the chief constable of Devon and Cornwall.

A Home Office source said that an interim commissioner could be brought in while a full application process was undertaken. Politico’s London Playbook said there are a number of “runners and riders” in the frame.

Stephen House, the deputy commissioner, is an “obvious candidate”. Mark Rowley, former assistant commissioner for specialist operations, is also seen as “something of a reformer”, having recently criticised the Met’s over-reliance on stop and search. 

Andy Cooke, former Merseyside Police chief “cut his teeth jailing dozens of millionaire drug kingpins in Liverpool” and has fans in government circles. And Essex police chief B.J. Harrington has won rave reviews in the county, but did himself “few favours” last summer when he criticised Patel over the freeze in police pay. 

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/955708/metropolitan-police-public-trust