The decision by the official inspectorate to put the Metropolitan Police in special measures will only intensify the debate about whether or not the structure of the UK’s pre-eminent force is fit for purpose.
We have written previously about the Met’s strange hybrid status, combining responsibility for local policing in London with a suite of counter-terrorism responsibilities and control over units such as the Territorial Support Group, the core of the nation’s riot police.
As James Forsyth sets out in today’s Times, this division causes numerous problems, not least of which are chaotic lines of accountability. Neither the Home Secretary nor the Mayor have clear and complete responsibility for the Met’s performance, nor sole authority to hire and fire the Commissioner.
There is a clear case for structural reform, with national responsibilities moved to the National Crime Agency or other bodies and the Met refocused on policing London.
But sadly, we have no reason to think that such a change would be any sort of silver bullet. Whilst only a handful of forces nationwide are in special measures (not the official term, which is the suitably oblique ‘engage status’), and the Met seems egregiously useless when not actually malignant, it is far from the only one with problems.
Just last month, new figures revealed that police have failed to solve a single burglary in almost half the country. Worse, the Daily Mail reported that:
“Despite the impact on victims, it was revealed that some forces no longer dispatch an officer to the scene of a burglary because it’s not considered a policing priority.”
‘Investigations’ are often closed within hours, as without CCTV or forensic evidence (the latter of which the police are not collecting) there is apparently little chance of securing a result. (How the police solved such crimes before the development of these modern aides is presumably a mystery.)
In some cases, the dereliction of duty strayed into the cartoonish: “In Leicestershire, police did not fully investigate break-ins at odd numbered houses to save money.”
Theoretically, voters angry about the performance of their local force have a democratic outlet in the police and crime commissioners. But as Jacob Rees-Mogg pointed out in relation to the Bank of England in our latest podcast, the electorate are seldom so obliging as to spare the Government when they are failed by independent organs of the State.
Police dysfunction likely poses a particular danger to the Conservatives because they have traditionally been the party of ‘law and order’.
But there is a broader problem, in that it currently fits too tidily for comfort into a wider sense of malaise. The rail strikes and threatened ‘summer of discontent’ from the public sector unions are another obvious contributing factor, and the cost-of-living crisis will likely offer plenty more.
If the voters get the general impression that large parts of the British state simply don’t work, the short-term beneficiaries will be Labour.
But it isn’t obvious that the Opposition have a coherent theory of this dysfunction, let alone a plan to solve it – and British politics could end up in quite a dark place if voters conclude that neither party is capable of getting the State to discharge basic functions such as prosecuting burglaries.