The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has announced the latest phase of his £5.1million Action Plan fund to improve trust and confidence Black and minority communities have in the Metropolitan

Police Service.

The Mayor and Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, Sophie Linden, have visited Hendon Police Training College where they were met by the Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley to see community-led police training to ensure London’s newest police officers understand more about the communities in which they will go on to police.

The training puts Black communities in London – who have some of the lowest levels of trust in the police – at the centre of improving how the next generation of police officers go about their vital work of bearing down on crime in London’s diverse communities. The latest phase of allocated funding by the Mayor’s Action Plan will see £1million going into community-led training this year, bringing the total investment in this area to £3million.

The Met has been running community-led training for its new police recruits since September 2021 as a direct result of the Mayor’s Action Plan in 2020. The sessions include community representatives sharing their lived-experiences on topics such as stop and search and domestic abuse. The training also gives Black community representatives the opportunity to underline the vital role communities have in the policing of their areas and how police officers must work with communities.

The report into the review of the Met’s culture and standards, published last week, found failings related to discrimination, culture and operational effectiveness. The Mayor and the Met Commissioner are agreed that the report must be a catalyst for reform and a turning point in the relationship between the Met and London’s communities.

The Met is now more diverse than it has ever been, both the Mayor and Commissioner are clear that Londoners need a police service that better represents and understands them. To help achieve that the Mayor is providing £300,000 funding this year for the Met’s outreach work so that it becomes more representative of the city it serves with increased diversity of officers at every rank.

This is in addition to a £400,000 annual investment from City Hall to support the promotion of Black police officers and provide them with career development, leadership and promotion opportunities within the Met – where they are currently underrepresented in senior roles.

Currently, 17 per cent of officers in the force are from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds and both Sir Mark and the Mayor are urging people from all backgrounds to choose a career in policing and be part of delivering the change they want to see and our communities deserve.

The announcement is part of a raft of actions by the Mayor and the Met to rebuild public confidence and trust in the police and follows on from achievements of the Mayor’s Action Plan which has:

• Carried out a pilot to identify any disproportionality relating to the ethnicity of drivers stopped by the police, which has led to changes being adopted nationally.
• Completed a review and removed more than 1,000 young Black Londoners – with little or no evidence of a link to criminal gangs – from the Met’s Gangs Violence Matrix, which is now set for a “complete redesign” by Sir Mark Rowley.
• Completed a handcuffing review – which has led to a 20 per cent drop in the use of handcuffs in situations where no arrest is made.

Plans are also underway to set up a new partnership panel to oversee and inform the work of Safer Schools officers, to address community concerns that some young Black Londoners are being over policed, and to publish research from body-worn camera footage in the coming months to help improve the police's understanding of the points of escalation and de-escalation during stop and search.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “Communities must be at the centre of our work to reform the Met and that starts with the Met listening and acting on what diverse Londoners with the lowest levels of trust are telling them. That is why I am really proud to be funding community-led training where Black Londoners can work with our next generation of officers to help build a fairer, safer London for everyone.

“It’s simply not right that Black Londoners have less trust and confidence in our police service and it’s something the Commissioner and I are determined to resolve together. A key part of achieving that is having a police service that better represents and understands Londoners.

“That’s why we have set challenging targets for the Met and there will be continued funding from City Hall for outreach work to accelerate the transformation of the Met’s workforce so that it becomes more representative of the city it serves. I will not be satisfied until Londoners have the police service they deserve – one that is representative, trusted and delivers the highest possible service to every community.”

Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, said: “Trust in policing among London’s Black and minority ethnic communities is far too low. Tragically they are also often the communities that experience higher levels of crime. For many, they feel over policed and under protected.

“These challenges are not new. In some areas the relationship between the community and the police has been characterised by mistrust dating back decades.

“We know that if we are to increase confidence, rebuild relationships and crucially, deliver effective policing that makes a positive difference, then it is vital that our officers understand more about the communities they serve.

“Officers who benefit from community input during their training will develop a deeper understanding of the part of London they police, they will be more culturally aware and more sensitive to the impact of our operational interventions.

“As a result, not only will they be better placed to rebuild trust and confidence, they will also be more effective at tackling crime and keeping London safe.”

Lee Lawrence, community representative, said: “When there is damage you need to go through a healing process. The more that we can build understanding through lived experiences the better those officers are going to be.

“The past influences where we are today and if we are not aware of that then it is easy for there to be misunderstandings.

“If we cannot take the time to understand each other then how can we move forward? What we do today influences the future.” Photo by DAVID HOLT from London, England, Wikimedia commons.