Scotland Yard wants to fast-track corrupt and badly-behaved officers off the force
The average length of time for an investigation following a public complaint is about a year
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Your support makes all the difference.Scotland Yard wants to fast-track corrupt and badly-behaved officers off the force as it emerged more than 300 fully-paid staff remain suspended or on restricted duties while awaiting the outcome of disciplinary inquiries.
Officers have been barred since January 2015 from quitting or retiring to avoid gross misconduct charges but they remain on the payroll while long-running and bureaucratic internal investigations take their course.
“We’re looking at what options there might be there, potentially in terms of getting people out quick but continuing with the misconduct process despite them being out of the job,” said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Fiona Taylor, the head of internal investigations at the force. “Police officers want bad cops exiting the organisation.”
New figures show that 328 officers were allowed to resign or retire from the Metropolitan Police in the three years from 2012, saving potentially £4m for the taxpayer.
Constable Roberto Rossi
It took just 22 minutes to end the 12-year policing career of Constable Roberto Rossi of the Metropolitan Police. It would have been shorter had the chair of his disciplinary panel not taken five minutes to ponder his fate.
The outcome was effectively sealed in August when Rossi pleaded guilty in court to making indecent images of a child. He was caught when the US Department of Homeland Security uncovered suspicious online activity and alerted their counterparts in the UK.
Rossi was arrested in July 2014 and since then, he has been suspended on full pay. When he was informed that he was facing a disciplinary hearing in December, his response was limited to four words. He accepted what he had done and had nothing to add.
He did not turn up to the disciplinary hearing in a small room on the 14th floor of a police building in west London, and nobody spoke in his defence. The force ‘friend’ who was supporting him had retired, and Rossi showed no inclination to seek the help of anyone else. His character reference came from his borough commander who had met him only once, on the date that he had been suspended.
The hearing was told that Rossi had a law degree, no black marks on his disciplinary record and he had been the leader of the volunteer police cadets. Although he was described as being “well-liked and hard-working” his borough commander did not want him back where he worked at Kensington and Chelsea as it had “significant challenges concerning culture which we are working hard to change”.
The hearing was only the last humiliation heaped on Rossi. Since his conviction, his marriage has failed and he has moved from the family home in Oxford to the Welsh Valleys. As part of the terms of his conviction for producing the images over an eight-year period, he has had to attend 20 sessions of a sex offenders’ programme.
As Rossi was not there – as was his right – the chairman of the panel Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt told the seven people present that police officers were subject to the highest standards of behaviour, or it would undermine the confidence of the public. Dismissing him with immediate effect, he said Rossi’s behaviour had been a “gross betrayal of responsibility” that had brought discredit on the force.
It followed the case of another constable, PC Russell Bridges, 35, who appeared before the panel after he was cautioned for possession of cocaine. Officers in Surrey had been called by a neighbour complaining about the noise from inside the officer’s house. Bridges let them in, and the officers found drugs paraphernalia and a small amount of cocaine.
Bridges, who had worked for the Met for 11 years, was described as a highly-effective and motivated officer but had shown a “gross lack of judgement” that was a “real shame for the organisation”, said AC Hewitt. Then he sacked him.
Since the start of this year when the changes were made, only 12 officers have applied from the force citing exceptional or medical reasons, with only two allowed to go. It has left 63 officers suspended and 254 on restricted duties. The average length of time for an investigation following a public complaint is about a year.
The ban on allowing officers to quit the force followed a series of scandals, including the case of police constable Simon Harwood, who was cleared of killing a man caught up in the 2009 G20 protests after striking him with his baton and shoving him to the ground. He was later sacked.
He had rejoined the Met after previously evading misconduct charges over a road rage incident by temporarily retiring on medical grounds from the country’s biggest force.
Another officer, PC Andrew Birks, took unsuccessful legal action after he was stopped from leaving the Metropolitan police over an investigation into the death of musician Sean Rigg in police custody in 2008. PC Birks had argued that if he was not able to resign, he would lose the opportunity to be become a deacon for a new career in the Church.
The Met investigated nearly 7,000 complaints last year, upholding 12 per cent of them. The length of time they take remains a source of irritation for complainants and police.
Police leaders have complained that officers can be left in limbo for months and even years with serious accusations hanging over them, unable to begin new careers outside of the police even when both they and the force want them to quit.
It comes as the Government prepares to publish plans for a major shake-up of the disciplinary system, which is set to allow officers facing the most serious misconduct charges to quit the service. Gross misconduct inquiries against them would continue which could see them publicly shamed, and put on a list of officers barred from working in the service again. However, there is nothing currently planned in legislation that could see them forced to quit.
Superintendent Ray Marley, of the College of Policing, said: “If you get someone who shouldn’t be a cop then that should be at the earliest opportunity so we don’t need to keep paying them, or have them sitting at home not doing police work.”
As part of the changes, the authorities will release a force-by-force breakdown in January of the hundreds of officers barred from working for the police service.
In March, more than 440 officers were put on the list in its first 12 months of operation from 43 forces in England and Wales, but it was not broken down by area of the country.
The Metropolitan Police has already increased the use of special hearings – up from nine in 2013 to 28 this year – to fast-track officers with clear cases against them. They have been used to eject officers from the force who have been found guilty of criminal offences or failed work drugs tests.