In the end, the trainee resigned, but Andrew’s problems are hardly over. For if modern British policing resembles a moth-eaten tapestry made up of many tawdry threads, one thread is surely the cohort of officers that joined after 2010. Old police hands have a tendency to unfairly decry new recruits. Yet recent blunders, from muddled reporting over Ann Widdecombe’s death to the anti-racism row over the Henry Nowak case, expose just how broken British law enforcement now is — not least when it comes to recruitment and training.

Interviewing insiders from forces across Britain, I unearthed a story of bad policy, craven leadership and chronic underinvestment. Yes, DEI can harm policing, but not necessarily in the way critics imagine. Because while the strictures of the Equality Act cause doubtless harm on the streets, it also means forces often spend as much time wet-nursing vulnerable recruits as they do catching criminals. Combined with a raft of other problems, from a shrinking talent pool to the continued scourge of discrimination, and the future of British law enforcement looks grim.

***

To understand how Andrew’s trainee could avoid over 95% of her duties, you must first understand the Equality Act. Passed in early 2010, as New Labour stumbled towards defeat that May, it bundled existing anti-discrimination law into a single piece of overarching, rocket-assisted legislation. By creating nine “protected characteristics” — from age to sex to disability — lawmakers dumped employers into a legal and procedural minefield. Forcing managers to constantly balance rights and responsibilities, the Act is riven by ambiguities, making it easy to exploit or misinterpret. Crucially, the police have no blanket exemption to any of this: every officer’s duties must be considered on a case-by-case basis. 

This creates maddening issues for police forces, especially given a seemingly insatiable appetite for what the Equality Act calls “reasonable adjustments”. Paul*, a recruiter for one Northern force, heard of a young officer who suffered from “hypersexuality” requesting an extra 30 minutes in the work day to “sort herself out”. She was refused. Most adjustments are more mundane, typically involving working from home or avoiding certain duties. 

Much of this dysfunction comes from the top. As one former staff officer puts it: “Senior officers? All they seem to talk about and care about, really, is DEI.” This is borne out if you tour the upper echelons of forces nationwide. During one specialist policing course, a visiting chief superintendent spoke of nothing but opening up opportunities for minorities. On the actual subject matter? Not a word. Initially, this enthusiasm was probably a function of ambition, with promotion linked to pushing DEI. Then came a cultural and generational shift as a more activist cohort of officers entered the top tier. 

It doesn’t help that police line managers complain of having decisions challenged by staff networks — representing ethnicity, religion and neurodiversity, among others — established to protect minority rights under the Equality Act. One instructor complains how “the prestige of being able to say we’ve recruited officers from this or that underrepresented group” trumps operational efficacy. This is exacerbated by endless excoriating reviews, contributing to a culture of tale-telling. Stations increasingly resemble schoolyards, bubbling with rights-based resentments. Officers allege discrimination to distract from poor performance. And managers find themselves engulfed in office feuds, when really their focus should be on fighting crime.

Beyond the vagaries of the Equality Act, Gen Z recruits do also seem more vulnerable. Andrew recalls one officer who had to leave a tape-recorded interview after a suspect began swearing at her. “I found her hiding in a cupboard with a blanket over her head.” By 2024, officers reportedly took 774,000 man-days off for mental health reasons. No wonder many sergeants and inspectors complain of becoming little more than HR officers with truncheons, occupational health advisors and therapists to Gen Z rookies. 

Before any of this, though, new coppers need training. Until the Equality Act, many would have been precluded from joining. Now, though, forces must now find a way of adapting to recruits with a range of physical and mental health issues — even as courses themselves are less rigorous than ever. 

***

Hendon Police College, stranded in an unglamorous corner of northwest London, was always ugly. When I trained there in the early Nineties, before going on to serve at the Met for a quarter of a century, it felt like a Soviet housing project. Now, with its rows of modern, yellow-topped classrooms, it resembles an Amazon fulfillment center. The old Hendon site was demolished in 2015, after doubling as the Eastern European country of “Sokovia” in an Avengers superhero movie. 

Back then, officers joked the real supervillain was Theresa May. As home secretary, May oversaw reforms responsible for today’s desiccated police service, not least in terms of cuts. Officers no longer attend costly residential training courses, instead commuting to training centers or universities. What was once a quasi-paramilitary model, complete with square-bashing and long hours, became a more congenial, “civilized” experience. 

Veteran officers believe the old model was better: it developed a sense of camaraderie and focus. More than that, it gave instructors far more insight into their charges. My own time at Hendon involved daily role-playing exercises involving negotiation, confrontation and exercising practical legal knowledge. On the “training roads” around the campus, knots of novice coppers acted out arrests, stopping cars, searching people, adjudicating disputes and taking statements. Our performance was dissected by the instructors, our failings explained firmly but fairly. It mattered, too, that until the residential training centers were closed in the early 2000s, trainers were all sergeants.

