Metropolitan Police Service Commissioner. It’s the top policing job in the nation, necessarily carrying with it huge responsibilities and an overriding requirement for tact and diplomacy – particularly when a crisis looms large.
Above all, though, by word and deed the incumbent absolutely must command the utmost respect: from fellow police officers and, equally as important, the public whom they serve.
In recent years, one could argue that this law enforcement hot seat has become something of a poisoned chalice.
Sir Ian Blair’s term of office was dogged by controversy almost from Day One. If nothing else, it was certainly an era in which the politicisation of policing really came to the fore.
Subsequently, we’ve been privy to the tenure of Sir Paul Stephenson, who recently took the noble decision to resign in the wake of the phone hacking scandal even though – as the IPCC investigation reported this week – his conduct during the whole saga was proven to have been impeccable.
In all honesty, I’m delighted that Sir Paul has been exonerated from any blame or association with this sordid affair that, among other things, has brought opprobrium upon my own profession.
I’ll freely admit that I was sceptical about Sir Paul’s appointment in the wake of Blair’s departure. There was always much talk around Policeman Blair allegedly being in the back pocket of Prime Minister Blair and, along the same lines, some commentators felt that the Damian Green episode at the time Jacqui Smith was Home Secretary had perhaps tarnished Sir Paul’s reputation a little.
No respect for any kind of authority
For my money, Sir Paul Stephenson’s performance in office was nothing less than impressive.
Initially, across many months there wasn’t a lot of engagement with the media. Perhaps that was a deliberate and clever tactic to distance Stephenson from what had gone before.
The day I really sat up and took notice of Sir Paul’s ‘doctrine’ was when he spoke with such clarity and passion at the BSIA Annual Luncheon in July last year: a polemic of the highest order in which he outlined his Top Five policing priorities for London.
That speech was also the first occasion – to my knowledge, anyway – that a ‘Top Cop’ addressed in open forum what’s arguably the most pressing problem in our midst today: a tract of society whose cohort makes no attempt whatsoever to breed any kind of respect for authority among its offspring. This is largely because, for whatever reason, they harbour none themselves.
12 months on and we have the rioting and looting in London and elsewhere across England. Pretty much the outward manifestation, if you will, of what Sir Paul was saying all those months ago.
Put bluntly, it’s a problem that politicians have regularly glossed over with clever spin, sometimes acknowledging that it exists but never really doing anything tangible about it.
If David Cameron is true to his word and really does tackle the underbelly of our society by working with the judiciary to impose – and see through to conclusion – meaningful sentences that serve as a genuine deterrent, I for one feel this would be an apt and most fitting tribute to Sir Paul’s tenure at New Scotland Yard.
There’s no doubting that the former Met Commissioner’s words in front of the Trade Association’s members and guests at The London Hilton last summer have proven prophetic – and then some.
Policing model up for debate and change
With the Government’s proposals to cut policing budgets seemingly now set in stone, we’ve reached a juncture where the whole concept and model of British policing – so revered around the world – is up for debate and change, be it radical or otherwise.
In parallel with the future of security regulation (where there’s a stated desire and intent to divest powers back to the practitioner element within the discipline), so too the Home Secretary now wishes to make policing more accountable to the public with the advent of elected Police and Crime Commissioners.
They’re not everyone’s cup of tea, it seems, but then again neither was New Labour’s slavish desire to have the Boys In Blue persistently concentrating on notional targets in spreadsheets rather than policing the beat and feeling the collars of ne’er-do-wells.
Against that backdrop, and much more besides, it’s now time for Home Secretary Theresa May, London Mayor Boris Johnson and Kit Malthouse – leader of the Metropolitan Police Authority – to sift through the applicants who’ve put their hat in the ring to succeed Sir Paul and command that rather tasty GB pound 250,000 salary.
If reports in the national media are to be believed, we’re basically looking at one of four candidates who’ll win out… The current acting Commissioner Tim Godwin, Stephen House (chief constable of Strathclyde Police) and two brilliant policemen who applied last time around but were unsuccessful: namely ACPO president Sir Hugh Orde and Bernard Hogan-Howe, acting deputy Met Commissioner and the former chief constable of Merseyside Police.
Potential leader of the pack
There’s much speculation that Stephen House is leading the pack. He was specifically asked to apply for the role by the Home Office around the same time Theresa May was making it perfectly clear that American ‘super cop’ Bill Bratton – former New York and Los Angeles Police Commissioner, and apparently favoured by David Cameron – would not be accepted for this unique policing role as May feels a British national is the sole option.
House would be nothing if not a safe pair of hands. A graduate of Aberdeen University, the 54-year-old Glaswegian took on his current role in 2007 having previously served with the Met. Given the latter, he knows something of the territory.
As someone who lives in South Lanarkshire, I can tell you that Glasgow is very well policed indeed. There are always lots of Bobbies on the Beat: hence a strong presence where it matters, both in the centre of the city and among its peripheral environs.
