Scotland Yard chief Sir Mark Rowley
(Picture: PA Wire)Less than one per cent of nearly 50,000 complaints by the public about police performance led to disciplinary proceedings last year, new Home Office figures revealed on Thursday.
The statistics show that 48,979 complaints made about police officers were dealt with in the 12 months to the end of March involving a total of 115,235 allegations of misconduct.
But the majority of complaints led to a finding of no case to answer and only 0.3 per cent, involving 158 officers, led to disciplinary proceedings.
Some of these ended without any sanction and although a handful of others resulted in final written warnings or findings of gross misconduct, the statistics will revive questions about whether existing disciplinary and complaints procedures are sufficiently robust.
The statistics came on Thursday as Scotland Yard chief Sir Mark Rowley revealed that freed rapists will be ranked according to the threat they pose with the most dangerous placed under surveillance when they leave prison.
The Met Commissioner said the grading system — which will also be applied to other sex offenders in the capital — would be drawn up by assessing rapists’ backgrounds and offending history to determine who was most likely to want to target women or children again.
He said those presenting the highest risk would face potential surveillance and police efforts to find ways to return them to prison if they breached the conditions of their release or committed new crimes.
He said police would attempt to place others under domestic violence or stalking protection orders as part of further efforts to stop them.
Sir Mark’s comments about the approach to freed rapists came as he expanded in a BBC interview on his plan, already disclosed by the Standard, to draw up a list of the most dangerous among the “tens of thousands” of “predatory men” in the capital with a record of previous sex offences.
He said that “clever algorithms, clever research methods” would be used to analyse the Met’s data to “stack them” in order of the danger they posed so that police could ensure they were focusing their efforts on the most threatening.
Asked if this would include placing freed rapists under surveillance, Sir Mark added: “Some of them, yes. Sadly, there are a lot of people who come out of prison in that situation.
“If you use the data and the evidence well, looking at their other previous convictions and their backgrounds, you can start to grade between them, who’s most likely to offend again, who’s most likely to be a one-off offence, so you can focus to the best effect to protect women and children in London.
“It might be surveillance, it might be working with probation to put stronger controls on them as part of their release from prison, it might be looking for other opportunities to recall them to prison if they are breaching conditions, it may be some of these proactive orders.
“There’s a range of tools that we’ve got, a tactical menu, but you need to have your prioritised list. It’s being able to grade that automatically, that’s the point.”
