Did the Met really believe that the courts would allow them to remove accused officers without due process?
Or was enacting an intentionally unlawful policy- Operation Assure- a strategic ploy to avoid accountability and reform and blame the courts for the state of the Metropolitan Police Force?
I have fielded a number of interviews about the Met Police losing a judicial review over removing police officers that fail vetting and that the Met will appeal the ruling. As a lay person reading the case, it seems blatantly obvious that a person cannot be removed from their position without having been able to respond to the charges against them.
From the headlines- the law ruling leaves policing in a “hopeless position” and campaigners are being compelled to argue that the courts are making misognyist decisions. Commissioner Rowley gets to say his hands are tied and he is forced to keep criminal police on the force. Of course it sounds awful that rapist police are allowed to stay on the force; and the Met would be well aware of the spin that they could apply to this judgement.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8r5nrzn4z0o
I do not buy it.
Are we supposed to actually believe that the administration and legal team of Mark Rowley’s Met believed that they would be permitted to sack officers with no due process? This is an organisation that spend millions annually on misconduct and removal hearings and procedures. Baroness Casey did an Interim Review on just how broken the misconduct procedure is; but the Met more than maybe any other organisation knows the ins and outs of employment law.
What if the Met knowingly rolled out this unlawful policy as part of long term strategic positioning for the Met to remain unaccountable for hiring and shielding criminal police for decades.
If that sounds like a conspiracy theory, hear me out. We didn’t believe Spy Cops was real either. This policy and subsequent judicial review does not pass the smell test. There is no way that the Met thought they could remove over 100 officers without allowing them to even respond to accusations against them, whether that be from 1 or 80 women—- and there is no way that the Met were not aware of the need for due process.
And if this so called ‘loophole’ has been criticised and recognised as an issue for 25 years, why is the Met ever announcing policy that has not been legally vetted and won’t stand up to judicial reviews from the notoriously litigious Police Federation? The home office and CJS and CPS and Metropolitan Policing continue to play the blame game rather than actually pass the legislation that will make women safer and policing accountable.
Is it plausible that a decision was made at Scotland Yard, similar to the decision to let thousands of ‘bad apples’ to medically retire on full pension while keeping their misconduct and names anonymous and their futures safe from accountability or punishment to avoid the bad press and embarrassment to the Met?
I can picture Rowley’s team explaining that they must be seen to be tough on sexual offenders on the force; so they will announce that they are re-vetting the force and past decisions and removing the worst offenders.
The Met could have agreed with the Police Federation that they wouldn’t name and shame so called rogue officers and wouldn’t arrest them, and in a year's time their sackings could be reversed and pensions restored and then those rogue officers could quietly retire like thousands of other officers have been allowed to do.
It would get the majority of the sacked men to stay quiet with the promise of payment and reversal of fortunes in two years time. It would help Rowley’s current reputation problem and get the public angry at the courts not the police. Simples. Blame the law ruling and not the organisation that hired and promoted (in some cases armed) and protected these men for decades.
Think about it. The public has a short attention span, and by the time the courts rule the policy unlawful; the Met can frame their officer’s gross misconduct as less dangerous and criminal than documented in the heated months after David Carrick was convicted. By the time this whole charade is over, their behaviour will be long forgotten except for Couzens and Carrick and Mitchell.
Operation Assure did what it needed to do at the time, which was like arnica to the black eye of women abused by the police. Cosmetic, but not addressing or actually punishing the officers that never should have been employed in the first place.
Operation Assure could be a win win, for the Commissioner and for the legacy police and federation. The only losers are once again the women who are victimised. But we are used to it and unless another Couzens is exposed, the commissioner can blame the government and avoid any actual reform or accountability. It’s a roundabout way of taking care of your own and shielding them, and as it has been happening for 25 years, why stop now?
