LONDON LETTER:Dealing with criminals may be the easiest part of the job for the Met's new commissioner, writes MARK HENNESSY
LONDON’S METROPOLITAN Police commissioners, never more than now, live in a dangerous world where reputations that have taken a lifetime to build can be broken in hours in the risk-fraught waters occupied by politicians and media.
The last two occupants of the office, Ian Blair and Paul Stephenson, fell before finishing their terms: Blair because he lost the support of Mayor Boris Johnson, and Stephenson because he became embroiled in the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.
Bernard Hogan-Howe, the latest to fill the role, will have realised on his first day in office – if he had had any doubts before – that he has now become a target for those who want to create him in the image that they prefer, or indeed, to destroy him.
Just months away from a London mayoral election, the Conservatives are desperate to show Londoners they are “winning the war on crime”, to use one of the thousands of clichés often used on the subject.
The all-avenging police chief becomes part of such a narrative. Home secretary Theresa May said Hogan-Howe was a “tough, single- minded crime fighter” and the image-makers went to work to paint such an image of the Yorkshireman for the public.
He had, said some, chased and caught two suspected bicycle thieves at a dangerous housing estate just weeks before his ascension to the top Met post. The claims led to breathless “Hogan’s a hero” headlines in local London papers.
Instead, it emerges that Hogan-Howe had been out on patrol with a sergeant when they came across a couple of youths on bicycles. He asked the sergeant to have a word with the boys to check them out and all was fine. There was no chase and no thieves. The Yorkshireman is said to be “bemused and embarrassed” by the fuss.
For some he is occupying a post that should have gone to former Police Service of Northern Ireland chief constable Hugh Orde, who heads the Association of Police Chief Officers – an influential job in British policing but not one with the hands-on operational control for which Orde so clearly pines.
If people in Northern Ireland or the Republic who had dealt with him as PSNI chief had the power of appointment, Orde would have been chosen by a country mile. He is still remembered with fondness by so many, if not universally, from his days in Belfast, particularly since many have not established similar relations with his successor, Matt Baggott.
Although blessed by a tide of good wishes from across the Irish Sea, Orde never had much chance of getting the top London post, particularly after he questioned May and David Cameron’s declarations during the August riots that it was they, and not senior police officers, who had decided on the tougher police response that finally curbed the looting.
His pugnacity during the riots and his earlier objections to the police reforms desired by the home secretary may have had much to do with the fact he clearly believed the Conservatives had already decided long before the riots that they did not want him. Perhaps it was unwise of him, however, to question whether it mattered if the prime minister was in the country during the riots.
A senior panel of Home Office officials recommended Orde in August for the top spot, while a panel from the Metropolitan Police Authority also favoured him, going on to add only he and Hogan-Howe – and not the other two candidates in the race – should go forward to a final interview with the home secretary and mayor of London. May refused and called all four for interview.
Throughout, the formidable May called the shots. She blackballed Orde from the off, but, equally, was damned if she was going to let Boris Johnson have the final word on the commissioner’s appointment, as he had with Paul Stephenson. Others could advise, she made clear, but she would be the one to decide.
Hogan-Howe takes over at a time when budgets are being cut and when morale in London among officers – facing cuts both to their pensions and overtime arrangements – is said to be at an all-time low. His arrival also comes at a time when full-scale riots can be instigated with just a string of Twitter or Facebook messages.
Everyone has their own solution to London’s policing problems. For Labour Tottenham MP David Lammy, the answer is more black and Asian officers on the beat. Policing by consent is no longer possible unless there is a surge in the recruitment of ethnic minorities.
“The police in London have got to start looking like the police in New York. We have stalled in relation to ethnic minority recruitment,” he says.
Hogan-Howe is more careful than Orde in speaking softly to power, although opinions about him among senior colleague differ sharply.
It would be a miracle if it were otherwise in the world of senior police officers, where ruthless ambition, vanity and a desire to humble your enemy if you do not succeed yourself exist side by side.