Metropolitan PEEL 2016

The Metropolitan Police Service is good at preventing crime, tackling anti-social behaviour and keeping people safe.

The force is good at assessing the areas of highest threat, risk and harm, and planning how it will tackle both traditional threats and some aspects of ‘hidden crime’. However, it uses only police-generated data for some problem profiles about threat or risk of harm within communities, limiting its understanding.

The force understands the importance of involving the public in setting policing priorities at the neighbourhood level. It makes sure that the public can become involved in priority setting and problem solving. It has also works closely to engage those communities that are less likely to trust and have confidence in the police.

The force invests substantially in its crime prevention work, although in some boroughs officers and staff are frequently redeployed to cover reactive duties, which limits their ability to prevent crime in neighbourhoods. For some initiatives, the force assesses the effectiveness of problem-solving and crime prevention activities. However, problem-solving activity is inconsistent, and not routinely assessed by the safer neighbourhood teams. This means that the effect on reducing crime and anti-social behaviour, the lessons learned, and good practice are not identified.

The Metropolitan Police Service’s investigation of crime and management of offenders requires improvement.

The force has robust processes in place to enable it to respond appropriately to reported incidents. Important information is passed to first responders, but difficulty with getting additional information causes delays at crime scenes.

Crimes are allocated effectively for secondary investigation; overall, the quality of investigation is good but initial investigations need to improve. The force is aiming to do this through ‘Mi Investigation’, but this is some way off implementation. The force has restructured its forensic provision successfully and works hard to meet the increased demand for this service. It has taken steps to improve compliance with the requirement to take victim personal statements, but further improvement is required.

The force monitors wanted persons and outstanding suspects actively. Its approach to integrated offender management is improving, but more needs to be done to ensure consistency. Progress in completing risk assessments for registered sex offenders is too slow. Response and neighbourhood teams have limited knowledge of these offenders locally and do not monitor or collect intelligence about them routinely.

Some improvement has certainly been made since HMIC’s 2015 assessment of ‘requires improvement’; the force needs to ensure that this continues.

The Metropolitan Police Service is inadequate in its capacity and capability to protect those who are vulnerable from harm and support victims. HMIC’s 2016 child protection inspection found serious shortcomings in the force’s response to missing and absent children. These findings have been considered as part of HMIC’s 2015 effectiveness assessment.

The force’s awareness, consideration and assessment of vulnerability have improved slightly since 2015. The force has also updated its child sexual exploitation problem profile, although it still does not fully understand the nature and scale of other forms of vulnerability. Systems and processes in place for dealing with missing and absent persons have been made clearer, and support systems are in place to help officers and staff when dealing with vulnerable people. Despite these changes, problems remain in understanding the links between missing and absent children and child sexual exploitation, and in considering all individuals and risk in domestic abuse incidents. Officers and staff often fail to complete the proper risk assessments to ensure that victims of domestic abuse are kept safe.

Specialist teams investigate offences involving vulnerability and safeguarding. However, there is a shortage of detectives in these teams, and a lack of co-ordination between teams hampers the quality of some investigations involving vulnerable victims. Opportunities to protect victims of domestic abuse are being missed.

There is much effective work by the Metropolitan Police Service on serious and organised crime and positive results are easy to identify. Nonetheless, the force requires improvement in some areas. Although it makes good use of its own intelligence, it has failed to produce a serious and organised crime profile in conjunction with its partners, so does not have a shared picture of the threats to London’s communities. The force does not map identified organised crime groups (OCGs) as well as it should and does not fully comply with the national guidance. Despite the force updating mapped OCG records during 2016, and providing training to officers on the OCG mapping process, its understanding of serious and organised crime remains incomplete.

This is a finely-balanced judgment, since in many respects the force’s response to serious and organised crime is admirable. It is able to investigate OCGs successfully. However, its approach is overwhelmingly based on pursuit, and too often lacks the involvement of partner organisations and neighbourhood policing teams.

In contrast, the force’s response to gang crime is impressive. It has initiatives to deter people at risk of being drawn into gang activity, good local awareness of the gangs that operate in communities, and good partnership and local policing involvement in activities targeting gangs. The force communicates well with the public about serious and organised crime.

The Metropolitan Police Service has comprehensive arrangements in place to ensure that it can fulfil its national policing responsibilities. It has carried out an assessment of the six threats in the Strategic Policing Requirement (SPR) (PDF document) and understand its obligations under the SPR.

The force has undertaken a comprehensive assessment of the threat of firearms attack, with different scenarios. It has an armed policing strategic threat assessment that is reviewed regularly. The commissioner has determined that the force’s armed capability should be increased further, and plans are in place to achieve this.