As Sir Mark Rowley is announced as the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, attention has turned to the issues he must address to win back Londoners’ trust.
Taking charge of Britain’s biggest force, Sir Mark will lead 34,000 officers who police more than 9 million people in the capital.
Sir Mark, a former head of counter-terrorism who left the Met in 2018 after more than 30 years in policing, was appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of the Home Secretary, Priti Patel.
He said he was “deeply honoured” to become the next Commissioner, adding: “Our mission is to lead the renewal of policing by consent, which has been so heavily dented in recent years as trust and confidence have fallen.”
The job advert for the £293,000-a-year role stated that the candidate must provide “inspirational leadership” and re-establish trust and confidence in policing among “particularly women and girls and those from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities”.
His predecessor, Dame Cressida Dick, resigned in February after the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, withdrew support in her leadership following a string of damaging scandals.
The kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by the then-serving officer Wayne Couzens; two disgraced PCs being jailed for taking unauthorised images of the murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman; a litany of strip searches of young Black school children and institutional blunders that contributed to the deaths of the serial killer Stephen Port’s final three victims all eroded the public’s confidence in the force.
Last month the policing inspectorate placed the Met under “special measures” following concerns about “serious or critical shortcomings”. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services said the move was to help support the force to make “improvements”.
Sir Mark’s start date is yet to be confirmed but some of the issues waiting in his in-tray will be dismantling a “toxic canteen culture”, while listening to concerns about women’s personal safety, criticisms of stop and search, and preventing youth violence after a record number of teenage homicides last year.
Here, we speak to four experts who give their views on what he must prioritise to inspire lasting change.
‘More effort must go into implementing protective measures for victims’
Rebecca Goshawk is the head of partnerships and public affairs at Solace Women’s Aid, a London-based charity working to “end the harm done through violence against women and girls”.
She said: “Trust in the Metropolitan Police is at a low for women and girls. We believe it is crucial that the new Commissioner prioritises rebuilding trust with all women but particularly with victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence, Black and ethnic minority women and girls, LGBT+ groups and those with insecure immigration status.
“To do this, the Commissioner should launch an inquiry into institutionalised misogyny and racism within the Metropolitan Police and review whether police officers are sufficiently trained to sensitively support domestic abuse victims, and improve and implement their safeguarding procedures around girls, ensuring they are trauma-informed and appropriate.
“The new Commissioner should also ensure that efforts go into effectively implementing protective measures for victims, and breaches of these are investigated to ensure their safety once they have reported abuse.”
‘Acknowledge racism as an institutional rather than incidental issue’
Habib Kadiri is research and policy manager at StopWatch, a police campaigning charity.
He said: “Commissioner or not, the Metropolitan Police are forever committed to improving relations with marginalised communities and have created countless initiatives for this purpose.
“Yet it has not stopped public confidence from plummeting, especially among black Londoners. This is partly down to a failure to acknowledge racism as an institutional rather than an incidental issue, and by extension, to do what is necessary to fix it.
“This is why more and more communities across the capital are increasingly setting up cop-watching groups – they no longer trust the Met to protect them and do not see the police as the solution to many of their problems.
“No Commissioner can improve relations with already overpoliced communities until this basic hurdle is cleared.”
More on Metropolitan Police
‘We need officers on our streets who communities have confidence in’
Patrick Green is the chief executive of the Ben Kinsella Trust, an anti-knife crime charity set up in the 16-year-old’s name after he was fatally stabbed while celebrating the end of his GCSEs in June 2008.
He said: “While knife crime offences have gone down, the ferocity of the attacks seems to be getting worse, which is reflected by the fact that 27 young people lost their lives to knife offences in 2021.
“In his response at the start of the year, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, spoke about the ferocity of knife attacks and concerns they are becoming more violent. This has also been mentioned by a number of trauma surgeons working in A&E units, who say the victims are presenting with multiple stab wounds compared with one or two a decade ago.
