Four months on from becoming commissioner of the Metropolitan police, this should be the honeymoon period for Sir Mark Rowley. Instead, a nightmare is engulfing his force and commissionership that has been years – if not decades – in the making.
The task facing Rowley is putting his force’s reputation back together again, at speed, as public incredulity and anger grows, while conducting the crime-fighting business of the Met in a demanding city, under intense media gaze, squeezed budgets, antiquated technology systems, historic low public confidence, a fed-up workforce and large sections of his force who think the world is out to get them.
The Met has admitted that David Carrick, convicted of 85 serious offences, including 48 rapes, should never have been allowed to join the force – or be kept on despite complaints against him, enabling him to use his status and protection as an officer to carry out his attacks.
Rowley is trying to show that the Met under his leadership understands the scale of the problem and is fixing it. Central to this is a review of every officer and staff member who in the past decade has faced an allegation of domestic or sexual abuse.
