Greater Manchester Police's deputy chief constable has likened fixing Greater Manchester's failing police force to 'flying a jumbo jet and rebuilding it while it's in the air'. Top cop Terry Woods told the police, fire and crime panel on Tuesday (March 16) of the progress GMP has made since inspectors last visited in September.
It follows another damning assessment by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) which found the force to be 'inadequate' in three areas and 'requiring improvement' in a further five. But senior leaders have spoken of 'significant' improvements in the number of arrests made, crimes recorded and incidents attended in the last six months. This includes 96.5 pc of rape and serious sexual offences now being recorded.
Angela Lawrence, an independent panel member who was awarded an MBE for her work on tackling gang violence, asked how the police will rebuild trust. She said: "GMP have had their ass whooped because you became complacent.
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"You're going back to basics now which is necessary. But you also need to deal with the culture within the police itself. Until you root out the evils within your establishment and are seen to be really holding people to account, trust is not going to be there."
DCC Woods, who is responsible for GMP's professional standards branch, acknowledged that culture issues must be sorted out by setting an example. He told the panel that the force is 'heavily invested in proactively seeking out issues', rather than simply reacting to disciplinary cases involving its officers.
The deputy chief also told the panel that 'thoroughly decent' neighbourhood policing is key to winning regaining the trust and confidence of communities. However, he spoke of the struggle to keep neighbourhood officers in their communities and not deploy them to incidents elsewhere due to demand.
He said: "People are just getting their head around the fact that we're flying a jumbo jet and we're rebuilding it while it's in the air. What we don't have is a pause button. But the mitigation around this is us putting the leadership in, the plan, the direction and giving both communities and importantly the staff the confidence and the hope in where we're going.
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"So the number one threat is me and the chief holding our nerve. We still have thousands of incidents reported each day. We could do them slightly quicker if we sent all the neighbourhood officers out doing those jobs. But it's us holding the line and saying, 'no'.
"Demand is the biggest threat. There's lots of mitigation around it, but it's a real challenge."
Chief superintendent Rick Jackson, who is responsible for performance and improvement oversight at GMP, told the panel about recent progress made. He revealed that there are now 51,000 open crime investigations, down from around 80,000 back when the force 'could not see the wood for the trees'.
More than 90 pc of crimes are properly recorded, up from 77 pc, with the majority of the increase involving vulnerable victims, Ch Sup Jackson said. The number of 'open incidents' has fallen from 2,700 to 827 this week.
Last Thursday (March 10), 999 calls were answered within seven seconds, down from two minutes at its worst which Ch Sup Jackson said was 'appalling'. The number of arrests made by GMP in the six months up to February has also increased by 21 pc with more than 20,000 people arrested during that period.
Ch Sup Jackson added: "The reason I'm giving you six-month figures is not to dress up the data. When I present the rolling 12-month figures, because we're making incremental increases each months, it hides the fact that actually, over the last five to six months, actually we've made some significant progress."
