Nothing was ever done about that officer. Kelly, generously in my view, thinks his behavior was emblematic of wider societal attitudes to women, in a force staffed by men who grew up in the late Fifties and early Sixties. By the time I joined the police, in the early Nineties, things had changed. My female colleagues reported how, yes, some of their fellow officers might “try it on” — but few suffered anything like Kelly’s ordeal. Yet, during my service, I saw a recurring problem with harassment. More than once, this involved officers who thought their rank protected them from scrutiny.

For the Metropolitan Police — Britain’s largest force — internal discipline means playing a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. In a sense, that comes with the territory. From false overtime claims to selling information to criminals, policing offers temptations for men and women hungry for fruit from the poisoned tree. Many officers taking this path drift down it due to financial or personal troubles. Many have issues with performance and attendance. This often overlaps: Wayne Couzens, for instance, was horribly in debt. This is usually a red flag for anti-corruption investigators.

Against all this are those officers patrolling the orchards where poisoned trees grow — the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS), the “AC12” of fictional Line of Duty fame. DPS, to the average copper, is an unwelcome mixture between HR and Darth Vader. After joining DPS, where I ultimately served for five years, my invitations to office lunches and retirement drinks dropped off a cliff. At a police social club, I was once introduced to a retired detective. My posting to DPS came up in conversation. “The Funny Firm?” he growled. “I didn’t talk to those cunts when I was in the job, and I’m not talking to them now.” Then he walked off.

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By Dominic Adler

Policing, as I often say, isn’t a popularity competition. What happens, though, when those policing the police pluck an apple from the poisoned tree? One recent case provides a shocking example of what happens when sexual misconduct and internal affairs collide. Earlier this week, five Met officers were arrested for allegedly suppressing allegations of sexual assault against a senior officer by a junior colleague. One is a detective inspector — from the DPS.

This raises difficult questions. Has the Met, after the Wayne Couzens and David Carrick scandals, adequately dealt with issues concerning sexual misconduct? I’m being rhetorical here: it clearly hasn’t. The report by the Government’s roving inquisitor of choice, Baroness Casey, was excoriating about New Scotland Yard’s culture of sexism. Then there’s the DPS itself. Whatever the alleged cover up says about policing’s ability to self-regulate, it likely isn’t good. Nor are these problems limited to London. To a lesser or greater extent, every force has similar problems. The complicity of officers, especially in Northern English forces, in the grooming scandal is only beginning to come to light — but I suspect the worst is yet to come.

During my own stint at DPS, I worked on proactive operations against corrupt officers. I saw firsthand how clunky and dysfunctional police misconduct procedures are. One example among many is how policing complicates what should be straightforward HR matters — taking a work car home without authorization or throwing a sickie — by treating trifles like potential crimes. Some of these problems are cultural and structural, “making the job work” by cutting cumbersome procedural corners. Others are legal, such as the thicket of human rights, equality and employment laws governing poor performance.

Yet when it comes to allegations of sexual assault, policing is particularly vulnerable. Like other traditionally male-dominated professions, the police has a tradition of macho, laddish culture. Then there’s the dynamic of rank and hierarchies, alongside a long and stressful working environment. It’s no surprise many police marriages are volatile, with many ending in divorce. Workplace affairs aren’t uncommon. As a DPS officer, I would log onto the intelligence system on a Monday morning, which would invariably reveal officers arrested for domestic disturbances, occasionally by over-enthusiastic county cops with no great affection for the Met. The November-to-January complaints generated by police Christmas parties constituted a DPS crime hotspot. Indeed, the alleged misconduct in that Met case supposedly happened at a festive drinks.

Despite these cultural pressures, of course, we rightly hold police officers to a higher standard. Managing coppers therefore requires strong line management — what we used to call leadership. Those line managers require unwavering support from their seniors too. This is where, too often, the system fails. At this point, the Irish playwright Brendan Behan’s dictum springs to mind: “I’ve never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn’t make it worse.” The new cohort of police leaders, many of whom are women, talk a good job on change. Yet they struggle to deliver, preferring to attend conferences and giving speeches, rather than work the hard yards by developing a culture of leadership, one based on operational experience rather than virtue-signaling.

I recall a conversation with another female colleague, a retired detective inspector. A tough woman, a proud daughter of Essex. We were discussing “handsy” male officers. The former detective inspector had moved to a management role in the private sector. “It’s so bloody simple compared to the police,” she told me. “A bloke says or does something out of order to a female colleague. We either reprimand or sack him, depending on the circumstances. In the police, we can’t see the wood for the trees, everything becomes a major investigation.” Even today, despite numerous overhauls, policing’s bastardized misconduct apparatus retains paramilitary elements, with officers scurrying off for the job’s version of a court martial. I’ll never forget watching a constable vomit over his tunic on Vauxhall Bridge, shortly before his Central Discipline Board. Neither are police officers HR managers, which is possibly why minor, and not so minor, transgressions are sometimes ignored.

