Receive free Metropolitan Police Service UK updates
We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Metropolitan Police Service UK news every morning.
Armed police officers at London’s Metropolitan Police on Monday returned to normal duties in sufficient numbers that the force cancelled a back-up arrangement with the army, winding down a protest that had raised questions about security in the UK’s capital.
The “contingency option” to deploy the military for counter-terrorism operations was the most dramatic aspect of the Met’s response to the decision by hundreds of the force’s 2,500 firearms officers to give up their permits to carry weapons.
The officers were protesting over the Crown Prosecution Service’s decision to charge a Met armed response officer with murder over the fatal shooting in south London last year of Chris Kaba, an unarmed black musician.
The events that played out over the weekend and into Monday have underlined the extreme difficulty of the challenges facing Met chief Sir Mark Rowley as he tries to reform the force after a series of scandals that have damaged the public’s trust.
Dal Babu, a former senior Metropolitan Police commander, said the episode had been the “biggest operational crisis” that Rowley had faced since he became commissioner in September 2022.
Rank and file officers lacked confidence in the force’s hierarchy, while the public also lacked confidence in the capital’s police, Babu said.
“Trust has never been lower,” he said.
The officers mounted their protest beginning at the weekend after the CPS announced the murder charge against the officer — identified only as NX121 — on September 20. The CPS acted after an investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct.
The Met said on Monday that “many” of its armed officers were worried about how the decision to prosecute NX121 affected them. “They are concerned that it signals a shift in the way the decisions they take in the most challenging circumstances will be judged,” the force said.
Rick Muir, director of the Police Foundation think-tank, called the mass-protest “pretty extraordinary”.
“Ultimately this is about how you balance the undoubtedly very difficult job firearms officers have to do while also ensuring there is accountability for police actions,” he said.
Referring to the army, the Met said on Monday that “sufficient” officers had returned to armed duties that the force no longer required “external assistance” to meet its counter-terrorism responsibilities.
There was, however, no immediate sign that the Met would be able to stop calling on other forces for help in sending their armed response units to incidents in London to cover the gaps created by the resignations.
Officers from the armed policing unit run jointly by the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire police forces helped the Metropolitan Police over the weekend, Hertfordshire constabulary said.
The Metropolitan Police Federation, representing rank-and-file officers, on Monday voiced its members’ continuing anger over the prosecution.
The federation welcomed the decision of home secretary Suella Braverman to launch a review of police accountability mechanisms, including the IOPC, following the murder charge.
“Colleagues should not fear for their liberty and livelihoods for simply doing the job the public expect of us,” the federation said.
Babu, who acted as the senior commander in multiple firearms operations while at the Met, said there were huge strains on firearms officers. He recalled that one officer involved in a shooting under Babu’s command calculated he had been under investigation for a quarter of his career.
However, Lee Jasper, chair of the Alliance for Police Accountability, a coalition of groups concerned about police conduct, pointed out that the Met in recent years had faced multiple scandals about officers’ conduct.
Among recent scandals have been the rape and murder of Sarah Everard in 2021 by Wayne Couzens, a serving Met officer. Another Met officer, David Carrick, was convicted earlier this year on multiple charges of rape and other sexual offences.
“It provides an existential challenge to Sir Mark Rowley,” Jasper, who lives near where Kaba was shot, said of the protest by the armed officers. Jasper added there was “profound anger and disappointment” in the black community at the force’s reaction to the charge.
Babu agreed that it was vital for the public that police officers be seen to be held to account. “If police are not seen to be held to account, the level of trust in the police will go down,” he said.
Black Londoners were already reporting the lowest levels of trust in the police of any community, Babu added.
However, he added, police officers also needed clarity.
“The police need that further reassurance from the CPS, from the IOPC, about how decisions are being made,” he said.
Read the full article here
