A good police force catches more crooks than it employs - will that apply to the Met?
9 March 2023, 10:04
It has been six months since Sir Mark Rowley took over as commissioner of the Metropolitan police.
His policing credentials are impeccable and his intention to root out the bad apples destroying the reputation of Britain's biggest force is admirable but as LBC's exclusive research reveals the scale of the task he faces is gargantuan.
Under half of Londoners still trust the Met with a mere four per cent of young women actively distrusting the beleaguered force.
Sarah Everard was murdered by policeman Wayne Couzens who actually used his position to trick the marketing executive into his car before kidnapping, raping, and killing the 33-year-old.
Only last week he received an extra 19 months on top of his life sentence for indecent exposure. The suspicion remains that if Couzens had been stopped then perhaps Sarah would still be alive today.
Last month former police officer David Carrick was jailed for at least 30 years after being exposed as one of Britain's worst rapists.
Responding to the poll Commander James Harman told LBC's Nick Ferrari at Breakfast: "We're in a bad place now, but we're going to turn it around."
But what can Sir Mark Rowley do? Perhaps he can learn from the lessons of the 1970s and the courageous commanding of former commissioner Sir Robert Mark.
Arriving at Scotland Yard in 1967, he felt, he said later, "like the representative of a leper colony attending the annual garden party of a colonial governor.'
His achievement by the time he left as commissioner in 1977, was to turn the Met's corrupt officers into outsiders themselves.
In the 1970s many detectives enjoyed financial arrangements with bank robbers, drug dealers, and pornographers.
His ruthless purge saw 478 officers depart early and the heads of the Flying Squad and the Obscene Publications Squad jailed.
The days of the wholesale, institutional corruption of the Met's CID branch was over - largely because of the work of one man, who was once nicknamed the Lone Ranger of Leicester.
Sir Robert managed to turn the Met around with a ruthless dedication to rooting out wrongdoing.
That is the task facing new Commissioner Sir Mark.
As Sir Robert famously put it "A good police force is one that catches more crooks than it employs."
Will Sir Mark manage to do it?
Only time will tell.