As for actual police HR, in my experience most staff were perfectly competent, albeit more focused on performance than actual misconduct (though there were outliers: including one woman known as “Claymore Mine” because she was anti-personnel). Then HR was cut like everything else, outsourced to contractors trying to manage complex cases via a telephone help desk. And so officers distrust HR decision-making, especially when some do experience tactical and malicious complaints, including from colleagues. This is why many argue complaints deserve forensic scrutiny for matters which — say in a supermarket — would be dealt with by HR. It is in this gap where potential sex offenders fester and, like Carrick, prosper.

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By Dominic Adler

Another issue is one that dogs other areas of policing. Dealing with workplace misconduct is DPS’s version of neighborhood policing. And, like neighborhood policing, it’s something of a Cinderella, devolved to local support teams. The real focus, during my time on DPS, was on organized crime, corruption and the most serious cases of misconduct. Our tactics and methods were seen as disproportionate. In the few cases where we proposed covert operations against officers accused of sexual misbehavior, managers often considered them too risky. I also worked with coppers who, in confidence, reported wrongdoing. Most refused to provide written evidence for criminal proceedings. That culture will only change when leaders lead by example.

So what can the Met realistically do? After the Wayne Couzens scandal, it sought to investigate what it considered a toxic culture by setting up a new squad. “Forming a new squad” is a perennial way for police managers to pour old wine into new bottles. A new confidential reporting system and “WhatsApp squad” is all very well, but if the mechanism for following up on intelligence doesn’t work then what’s the point? The Met’s new squads will find some scalps. There’s certainly no shortage of low-hanging fruit. I doubt, however, that they will catch, identify or deter the worst offenders without a more intrusive strategy, of the sort the Met launched in the Nineties to identify racism.

The Met is in a genuine bind. Ten years of scorched-earth austerity, followed by a rapid uplift of staff, has created a young, inexperienced workforce led by young, inexperienced sergeants and inspectors. To save on training costs, meanwhile, the Met backfilled specialist posts like firearms from other forces. I suspect this is how Wayne Couzens, who came from the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (responsible for guarding power stations) ended up serving on the Diplomatic and Parliamentary Protection Group. And yet, still, nothing changes.

Sexism, like racism, exists in wider society. And some of that will, inevitably, percolate into the police. There, the problem becomes horribly magnified. The answers, then, are both tough and unglamorous. They involve cash-strapped forces investing in better recruitment, vetting and training. That would help make policing a more attractive career, widening the pool of quality candidates: urgent enough when some officers now need English lessons before they can even take a statement. And, yes, constant vigilance is needed too. As my superintendent on DPS used to say, “sometimes, you have to nail the crow to the barn door, to serve as a warning to the others.” Perhaps it’s time for police officers, especially those at the top, to issue their sergeants with hammers and nails.

That’s why the British police model is often referred to as one of “policing by consent”. The service is run with the blessing and co-operation of the public, rather than as an arm of the state. We know that the police regularly walk into situations which most of us would instinctively avoid, often showing great courage in difficult situations. A YouGov poll in October suggested that the police in general are positively viewed by the public, with 65% saying they trust them and 31% saying they don’t. But recent scandals have taken a toll on the specific reputation of one force in particular: only 33% of the British public say that they trust the Metropolitan police (although the figure is higher among Londoners, at 57%).

The Met’s standing has been damaged by Sarah Everard’s abduction and murder by Met officer Wayne Couzens, and the disgraceful conduct of two Met officers at the scene of the 2020 murders of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman. Much has been said about the need to root out so-called “bad apples” in the force, along with tackling persistent pockets of misogyny and racism. But our model of policing by consent faces another challenge. Recently, the police have been taking on powers that the bulk of the British public never asked for them to have.

What the public wants from the police — as a 2020 report from the Police Foundation think tank suggests — is pretty much what you’d expect: more visible policing on the street, and a focus on “sexual crime, violent crime, investigating serious crime, responding quickly to calls for help, tackling terrorism and taking action on organised crime”. In other words, we want the greatest energy focused on the crimes with the highest potential to devastate lives.

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Of course, as the Strategic Review of Policing in England and Wales — set up to shape a “long term strategic direction for the police service” — acknowledges, a lot of crime has migrated from the streets to electronic highways. Fraud and computer misuse now make up 44% of all crime in England and Wales. The number of police officers in England and Wales, however, fell by 20,000 between 2010 and 2019. The government has promised 20,000 additional police officers by 2023, more than half of whom have now been recruited. Ideally, this should contribute to a more efficient police force with an enhanced presence on the streets. Add in more rigorous safeguards against bias and corruption, promised in the aftermath of this reputationally disastrous year, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to hope for a new, improved force.

But there’s a problem: recent, fuzzily-framed powers are taking our police in a direction that the public — and many officers — clearly do not want. Instead of patrolling the pavements, officers are increasingly encouraged to patrol the finer nuances of legitimate public debate. At a recent football match, Crystal Palace fans unveiled a large banner criticising the Saudi-backed takeover of Newcastle United. It featured a bearded character clearly depicting the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, along with a trenchant critique of Saudi Arabia’s shocking record on human rights. Croydon police promptly tweeted that they had “received a report of an offensive banner displayed by Crystal Palace fans” warning that “any allegations of racist abuse will be taken very seriously.” A later tweet from them thankfully confirmed that “no offences have been committed”, something which most sane people could have recognised with one glance.

