The Met need to spend less time on Twitter – and more time policing
For reasons that remain unclear, the Metropolitan Police feels it necessary to be present – and indeed active – on Twitter. It’s possible they’ve chosen to do so as a sort of safety valve for Londoners; somebody to vent at when the police choose not to investigate your bike being nicked or your house being broken into.
However their Twitter activity has certainly not done much for instilling confidence in a force that’s in dire need of some good PR.
Over the weekend, already facing abuse for some noticeably light-touch policing at a rally, the force decided it was wise to get involved in a scholarly debate around the use of the word “jihad”.
At a time when the Jewish community in London is experiencing a massive spike in anti-Semitic hate crime, it didn’t seem like the smartest course of action.
If the Metropolitan Police were a business, it would no longer be in operation. Sprawling and poorly-led, it continues to fail the city it in theory serves. Alas we are stuck with it. Reforming the Met is not actually as challenging as it’s made out to be.
Any CEO worth their salt would identify the need for simplification, stripping out the national responsibilities it has that distract it from community policing. That same CEO would identify a workforce that is flooded with bad apples, and move quickly to remove them, rather than presiding over the glacial pace of change we’ve seen so far.
New talent would be identified and rewarded, bumping them up through the ranks on merit rather than seniority and time-served. The CEO would go out of their way to speak to those let down – women and minority communities, in particular.
Key metrics would be the only thing that matter: delivering a city that got safer by the day, not one that’s more dangerous.
Current commissioner Mark Rowley – a lifetime cop, naturally, exactly the appointment any recruiter would advise against for a troubled business with institutional failings – has been in the job a year and there is precious sign of the force improving.
But at least they’ve still got that all-important Twitter account.