I find that above supposition/explanation just as likely as the Met’s legal team believing a policy that fires an accused police officer without any due process would survive the courts. This is an organisation that usually takes on average 400 days to decide a misconduct allegation. Entire departments are dedicated to dealing with misconduct and wrongful dismissals. The Met as an organisation are incredibly aware of the rules of proving misconduct and the rules of behaviour reaching the threshold for prosecution. Baronness Casey did an entire interim report on how badly the organisation deals with misconduct and sackings.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/casey-review-misconduct-in-the-met-and-officer-dismissal/
Are we meant to believe that the Met’s entire legal team believed they would be permitted to fire officers just based on allegations? It’s farcical. But by defending clearly unlawful policy in courts is long and drawn out and Rowley gets headlines about the courts allowing bad police to stay on the force and the courts being the reason for 100 officers that are ‘dangerous to the public’ to be paid £7 million for their illegal dismissals. It tracks given the lengths the Met has gone to to avoid reform and accountability so far.
What happened to the bill Harriet Harman put forward in May 2024 that included automatically dismissing a serving officer who fails vetting? What happened after it was supposed to be dealt with prior to summer session last year? https://www.harrietharman.org/new_bill_to
The judge in this case this week pointed to the loophole that needed to be closed by the Home Office, apparently a loophole that has been known about for 25 years, but never closed with legislative regulations. So the blame game continues instead of fixing the problem.
Commissioner Rowley says his hands are tied and takes no responsibility for announcing sweeping vetting reviews that would never hold up in court. Where was the due diligence? Once again the Met stomping their feet and acting with impunity and above the law backfires. I don’t believe that this charade is unintentional.
It might be understandable if millions of public money was not spent annually on defending indefensible violations of the public’s human rights by the Metropolitan police– despite the law being pretty obvious.
Maybe don’t announce that you will sack accused officers without the due process in place? Once again women’s safety is used to score political points rather than actually a non partisan priority. Women’s lives and safety are not a PR battleground. The force only makes a concerted effort to have these issues off of the front pages rather than actually implementing reform.
If the Met made vetting a priority 2.5 years ago and worked to get the bill that Harriet Harman proposed to the top of the agenda, we wouldn’t be discussing this case now.
The Met which has been fighting this case for two and a half years will file what appears to be a hopeless appeal which will last at least another six months while the Home Office will supposedly “act rapidly” to introduce new rules. But once these headlines disappear, progress will only be pursued once the appeal in this case is lost and another apparently £7 million will be paid paying men who never should have been hired in the first place.
Ian Blair said they had raised the issue with the Home Office 25 years ago. The memo said: “We needed the ability to remove officers who had failed vetting and subsequent appeal procedures. That nothing has changed 25 years later is bewildering. Ministers should do what their predecessors failed to do and make clear that vetting failure is a sackable offence.” Why wasn’t this headline news three years ago. Why wasn’t this used to push legislators to pass the bill that legally required reform?
Why wasn’t Harriet Harman’s bill passed? Why didn’t Commissioner Rowley use his media team to apply pressure on this topic rather than pursuing a lengthy and expensive judicial review that obviously violates the due process of an accused officer.
These officers need to be legally removed from the force, unless that is not at all the intention of the Met Police and Mark Rowley.
If Harriet Harman’s bill has been kicked into high grass, does that mean none of the following monumental issues have been addressed at all legislatively?
The Bill would have introduced reforms to:
Automatically dismiss a serving officer who is convicted of a serious criminal offence (all indictable and either-way offences + violence and Domestic Abuse if summary only)
Automatically suspend an officer charged with a serious criminal offence (offences as above)
Automatically dismiss a serving officer who fails vetting (strengthen and streamline current provisions – learning from MPS existing work)
Give Chief Constables the power to reopen misconduct investigations
Provide that Regulation 13 should be used to dismiss an officer whilst in their probation period (including for misconduct)
Introduce a Duty of Candour, which would require an officer to proactively report any wrongdoing (by self or others)
Provide Chief Constables the right of appeal to a Police Appeals Tribunal following a misconduct hearing when the sanction is inadequate
Reduce the performance process to a two stage process, from the current three stage + three appeals
Strengthen the pension forfeiture rules so that a criminal offence does not have to be committed ‘in connection’ with their service in order for an officer to lose their pension
Create a ‘duty to handover’ to obtain relevant information from an officer’s personal phone during a misconduct investigation
Does that mean that no actual reform has been legally required? Which leaves us in the same quagmire where only one in ten officers found guilty of gross misconduct lose their jobs. That is officers that have on average gone through 400 days of due process and been found guilty. Guilty of gross misconduct, but that is who I am meant to trust at my most vulnerable moment? If I was found guilty of gross misconduct at Starbucks, I would lose my job and not get hired back.