Now, though, this robust in-person training is increasingly replaced by distance learning. In practice, this means fewer practical demonstrations and more learning how to stop and search from an online questionnaire. This, Paul argues, creates “officers with little life experience, a superficial knowledge of the law, precious little knowledge of how to put a prosecution case file together, and [who] have to fill in their lack of knowledge with enthusiasm”. For their part, sergeants have been replaced by more junior PCs, cheaper to employ but who seem to be more “professional trainers” than practical officers. Paul adds that he’s heard training increasingly involves short days and “directed self-study”: a euphemism for unsupervised homework.

Instructors are themselves under pressure to keep costs down. Now retired, Alex* taught “student constables” in the South West of England. “Recruiting’s driven by accountancy mindsets,” he says. “This leads to corner cutting, kit shortages and no investment in training amenities.” This typically means swapping out resource-intensive roleplays for abstract lectures.

Given all this, officers are reluctant to attack the newbies too harshly. “The current set-up’s broken,” admits Liam*, who before his retirement trained direct-entry detectives for a Northern force. “I’m not blaming the recruits, it’s just the initial recruitment process is flawed. During Covid, the whole thing was done over Teams! How can anyone be accurately assessed over Teams?” 

Nor are recruits responsible for the way senior staff indulge the worst Whitehall predilections. Alex describes how health-and-safety legislation has led to “a regime terrified of any risk, leading to sterile and false training scenarios”. Officers are now unlikely to receive proper training to deal with aggressive suspects, let alone undergo scenarios where their partners deliberately lie. One only needs to glance at the Henry Nowak video to see the potential problems of this approach. 

***

My Hendon class, in 1992, consisted of 14 trainee constables. Two were from ethnic minorities and two were women. Aged between 22 and 46, our number included three graduates, a former bus driver, an insurance salesman and a retired army warrant officer. One colleague had memorably been a male model. If we weren’t wholly representative of Londoners, we were at least reasonably educated, in good health and level-headed. 

If initial training was doubtless better then, my interviewees also agree that the talent pool has shrunk. In part, that’s down to broad societal changes. Alex, the former instructor, cites the smaller armed forces, so fewer take that “well-trodden path” to the police. Alternative careers, from digital nomadism to IT apprenticeships, are also more available than in the early Nineties, offering better pay for less anti-social hours. 

This coincides with sea-changes in recruitment. Hoping to “professionalize” policing, policymakers encouraged would-be officers to pursue degree training alongside a nursing-style license to practice. Significant pay cuts arrived too, meaning new recruits are generally younger and less experienced. Like Andrew’s ex-colleague, people can also now join as “direct-entry” detectives, missing out on the two years of beat experience older officers insist is key to becoming an investigator. This route is particularly popular among middle-class recruits, whole are less suited to dealing with the ugly realities of Britain’s criminal class. 

But perhaps most significant is the 2020 change which allows 17-and-a-half-year-olds to sign up. Some of these younger officers, I’m told, come from challenging backgrounds. Their life experience and education is significantly different from officers of my generation: and generally for the worse. Their relative youth, Alex explains, also means “they’re learning so much, so quickly, and are so unprepared, that they struggle”. 

Yet it’s hard, here, not to return to the Equality Act. Paul tells me about one new officer with cerebral palsy, who secured reasonable adjustments despite being unable to pass the personal-safety training where recruits learn to use handcuffs and CS spray. Another newbie, a direct-entry DC, failed the same course because of dyspraxia so severe he kept dropping his baton. Apart from tolerating candidates physically unable to perform basic duties, forces are also required to cater to pre-existing psychological issues. Despite holding generally “progressive views” — and suggesting the emphasis on the racial aspect of DEI training was over-egged — Paul nonetheless despairs at the consequences. “What victim cares that the new PC is anxious or has debilitating dyslexia?” 

As in policing at large, attempts to challenge the status quo are given short shrift, with managers keen not to rock the DEI boat. Alex, the former recruit instructor, says “the tone set is one that says ‘we’ll support your decision, just as long as it’s not contentious or difficult.’ The fear culture arises out of a combination of factors, ranging from the diversity industry; a promotion system that’s all about group think; and selfish ambition.” 

Alex’s experiences chime with my own service. By the time I retired, in 2018, the Met felt like North Korea — run by David Brent. I remember enduring computer-based DEI training claiming that telling sexist jokes was only a few steps from genocide. No wonder supervisors struggle to manage new recruits. “There’s a fear of doing anything informally at any level,” Alex says. “Now it’s just ‘pass the buck’ straight to [professional standards] for any level of allegation regardless of how minor or frankly daft it may be.” 

The new police training regime is supposedly built of good intentions. The irony, though, is that if it allows nice if unsuited candidates too much leeway, this system also does little to stem the flow of genuinely malicious recruits. There are plenty of examples here, from David Carrick to Cliff Mitchell, with the usual blend of cuts and remote work partly to blame. Wayne Couzens, too, dodged recruitment vetting before going on to murder Sarah Everard, while cuts to training meant he was enthusiastically received into the Met on account of the firearms skills he’d acquired in the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. 

