Sir Mark Rowley, who started as Metropolitan police commissioner in September, said red tape made it difficult to sack officers who failed to meet expectations and called on the Government to change regulations to make the process easier. About 3,000 Met officers cannot be fully deployed because of performance concerns or physical or mental health problems, he told The Times. Another 500 officers are on restricted duty or have been suspended over allegations of serious misconduct. It comes after the Guardian reported Rowley’s calls for radical reforms to a controversial Met list of alleged gang members which mainly targeted black men had “exacerbated the disproportion”. While Rowley said the force would always help those injured on duty or suffering from mental health problems, the Met “cannot deal with a workforce where such a large proportion cannot be properly developed”. Many of those officers, he said, cannot work shifts or can only work limited hours a day or are limited in public contact due to issues such as stress. He added: “There comes a point where if you can’t be fit to be a police officer, then it’s a challenge for us because it’s a large number of people that we can’t develop properly.” Despite systemic failures to deal with misconduct following the kidnapping, rape and murder of Sarah Everard last year, Rowley said managers were put off taking action against officers “doing a bad job” because of a six-step process that requires more than a year. “We cannot exist as an organization if we cannot develop 10 or 20% of our people,” he said. Last year, only six officers were dismissed for poor performance, which he said was a “low number” considering the size of the Met. He also said he had set a deadline for public services, including the NHS and social care, to deal with mental health cases instead of the police, freeing officers to focus on reducing crime. Officers spend an average of 14 hours at accident and emergency with mental health patients, he said. He then wants to set a date for tasks such as carrying out orders on behalf of the NHS to hand over people to be cut. “There is a lot of work that is health and social care work that others can, and should, do that we do,” he said. “It’s not that those other areas aren’t important, but it’s not police work.” A Met spokesman told the Guardian they had nothing further to add to Rowley’s comments.
