Crisis? What crisis?

Maybe that should be which crisis because, let's face it, there are currently plenty of crises to choose from.

Today, though, having been invited to a Community Conversation by my local Met Engage team as part of its New Met for London consultation, now seems like an appropriate moment to focus on the crisis in policing as the service struggles to grapple with multiple complex institutional and operational issues simultaneously. At the moment it appears to be a challenge it is failing to meet and, while that continues to be the case, it risks losing both public trust and political support.

To be frank, politicians (specifically government ministers), are a large part of the problem; heaping ever more rushed, knee-jerk, ill-considered legislation on a service barely able to cope with existing demands after a decade-and-a-half of manpower and funding cuts made by, oh, politicians!. An already under-resourced service is now being asked to respond to a range of new social phenomena whilst at the same time facing increasing pressure to reform after a series of grave, even grotesque, institutional failings highlighted by the media.

This has led to renewed calls for de-funding of the police, which gained traction in the UK in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in the US in 2020, boosted by revulsion at the rape and killing of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer in London the following year. In the US the founding of Black Lives Matter (BLM) in 2013 led to a widespread campaign but it can be traced as far back as the 1930s*. However, earlier similar incidents in the UK, such as the police shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham in 2011, the death of Cynthia Jarrett during a police raid on the Broadwater Farm Estate (also in Tottenham) in 1985, plus a wave of riots in Bristol, Brixton, Toxteth and elsewhere in the early-1980s sparked by a toxic culture of policing of Black communities, had already poisoned the well of public trust in the cherished principle of policing by consent.

This principle was fundamental to the founding of the Metropolitan Police in London by Sir Robert Peel, then Home Secretary, in 1829. Hitherto, there had been robust resistance to the concept of such a police force in Britain, which, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, was seen as a potential vehicle for state surveillance and repression. Only the publication of Peel's Nine Principles, in particular number 7: "Police are the public, and the public are the police", persuaded Londoners to accept the service. Even then the Corporation of London refused to participate, preferring its own force, which it retains to this day.

The Municipal Corporations Act 1835 required 178 Royal Boroughs to set up professional police forces and the Rural Constabulary Act 1839 allowed county areas to establish police forces if they chose to do so. By 1851 there were around 13,000 policemen (and it was only men) in England and Wales. In the UK today there are forty-five 'territorial' and three 'special' police forces: the British Transport Police, Civil Nuclear Constabulary and Ministry of Defence Police.

According to Statista, The Met is by far the largest police force in the United Kingdom with 34,315 officers in 2024. At 16,356 officers, the Scottish police force has the second-largest force in terms of officer numbers, followed by Greater Manchester police force, which had 8,141 officers that year. Although the Metropolitan Police are responsible for policing most of Greater London, the City of London Police (as aforementioned) has its own officers, numbering 995 in 2024. In July 2019, the government announced the Police Uplift Programme (PUP) pledging to recruit an additional 20,000 police officers in England and Wales by the end of March 2023. That programme has now ended and, as of March 31, 2025, there were 146,442 full-time equivalent (FTE) police officers in the 43 territorial police forces covering England and Wales.

But numbers, of course, can never tell the full story - what officers are asked to do, and how they go about doing it, is crucial to understanding public concerns about contemporary British policing. As a result, there is an ever-present risk of the service becoming a political football. This can be seen particularly acutely in London where the Met Commissioner is answerable both to the Home Secretary and the Mayor of London in his role as Greater London's Police Commissioner responsible for running the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC).

In 2022 the then Met Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick, felt she had been left with "no choice" but to resign after London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, made it clear he had lost confidence in her leadership following her handling of the Sarah Everard case. There have been calls for her successor, Sir Mark Rowley, to resign after his refusal to accept findings of the 2023 Casey Review that the Met was institutionally racist and misogynistic, and following a recent BBC Panorama undercover exposé of the appalling attitudes expressed by some officers at Charing Cross Police Station, the site of similar revelations three years ago.

Following the resignation of Dame Cressida there were calls for the Met to be split into smaller units, either along geographical lines or by transferring specialist functions, such as counter-terrorism, to national bodies. These have not been pursued but it has also been suggested that a national police service, at least for England and Wales, might be a more efficient and effective use of resources and intelligence-sharing than the current regional model. The Police Foundation, The College of Policing and The National Police Chiefs' Council have all published reports in the past couple of years about potential ways forward, with an emphasis on the importance of local knowledge and accountability alongside strategic collaboration.

So what's to be done? As budget cuts force the Met to close all but twenty of its remaining thirty-seven public-facing front counters, different ways have to be found for the public to engage with officers. Few Londoners took advantage of this facility anyway and, in my personal experience, doing so could be a bleak, time-consuming and intimidating experience. For a time the 101 non-emergency telephone number provided a good point of contact but even that service eventually became overwhelmed. As a Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator fifteen years ago I found 101 very useful but, after experiencing frustratingly lengthy waits, I haven't used it for years and wouldn't do so now. 

Now, a Met Engage email contact is available which, while not responded to immediately, is usually picked up and answered by a member of the team in a couple of days, and there is also a Met Engage monthly e-newsletter. Regular 'Walk, Talk and Do' sessions conducted by Neighbourhood Policing teams in local parks are a useful point of contact, as are residents' Ward Panel meetings. More such points of contact, utilising email and outreach, are essential to rebuilding trust. But, for them to be truly successful, the public has to be made aware of these options - and then use them.

Modern policing has become too distant from the public, the source of its legitimacy, and that must change.

*'Black Reconstruction in America' by W E B Du Bois, published 1935