by Oliver JJ Lane
British police leaders should steer clear of “culture wars or woke” to focus on preventing crime and uphold British policing’s own values — somewhat implying they don’t presently do so — a major government-backed review has found.
Policing in England and Wales is facing something of a crisis of leadership, with the quality of policing varying across the nations, senior police leadership doing their jobs without training or professional development, and apparently distracted by “woke”. The Police Leadership Commission, led by Blair-era veteran Labour grandee David Blunkett and chair of the College of Policing Lord Nick Herbert stated that just 13 per cent of police constables said they believed they worked in a “well led and managed organisation” and that while “some forces are good”, others have “lost focus on cutting crime”.
Calling itself “the most comprehensive examination of police leadership in England and Wales in a generation”, the Commission’s report found that the quality of senior police officers was variable and this, in part, was down to slapdash approaches to training. In comparison to other uniformed services, top police officers are barely trained at all, it appears. The report stated:
…15 years after leaving Sandhurst, a colonel in charge of 1,500 people will have undertaken 72 weeks of leadership development. By comparison, chief superintendents in the MPS who have had comparable progression are likely to have had two or three weeks… More than a fifth of new sergeants and inspectors responding to our survey said they received no formal leadership training more than two years into their role…
The report, which comes amid a constant stream of policing scandals and claims of ‘two tier policing’, noted that police had been “accused” of applying the law unevenly “based on the background or social group of those involved”, and reflected that these factors “should have absolutely no bearing” on how police behave, just one of several times in the report when the assertion of how policing should be implies it is failing to live up to the standard.