London’s Metropolitan Police has suspended or restricted duties for the equivalent of a small police force within its ranks. Britain’s largest police force said 201 officers were suspended and 860 were on restricted duties, while 100 police officers have been sacked in the past year for gross misconduct – together, that’s roughly 3 per cent of the 34,000-strong Met. For comparison, that’s more Met officers than those who identify as LGBT+ (2.8 per cent). This is only the beginning. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy, who is leading the reforms, said the “paradox” of the process in rooting out rogue officers is that the better and harder they work, the more “difficult” cases they will find. So much so that Scotland Yard is expecting to hold 30 misconduct hearings and 30 gross incompetence hearings a month for potentially the next two years. Anoosh Chakelian says in the New Statesman that one source involved in police training told her the headlines about police misogyny were actually attracting like-minded young men to join.
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