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The argument over trans rights and women’s rights, too, has triggered lengthier but similarly doomed police investigations. One such case culminated in the bizarre 2019 prosecution of Miranda Yardley, a transsexual, for allegedly committing a transphobic hate crime online. The police investigation had been prompted by complaints against Yardley from a trans rights activist (who was not herself trans); the judge threw the case out after one day, awarding costs to the defendant. More recently, “gender-critical” feminist Marion Millar was charged under the Malicious Communications Act for potential hate crime. One of her offending tweets was reportedly a picture of a suffragette ribbon, which a complainant had argued was a noose. All charges were ultimately dropped. In both cases, the lengthy process to which the defendants were subjected was a punishment in itself.

Many of these threats to investigate, or unsuccessful charges, make the case that a “hate” crime has been committed — that is, an offence motivated by the plaintiff’s disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity. (Ordinary crimes, it seems, take an equal opportunities approach.) Hate crime carries an enhanced sentence, but at least — since it involves an actual crime — it is bound by certain legal definitions.

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Hate crime’s little brother is a sub-category called “non-crime hate incidents,” which can’t be prosecuted. For someone on the wrong end of an accusation, however, it can be very uncomfortable. Although the public collectively consents to the police holding power, we have little say as individuals in how that power is used over us. Police activity can be a factor in us losing our livelihoods or our liberty. And, despite not being a crime, a “non-crime hate incident” can go on your record and potentially show up on enhanced DBS checks. It might close off certain job opportunities. To better understand the offence, I turned to the West Yorkshire police website, where the Hate Crime Co-ordinator PC Emma Harrison explains it via video:

“A hate incident can be any incident that the victim or any other person perceives to have happened to a person as a result of their faith, their race, their sexual orientation, their disability. It doesn’t have to be a criminal offence. As the definition says it can be any incident, so it can be perhaps just the way that somebody looks at you or it might be something that somebody says to you that might upset you. It literally can be anything at all that you feel is there as a result of something about you, something very personal to you, it might be the colour of your skin, it might be a disability that you have, and it doesn’t even need to be a disability that can be seen.”

Around 120,000 such offences were recorded between 2014, when the College of Policing brought in the “non-crime hate incident” guidance, and 2019. Of course, it is often sensible for police to keep records of especially upsetting or threatening behaviour that nevertheless misses the threshold for criminal prosecution. But the net here is cast extremely wide, and could easily include a legitimate personal opinion that someone else simply doesn’t like. The “non-crime hate incident” exists entirely in the perception of the allegedly aggrieved party.

It seems chilling that “any incident” — including “perhaps just the way that somebody looks at you” — can potentially land an individual with a police record, not least because “looks” are frequently open to misinterpretation. If you are deemed the perpetrator, there is currently no evidential means by which you can overturn the ruling, save for an expensive and drawn-out judicial review. As the former director of public prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, wrote recently: “This power has real world consequences. We need hardly imagine what an HR manager would make of a job applicant with a police history of hate.”

A world in which self-described victims cannot be challenge is a dangerous one. The police’s desire to semaphore its wholehearted belief in the testimony of alleged victims, before investigating any actual evidence, was a key factor in the Met’s catastrophic Operation Midland. For nearly a year and a half, they pursued a highly energetic investigation into an alleged VIP sex ring on the basis of luridly fabricated evidence from the fantasist and paedophile Carl Beech, anonymised as “Nick”. His allegations resulted in the baseless persecution of both a former Home Secretary, Lord Brittan, and a former Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Bramall.

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One of the glaring mistakes of that investigation occurred when one senior officer abandoned all rules of due process publicly to declare “Nick’s” allegations “credible and true”. They were both incredible and false. The assertion flew directly in the face of the eighth “general instruction” of British policing: that police should “refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.”

Leon Brittan died in 2015 without knowing his name had been cleared. The usual apologies were made by Dame Cressida Dick. And yet the same principle of “guilty if accused” has somehow been allowed to spread quietly in the thicket of “non-crime hate incidents.”

It is a tenet of our democracy that other people are allowed to say things with which we do not agree, and might even find offensive. The mission creep of the UK police force — which now risks effectively handing out police records to a growing pool of law-abiding citizens — is worrisome not only for the public at large, but also for the force itself. And it comes at a bad time: in what should be serious cause for concern, the October YouGov poll mentioned earlier also found that more people (48%) were now “unconfident” of the police’s ability to solve crime in their local area than were “confident” (43%).

If the general public sees more individuals being hounded and investigated for opinions which many of them may hold, while the conviction rate for high-harm offences such as knife crime and rape remains dismal, they may well conclude that the police service is no longer set up to serve the best interests of ordinary citizens.

That bodes ill for the co-operative model which has broadly served the UK well for so long. The best of police officers understand this instinctively, as did the “general instructions” from 1829, which saw much of this coming, in rule five, which says that the force should “seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law.”