‘You are quite openly Jewish, this is a pro-Palestinian march, I’m not accusing you of anything but I’m worried about the reaction to your presence.’
These were the words of a police officer to Gideon Falter last week as he walked along Aldwych after attending synagogue. The chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism was not protesting or making a public statement of any kind, yet an officer of the law warned him that his ‘presence’, wearing a yarmulke, was a ‘breach of the peace’.
The Met is not improving, or at least not improving nearly quickly enough
Once the first wave of open-mouthed incredulity had passed, the widespread reaction to the police’s action was, quite rightly, outrage. The Metropolitan Police has been sharply criticised for its policing of pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the capital since Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October: the police have seemingly, at times, turned a blind eye to antisemitism, support for terrorism and incitement to hatred.
This most recent fumble has led to fresh calls for the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, to resign. The policing minister, Chris Philp, has expressed grave concern about the police’s actions: ‘No-one should be told their religion is provocative, nor an innocent person threatened with arrest solely because of someone else’s anticipated unreasonable reaction.’ If Rowley, who has only been in post for 18 months, did decide to quit, he would be the fourth commissioner out of five to resign amid controversy, following Dame Cressida Dick (2022), Sir Paul Stephenson (2011) and Sir Ian Blair (2008).
The case of Gideon Falter is grotesque and outrageous, and illustrates the clumsy and incompetent handling of public order since last October, but it is symbolic of much wider failure. The Met is in crisis. In June 2022, it was placed in ‘special measures’ by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services.
A review by Baroness Casey of Blackstock published last March found that the force, or rather ‘service’, had ‘failed over time to ensure the integrity of its officers’, that ‘London no longer has a functioning neighbourhood policing service’ and that there was ‘institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia in the Met’. In some areas, confidence in the police to ‘do a good job’ had fallen below 50 per cent, and levels were often as much as ten per cent lower in Black and other ethnic minority communities. The abduction, torture, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by PC Wayne Couzens in 2021 seemed, heartbreakingly, to represent everything that had failed in the capital’s police force.
Last month, the London Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee considered the progress made one year on from the Casey Review. It heard from Sophie Linden, deputy mayor for policing and crime since 2016, that ‘not enough’ had been done to change ingrained cultures and attitudes in the Met. Inspector Andy George, president of the National Black Police Association, said that of the UK’s 45 territorial police forces, the Met was ‘always the most defensive, the most dismissive’.
The Met is not improving, or at least not improving nearly quickly enough. Worse, when new challenges arise, like the substantial pro-Palestine protests since October 2023, they are handled partially, ineptly and often misguidedly aggressively. The response to poor public relations in the wake of mistakes is then incompetent and makes matters worse.
The commissioner of the Met currently also has national responsibilities for counter-terrorism and security, including VIP protection and politically motivated murder. It is not clear that this substantial burden can be handled as an ‘add-on’ to managing a law and order organisation of 43,500 people covering a population of 8.8 million. The time may have come to create a separate structure for counter-terrorism.
We can take as read calls for the police to receive more funding: they are true of every public service. But there is more than that. In the foreword to a Policy Exchange reportin 2022, former commissioner of the Met Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington and William Bratton, previously police chief in New York and Los Angeles, said Rowley ‘will need to prove to the people of London that under his leadership every single act of crime or disorder matters, every individual matters, and every neighbourhood matters.’
Can anyone seriously say Sir Mark Rowley is doing that? The Met is due to celebrate its 200th anniversary in five years’ time: the Metropolitan Police Act was given royal assent by George IV on 19 June 1829. It was a revolutionary piece of legislation, creating what most regard as the first modern police force, and before its passage, the maintenance of law and order had relied principally on the Statute of Winchester of 1285. If there is not huge, transformational progress in the policing of the capital in the next few years, it is going to be a very grim birthday party with little but survival to celebrate.