Not to mention that removed officers can reapply in five years time. Another so called loophole.
The bar to carry a warrant card should not be not committing criminal offences, but here we are. Once you are in the Met, it is almost impossible to lose the privileges afforded with the warrant card. And the Met does not acknowledge that for many of the people drawn to the policing in this current climate- that power and protection is the most attractive element of the job.
We keep being told that Sarah’s murder was a watershed moment, a watershed moment for what if it could happen again tomorrow? If the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection unit is still acting as the dark corner of the force?
We still don’t know who promoted Wayne Cozens or armed him. We still don’t know the names of the senior officers that dismissed the eighteen women that had reported David Carrick and who was responsible for the unit that they were both part of.
All of the inquiries and reviews by brilliant women like Baronness Casey and Lady Angiolini mean nothing if the recommendations and protections are not legislated for and are never actually implemented.
Are all of the actual methods to force legal reform are in limbo and Commissioner Rowley has a built in excuse the next time a known sexual offender employed by the police rapes and kills a young woman? Because his hands were tied?
Does that mean a separate disciplinary procedure still has to occur when an officer is awaiting trial? David Carrick was paid over £60k in the year before he confessed and the disciplinary procedures did not happen until the criminal conviction was received.
We know that officers that are accused of serious sexual offences are not automatically removed from dealing with victims of similar offences. There is not a zero tolerance policy to violence against women on the force and the Centre for Women’s Justice recommendations for dealing with officers accused of domestic violence have not only not been introduced to legislation, they have not even been adopted as best practices..
If a civil court awards a protection order to someone against a serving police officer, their constabulary are not automatically informed. We rely on the integrity of an officer who has been found by a judge to be a danger to a civilian or another officer to report that to their management. I called for this change to be implemented in March of 2023 and said that this loophole left women, especially family members of officers in danger.
And I was horrified to be proven right by Cliff Mitchell, who was hired after our water shed moment and had raped and been a suspect in the investigation of the rape of a 9 year old child. He was hired despite being suspected of raping a 9 year old.
And later found to not only have committed the rape, but continued to abuse his victim, armed with a warrant card.
This relatively minor administrative change has still not happened.
I can only conclude that there is no intention to close the loop holes or to value women’s safety or lives.
I’m supposed to believe that these men slip through the net? The net was not knitted to exclude predators. The net and all of these loopholes and the reticence to actually legislate reform is meant to protect officers and deny victims the possibility of justice if their attacker is employed by policing in our country.
The only constant is that women are no safer. Our safety matters much less that employment law for these officers and their pensions.
One in ten found GUILTY of gross misconduct is sacked. Tell me again that our lives are a priority. Those other nine found guilty, some are given reflective practice.
It literally means reflecting on why their GROSS MISCONDUCT should not have been committed.
Sit on the naughty step and think about why you should not sexually abuse your colleagues. Why you should not share pictures of victims and make sexual comments about them. Why you should exhibit humanity and not hit on victims of crimes that are vulnerable.
From my research for this piece, I am horrified to learn that none of the campaigning, pressure or exposure of the last four years has resulted in making policing safer for women.
Are constables still unable to reopen cases? Is that why the people responding to ONYX hotline gave this excuse to a victim about an officer that was still on active duty?
Harman said in 2023 “Sadiq and I have written to the Home Secretary to offer her the legislative package to introduce in Parliament. The Bill stands ready to be made into law, to give police chiefs in England and Wales the powers they need and have explicitly asked for, so that they can start to build public trust in the police.”
Yet nothing has become law. Policy that can’t possibly survive a judicial review is argued for two and a half years, and then appealed. An appeal will obviously fail. And hands will be wrung and the police will blame an administration from 25 years ago and nothing will change.
Women cannot trust police. Police cannot and will not actually implement the needed reforms. We have learned from The Casey Review and Angiolini Report that women are no safer than we were in March of 2021.
We deserve a police force free of sexual predators but at this rate there might be legislation enacted in 2045 and this article will be the memo unearthed where another Commissioner deflects blame and nothing improves.