“It’s not just about putting more police officers on the street – that is important, but it’s also about the links they make with the communities they serve. We need to put officers on our street who communities have confidence in and can work.
“Something the Commissioner must consider is the role that lockdown and the response to Covid-19 had on crime figures. While knife crime offences went down, it’s possible that it is related to being locked down for significant periods. The number of offences are still lower in London and have been for some time but they seem to be creeping up again. As we return to living somewhat normal lives again, we could see a return to the peak of knife crime offences in 2019.
“There are a number of unknowns that the new Commissioner will face but the warning signs are that if we ignore [the causes of] knife crime and violence those figures will escalate.
“The emphasis for the Commissioner is to reflect on what is happening in society in a way that not only takes knives and the people who carry them off our streets but promotes prevention, early intervention and a partnership approach to tackling crime by integrating with charities like us and other organisations that are trying to prevent knife crime from happening in the first place.”
‘Commissioner must admit that a toxic culture of institutional misogyny, racism and homophobia has cost lives’
John Pape, 43, is a promo producer who lives in Deptford, south-east London. His friend and former lodger Gabriel Kovari was one of the serial killer Stephen Port’s four victims, and he repeatedly sought to raise concerns about Port to the police. The police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), recently confirmed it was reinvestigating Scotland Yard’s handling of the inquiry into the murders of Mr Kovari, Anthony Walgate, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor.
He said: “The IOPC reopening its investigation into Met’s handling of the Port case is a positive step towards accountability. When things go badly wrong it’s important that the most inept officers are formally disciplined or sacked; if the police do not take action, where is the motivation for the institution to change?
“I was so shocked at how bad the standard of policing is in London. Irrespective of this being an LGBT+ case, the police investigation was disturbingly incompetent. At the inquest last year I gave testimony for 90 minutes but found myself attending on days I didn’t have to appear. It was compelling; the sheer number of mistakes that were made. The police, in their testimony, said they were overstretched but I feel they prioritised in ways that exposed the institutionalised prejudice within the [Met] police.
“As someone who was involved personally, and as an LGBT+ Londoner, I felt young gay men were considered a low priority. I’m sure if the victims were found stabbed or shot, the police would have done something, but unfortunately Port’s weapon of choice was this drug [GHB], and it was easy for the police to write off the victims as having willingly taken a date rape drug – which they didn’t. What became disturbing at the inquest was how they actively seemed to shut down any inference of that hypothesis being challenged.
“Hearing from [Deputy Assistant Commissioners] Stuart Cundy and Helen Ball at the inquest, I felt they were enlightened figures, but I know this isn’t the case on the shop floor. There are clearly huge cultural problems among the rank and file.
“The new Commissioner should seek to tackle dangerous levels of public mistrust among women, non-white communities and the LGBT+ community by showing solidarity and admitting a toxic culture of institutional misogyny, racism and homophobia has cost lives. None of the officers involved have been formally disciplined yet; I think people lose faith as a result of that.
“We need a Commissioner who is on the side of the public and not hiding behind statements that claim there are always a ‘few bad apples’ in an organisation of 44,000 people. At the inquest it was clear it wasn’t just one officer – it was so many of them, at different levels, making inexcusable mistakes.
More from News
“Cressida Dick was the first female and out gay Commissioner, so I suppose on paper her appointment was radical – but she wasn’t radical in her outlook. Her response to increasing complaints and issues felt like she was rushing to defend against criticism from the public.
“The police exist to make the public feel secure and we give them powers to arrest us and, in some cases, use force against us; in turn we are supposed to feel secure. But as an LGBT+ person and having gone through the experience of the Port case, I don’t feel that. If I or friends of mine were to die in unexplained circumstances I don’t know if we would be treated with respect [by the police].
“We deserve a Commissioner who will ensure action is taken and officers are disciplined when investigations go badly wrong instead of spending so much money on PR and failed attempts to defend their integrity in the courts and at inquests. The new Commissioner needs a radical vision to reform the culture among rank-and-file officers.”
