The Metropolitan Police Service is putting communities back at the heart of policing as it delivers more trust, less crime and high standards.
The Met launched A New Met for London on 17 July to an audience in Peckham, the first of 32 borough opportunities to continue their conversation with communities.
The plan sets out how the Met will deliver better policing as they radically transform the organisation to set Met officers and staff up to succeed.
In a statement, the Met said: “We want Londoners to know their local officers and work with them to help shape their policing priorities, to reduce crime and to tackle anti-social behaviour.
“When victims call us for help we want them to be satisfied with our response.
“We will keep serious violence low.
“We will solve more rapes, domestic violence, child abuse and other cases of predatory offending, and we’ll target the most dangerous offenders to take them off the streets before they can offend again.
“We’ll reduce disproportionality when crime, and our use of powers, falls unevenly across London’s communities.
“Those who fall short of our high standards will be dealt with swiftly and robustly.”
A New Met for London is the product of more than 10,000 interactions with Londoners, officers and staff, and partners from across the capital.
Already delivering results
The Met have already started to deliver results on some of the issues that matter most to people.
The Met statement read: “Residential burglary is down and we’re attending almost every call; we’ve maintained lower homicide rates compared with pre-pandemic levels; and we’ve reduced serious violence to below pre-pandemic levels.
“Over the last 12 months we’ve charged over 500 more rape and sexual offences, and our backlog of online child abuse cases has been cleared.
“Concern about anti-social behaviour is down and we’re receiving around a fifth (18 per cent) fewer calls regarding it.
“We are realigning 240 posts from central teams to create larger and more agile proactive policing units in each Basic Command Unit.
“We are strengthening local public protection, putting an addition 565 people into specialist teams to help target perpetrators. The capacity of our response and neighbourhood teams will not change.
“Meanwhile, we’re overhauling the training of new officers so it’s more practical and less academic, as well as investing in new technology and exploiting data better to police more precisely.”
One example is their innovative work to target and crackdown on the most dangerous men in London who pose the greatest threat to women and girls.
The Metropolitan Police Service have taken records from every offence reported to them in the last year of violence against women and girls where a suspect is named to create a stack of the top 100 offenders.
They are using a tool called the Cambridge Crime Harm Index, which gives each offence a score based on the seriousness of the offending.
This is an evidence-based approach using how recent the allegation is, frequency of allegations and severity of offending. No suspects are included based on police intelligence alone.
These suspects are being targeted with a combination of local and specialist teams, using tactics typically reserved for countering terrorists and organised criminals.
A spokesperson from the Met said: “Our approach will be to target the 100 most dangerous and work down. Our stack is constantly changing. We know we can’t stop offending by only focusing on these 100, but we also know they pose a disproportionate threat to others.”
Reforming culture, systems and processes
A New Met for London also sets out how they are reforming their culture, systems, processes, estate and equipment to allow the Met to refocus their priorities and set officers, staff and volunteers up to succeed.
“For too long our people have been telling us that many parts of the Met need reform and we have been too slow to respond,” a statement from the Met said.
“Over the next two years we will focus on three key areas: community crime-fighting, culture change and fixing our foundations.
“Community crime-fighting is the bedrock of how we police.
“We’ve put a dedicated neighbourhood superintendent, to lead local priorities, in every borough; we are recruiting 500 PCSOs and later this week you will see more about the next stage in our campaign to recruit thousands of new PCs.”
Policing by consent
Culture change will be delivered across the Met to embed the values of policing by consent.
The Met stated: “We accept Baroness Casey’s findings and we’re responding to them. We’ve let down the people we’re supposed to protect – Black, ethnic minority and LGBT+ communities, disabled Londoners, and women – and we haven’t fixed the cultural issues that have led to that.
“We will build a strong culture focused on delivering for London, maintaining high standards and learning from others. We will regularly review how we use stop and search, overhaul how we investigate officers and staff accused of breaching standards and reform armed policing.
“We are fixing our foundations, radically changing how we train out people to give them the skills and tools they need to cut crime and reform the Met.”
Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, said: “I care deeply about this mission and I’ve been candid from day one about the scale of reform needed to make it a success.
“Our people want to better serve the public and have been calling for change.
“We want the public to trust in the work we’re doing, to see how we’re fighting crime in their communities and how we’re keeping people safe.
“The data tells us that the majority of Londoners still trust us, more so than many other professions, but in recent years, confidence has fallen sharply and trust has been dented. We must repair that.
“We have seen serious failings, but the vast majority of our people come into work every day and do extraordinary things because they care greatly about the city and the people they protect.
“Day in and day out we see acts of kindness, bravery, dedication, and sacrifice from the 45,000 people in the Met.
“People who are driven by a desire to make the world around them a better place. We need to reform for them too.
“The progress we have already made is positive and should not be overlooked, but we know just how much more there is to do.”
A local conversation
Over the next three months a series of events will take place in every London borough.
Officers are working to strengthen existing relationships with communities, and to rebuild and restore relationships that have been tested in recent years.
They want to hear from the widest possible range of voices as the work to agree local priorities and to understand what this new plan means in different areas gets under way.
On the night of 19 July, an event was held in Hackney giving senior police leaders and members of the local community the opportunity to discuss the new policing plan and what this means to local improvements to police services. It provided an opportunity for people who live, work and study in Hackney to meet and have a conversation with their local officers about their local priorities.
+ A New Met for London is available to read here.
(Source: Metropolitan Police)