***

After marching off Hendon’s parade square, I was posted to a West London police station. There, along with three others, I went through the final stage of my training — being “puppy-walked” for 12 weeks by a sweaty old sergeant and three tutor constables. It was made clear that, should I be found wanting, I’d be dismissed from the Met. The tutors were patient, but happily issued bollockings where appropriate. There were fines — 50p here, a pound there — for stupid mistakes, the proceeds going towards an end-of-course drink. Meanwhile, my first arrest was closely supervised and mentored until the arrestee was bailed. I felt confident and supported throughout. 

These days, though, quality control is infinitely harder — and the Equality Act is again partly to blame. “You can’t get rid of people unless they use hurty words,” says Andrew, the Met DS. “There was one uniformed officer playing the diversity game like a pro; she’s got every protected characteristic and a portfolio of reasonable adjustments. She’s bagged an office job and hasn’t been on the street for years. I mean, she can’t even meet the public or leave the building unless she’s working from home. As far as I can see, she does very little.” Not just her: thousands of Met officers aren’t “fully deployable” because of their health or performance. All the while, officers are stoutly defended by the ever-present support networks; for the feckless and shameless, it’s a license to take liberties. “Nobody ever challenged this officer,” Andrew adds of her colleague. “Then she boasted about the PIP payments she was claiming. Talking about it makes my blood boil.”

These problems are compounded by questionable mentoring practices, especially when rookies are now led by colleagues who faced similar training. More than a few crack under pressure. Over the past five years, forces reported up to a 19% attrition rate from new-officer resignations, unsurprising when policing was recently described as “one of the most complex frontline positions in the public sector”. It’s hard to disagree, particularly when any error is soon plastered on social media. Forces, keen to atone for previous scandals, adopted zero-tolerance professional standards policies. Yet in another irony, this means that officers most prepared to get involved in operational policing are also those most likely to be disciplined. Many fear being “chucked under buses” for making mistakes, even in good faith. At a time when we desperately need more mature, experienced officers, we appear to be traveling in the opposite direction.

Nor is any of this theoretical. The recruitment, training and mentoring regime I’ve laid out here was responsible for producing the officers involved in the Nowak case. Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary, the force in question, ceased residential training in 2006. After watching footage of the incident, I fully agreed with Jonathan Hinder, a former police inspector and now a Labour MP, who said the decision to handcuff the dying Nowak was “unfathomable”. But frankly, was it really, given how officers are now recruited and trained? 

***

Amid these horrors, and polls showing less than half the public trust the police to deal fairly with complaints, can forces really change? There are some tentative signs that they can — at least beyond London. As Paul puts it of his Northern force, “the current regime does produce officers who are smartly turned-out and have a healthy respect for rank.” More than that, Paul says his colleagues would balk at the more absurd consequences of the Equality Act. “We wouldn’t dispute such a diagnosis,” he says when I ask him about that “hypersexual” young officer, “but wouldn’t support 30 minutes wanking time either.” This pragmatism is borne out elsewhere, with Sir Stephen Watson, the head of Greater Manchester Police, coming out strongly against rainbow lanyards and dancing with protesters. 

The reasons for these regional differences remain relatively unexplored. Yet Sir Stephen’s trenchant attitude — and my conversations with officers — suggest that the mood music from police headquarters percolates downwards. This only works, though, if chief constables feel supported by their bosses. It seems unlikely that Sadiq Khan will champion a campaign of common sense in the Met anytime soon.

All the same, it’s striking that even London’s famously progressive force is shifting. The service recently introduced a scorched-earth policy for “adjusted duties” officers. It’s a sign, perhaps, that managers are waking up to the disasters they’ve wrought. Yet even here, Andrew believes that the belated fightback is partly because the Met still doesn’t have the courage to back its managers. “The Met’s terrified of being sued for discrimination,” she explains, “so it decided to treat everyone equally badly.” The upshot? Well-performing staff with genuine health problems face six-monthly moves to other departments, a process one officer describes as “a stealthy form of constructive dismissal”. 

I asked the Met to comment on this and other issues raised in my story. It declined. All the while, British policing seems happy pursuing policies that are meat and drink to its critics. For example, the Telegraph recently reported that trainees are instructed to write essays “reflecting on antiracism”. Hopefully the investigation into Henry Nowak’s death will delve into the reasoning behind this ideological focus, as important as managing fractious crime scenes doubtless is too. 

Fail and the public will only keep suffering, as fantasies of inclusion collide with the brick wall of reality. Andrew, now nearing retirement, shakes his head. “It’s the Met all over. They lowered standards for diversity reasons and to hell with the consequences — until it bit them on the arse.” Of course, that doesn’t stop chief officers from insisting they’ve built inclusive forces, staffed by properly selected, well-trained constables. Politicians offer specious announcements around funding and officer numbers, claiming to support forces in keeping the streets safe. As Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said in January, “I’m putting police back where they belong — on the beat and fighting criminals.” To which the public is presumably entitled to reply, like the officer who handcuffed Henry Nowak, “I don’t think you have, mate”.

***

*Names have been changed.