The head of Britain’s biggest police force yesterday blasted “nonsensical” rules preventing him from sacking corrupt officers. Sir Mark Rowley, the Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, described his shock over discovering there are 160 officers with convictions for sexual and “some serious violence cases”.
He said: “I don’t have the final say on who’s in the Metropolitan Police.
“There are independent legal tribunals who can decide that we have to keep somebody even though we want to sack them, and that’s one of the powers that has to be changed.
“If you expect me to sort out the cultural issues in the Met and get rid of the people, then give me the power to do it.
“Can you imagine the chief executive of a big organisation saying they weren’t allowed to sack certain people – somebody has to decide for them? It seems nonsensical.”
Around 90 officers have been diverted from the fight against terrorism and organised crime to root out dirty police officers.
Sir Mark added that officers kicked out of the force will also be prosecuted if they have committed crimes.
Around four out of five past allegations of violence against women by Met officers are being reexamined, Sir Mark, inset, has revealed.
In all, 1,131 cases were examined in the decade to April 2022 and hundreds of officers are likely to lose their jobs.
He said the work to clean up the force was so urgent that around 90 officers had been diverted from serious crimes to the Directorate for Professional Standards.
The Met boss told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme: “The scale and urgency of this work has meant diverting officers from other missions such as serious and organised crime and counter terrorism.”
