Met 'reset' means fewer police at major events

Published4 hours ago

A "resetting" of policing priorities in London will mean that some incidents at major events and protests will now "take longer to squash", the Metropolitan Police has said.

Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told a session of the London Assembly that officers were being moved away from policing major events and into community policing instead.

The decision, he said, freed up 6,000 shifts in October.

The commissioner asked the Assembly for "support" in making the changes, which he said were due to "financial pressures".

Sir Mark said to Assembly members: "London's politicians, including yourselves, regularly say to me, 'My local neighbourhood officers are great, but you abstract them too much.'

"So this is about reducing that, but it does come with a challenge.

"It will mean that sometimes events in the centre of London will happen in a way that wasn't anticipated, and will take longer to squash and deal with.

"So I would ask for your support when that happens because the prize for taking that more measured approach is that we have more resources in local communities."

Sir Mark also told the Assembly that the force was facing "challenges" with the volume of misconduct cases involving its officers, which had "massively increased" in recent years.

The commissioner described the threshold to investigate issues as "so low".

He explained that officers' time was being consumed "investigating trivial matters".

It comes after Susan Hall, leader of the Conservatives on the Assembly, said that during a recent committee meeting they were "told by the Met Fed (Metropolitan Police Federation) that thousands of officers are on restricted duties or even garden leave, waiting for their investigation for misconduct to be heard".

Sir Mark agreed that misconduct cases had been taking "too long", but said in the past six months "the number of days per case is going down rapidly".

He added: "There is currently a review of the system commissioned by the home secretary.

"I'm concerned that the police regulations don't give enough discretion on which cases to investigate and which cases to not."

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