Are police misconduct panels being taken too far? Are we keeping rotten apples and seeing hardworking experienced officers now leave?

Wayne Couzens and David Carrick are two names that will permanently blight policing.

They were horrendous moments that all police officers will remember very bitterly. As per norm, the knock on catastrophic impacts were predominately shouldered by our frontline response officers who work with the public more than most, alongside our neighbourhood teams. As a result of these two despicable individuals, the issue of vetting was rightly thrown into the public eye with the key focus being-how do you allow monsters like this to undertake a role in society where the public are at their most vulnerable and need to trust you to come to their rescue?

The vetting issue became a stone that most urgently needed to be turned and numerous processes began to look at how the system allowed these two appalling individuals to serve and be in a position of trust that they ultimately went on to abuse and commit horrific crimes against women.

As Covid and the pandemic gripped the world in 2020, our lives changed dramatically. As a result, all ways of working that we once knew, had been replaced. This alongside a strong recruitment drive by the current then Prime Minister Boris Johnson to get more officers out on the street, took dominance.

The mass recruitment process then began. All Human Resources interviews were held by Team’s Meetings, vetting was hurried through to get those numbers back on the street to fill the huge gap left by his Conservative predecessor and often known as the demise of policing, Teresa May.

The recruitment drive saw many apply and easily go through.

A serving officer from a southern based police force told the Havering Daily: “We had people join up who were shocked to learn that police officers work nights and weekends. This was something many of them did not like and promptly left.

“We had a police officer join who had a Swastika tattoo on his arm. People were staggered by those coming through and joining.”

The mass recruitment drive soon saw new officers join and then swiftly leave when they realised the exact work involved in being a police officer.

One officer who joined was quite shocked to learn that he could not go home each day for his lunch as he was used to, but had to eat lunch, if he did eat lunch, often in a vehicle after responding to endless calls as the stations did not have any canteens. He soon left too.

The serving officer continues: “With the starting base salary that was being offered the force was not appealing to those that had more experience but those who were unaware of the endless challenges of policing and just how difficult the job can be.”

Sadly, we know now that it is too late, that the vetting system failed and monsters like Couzens got through who had failed repeated vetting process and still went on to serve.

As a result of these individuals, police vetting changed and hopefully we will never see such horrendous crimes again.

The key question to leave you with now though is- are these misconduct panels being taken too far? Are we keeping rotten apples and seeing hardworking experienced officers now leave that we so desperately need? How many officers are we losing each month due to misconduct panels who return after months or even years of being away from their job and having been cleared?

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