James Heale James Heale

Can Mark Rowley clean up the Met police?

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley (Credit: Getty images)

Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, faced a media grilling this morning as he championed his plans to clean up the force. It comes a fortnight after Louise Casey’s damning report into the Met, which branded it ‘institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic’.

A YouGov poll out today shows that public confidence in the Met has been shattered, with 42 per cent of Londoners saying they ‘totally distrusted’ it following recent scandals. Some 700 officers are currently on restricted duties, with hundreds more facing re-vetting or ‘risk management measures’. Rowley has pledged to ‘remove the cancer from the bone’ as he seeks to root out hundreds of officers found guilty of wrongdoing.

Rowley has won plaudits for talking a good game. The trouble is we have heard much of this before

It’s being billed as the Met’s ‘biggest purge in 50 years’, but Rowley warns he will need ‘greater powers’ to remove rogue officers.

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