House’s officers are approachable, wholly committed to the cause and very, very big on genuine partnership working with the community and commerce. They’re highly visible which, for most members of the public, is nine tenths of the law.
They’ve also had much success in tackling gang culture in the Strathclyde region: something which David Cameron has only just said is top of his social responsibility radar.
One has to assume such praiseworthy philosophies and results in Glasgow are the outward magnification of sound leadership.
You’ll have noted, too, that there was no viral looting and rioting north of the border last week (but perhaps that’s because Scottish people are more civilised, less materialistic and concerned with the greater good of the community as opposed to the self).
An exemplary policing record
Sir Hugh Orde is without doubt an exemplary policeman. You’ll not get a more difficult and challenging policing remit than leading the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and 52-year-old Sir Hugh did so with aplomb before heading for the ACPO top spot when missing out on the Met role last time around.
He totally reformed that particular force, and performed the neatest of tricks which many thought impossible: following the historic Good Friday Agreement, he won the hearts and minds of both Catholics and Protestants alike.
There’s a cogent argument to say that particular entente cordiale coupled with a social will among the fair Irish people wrought a cessation to ‘The Troubles’, but Sir Hugh’s policing tactics surely must have exerted a positive influence somewhere down the line.
Here is a man, then, who’s totally in tune with the policing zeitgeist (as evidenced by any number of engaging speeches he has given in recent times).
Why else do I say that? One has to speculate that his current role must afford Sir Hugh the opportunity to picture from the perimeter what’s happening in the centre of the Met (and every other force, for that matter) and then form his own opinion of where policing should be going as we head towards the 2012 Olympics and the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
It has been well publicised that Sir Hugh likes to speak his mind. Within what purports to be a democratic society this should be a right for all of us without fear of castigation, but that’s simply not the case in the real world.
Sir Hugh hasn’t been backward in coming forward in voicing his concerns over the planned policing cuts, for example, as well as pay issues and general reform.
It has been suggested Theresa May wasn’t happy with some comments Sir Hugh made post-riots and looting, and that may have lessened his chances for the Met Commissioner’s role (which, traditionally, involves a fair amount of lip-biting).
Sir Hugh is right to stand up and be counted. ‘Politics’ shouldn’t come into it. The appointee ought to be in place because they can demonstrably do the job, not as a result of the fact that their ideas happen to slot in neatly with those of the Government of the Day.
If Sir Hugh were chosen to fill Sir Paul Stephenson’s chair it’s safe to say this would be welcomed by the rank-and-file Bobbies.
Total Policing concept on Merseyside
Bernard Hogan-Howe is another former chief constable who commands my utmost respect.
In the early part of 2008, I spent several weeks researching in great depth Sheffield-born Hogan-Howe’s Total Policing concept on Merseyside (where he managed the fort from 2004 through to 2009).
Designed to tackle many forms of criminality – including protection rackets on building sites and security personnel working without benefit of SIA licence – the concept’s results spoke for themselves.
As I reported at the time: “From April 2006 to April 2007 alone, there was an 11% reported reduction in all crime on Merseyside, and a 25% drop in violent crime ‘against the person’ when compared with the previous survey year. Robbery has fallen by 8% (bucking the national trend, which has witnessed a 3% increase) and burglaries are down by 3%. Instances of criminal damage are down 4% and drugs offences by 15%. The best crime reduction result in the country.”
Hogan-Howe boasts a stellar education, having gained an MA in law from Oxford University, as well as a Diploma in applied criminology (attained at Cambridge University).
In short, he knows what he’s talking about and is strongly opinionated: some of you might recall Hogan-Howe taking judges to task over what he perceived to be their leniency in relation to gun crime.
What about the Acting Commissioner?
The final candidate is the current incumbent. Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin has had something of a baptism by fire (if you’ll excuse the pun), having to deal with the most abhorrent scenes of criminal disorder we’ve witnessed in the Capital for some time now.
Godwin joined Sussex Police in 1981, moving to the Met in 1999 (and winning promotion to deputy assistant commissioner two years later).
The coalition Government – in the form of Cameron and May – has made it perfectly clear in the media that it feels the policing tactics used in the initial tract of rioting and looting perhaps weren’t the best or most appropriate. That may well have a bearing on Godwin’s candidature.
At the present moment it’s fair to assume that police morale is low. Why so? The spectre of financial cuts hangs heavy, while the post-reform future is uncertain.
On top of that – and it was ever thus – the police are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
With the Greatest Show on Earth just around the corner, there’s an overriding need for a speedy appointment of the next Commissioner (Theresa May is likely to make her recommendation known to Her Majesty The Queen in the next couple of weeks, and an official announcement will follow on).
More important, though, that the recipient of this five-year contract be the right person for the job based on merit and results with political dogma divorced as much as possible from the equation.
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