THE POLICE ADVISOR BLOG

Police misconduct rarely arrives fully formed. It does not usually begin with a dramatic act of corruption, a bribe in a car park, or an officer deciding to become a villain. More often, it begins with something small: a message sent, a rule bent, a confidence assumed, or a senior officer deciding that the usual processes are for other people. Three recent cases illustrate the point well. One involves a former chief constable, one a senior volunteer officer, and one a serving

I promised in a previous entry to update this blog with new figures about UK police firearms officers and deployments, and the figures for the year to March 2026 are now available for England and Wales. Total number of Armed Officers The total number of police officers authorised to carry firearms has gone up, by about 3%, to 6,558, spread across the 43 police forces in England and Wales. This is primarily driven by an uplift in the Met Police, who cover London. It's worth n

Shabana Mahmood, Home Secretary (Picture credit: BBC) After not quite five months in post, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has unveiled a white paper setting out the government’s plans to reform policing. On paper, at least, the proposals are radical. The headlines include: Bringing together existing national agencies and specialist capabilities – the National Crime Agency, Counter Terrorism Policing, regional organised crime units, police air support, national roads polic

We’ve seen two sides of policing this week - the terrible and the heroic. Sadly, the balance is tipped to more of the terrible, I’m afraid. Picture credit: BBC This week, BBC’s Panorama programme exposed some appalling behaviour by officers and staff based in the Metropolitan Police’s Charing Cross police station. Hidden camera footage showed serving officers calling for immigrants to be shot, making sexualised comments to colleagues and sharing racist views about immigrants

Jason King brandishes a knife shortly before stabbing a neighbour Jason King is a 55 year old man who, on a warm evening in May 2024, decided to settle an argument with his neighbour by banging on their front door and threatening to set his dog on them. When the neighbour confronted him, King stabbed him in the stomach with a knife he had brought to the scene. Two unarmed response officers from Thames Valley Police were first to the scene. On seeing this, King leant out of an

You may have seen the above somewhat click-baity headline here in the Guardian. The story goes on to say that: “…a man who had returned home from his allotment with a trug of vegetables and gardening tools strapped to his belt was arrested by armed police”. I’ve read the story, which didn’t feel entirely right to me, so I thought in the interests of balance, I’d try and look at what is and is not being said here. Now to be very clear, I wasn’t there, and the officers and the

The nation's obsession with crime - both fictional and true - continues. The former is good news for me as a police advisor (!), but sometimes fact can be stranger than fiction, as this show illustrates. Unlike the more established Channel 4 series 24 Hours in Police Custody, this series takes things more slowly, and relies more on watching the detectives as they talk through the evidence, following leads, sometimes ending up in cul de sacs, occasionally having a breakthrough

Justice is an important part of democracy, and to ensure public confidence, it has to be seen to be effective. That includes the handing down of a sentence to a criminal which reflects the seriousness of their crimes, and the opportunity for the victim's loved ones and family members to have their voices heard. A number of recent high profile cases have caused anger and outrage to many: In 2023, Thomas Cashman failed to appear in court to receive a life sentence for the shoot

Some time ago when I introduced my blog series about Armed Policing, I included some statistics about the number of firearms deployments in England and Wales. Those figures have been updated (and are about to be updated again later this summer), so I thought it was worth revisiting them to see what we can learn. In this post, I quoted these figures: You may be surprised to learn that there are only around 6,000 armed officers in England and Wales (Scotland has an additional 5

The Government recently announced plans to tighten up police vetting to allow forces to sack officers who don’t pass their vetting. Police vetting is carried out both during the initial recruitment process, and on a regular basis on existing officers. It is a process designed to identify those officers and staff who have either a criminal background, clearly undesirable traits such as racism, sexism or misogyny, or are liable to blackmail or other coercion due to their associ

You may remember the appalling story from April last year of a man with schizophrenia who stabbed and killed multiple people in a Sydney shopping centre. You can read about it here. The inquest into the circumstances has begun and they’ve heard evidence from Inspector Amy Scott, the first police officer into the scene. She confronted and killed the attacker just over a minute after entering the shopping centre. Her account of those 60 or so seconds is humbling and terrifying

Yesterday (21st October 2024) saw the conclusion of the trial of a serving Metropolitan firearms officer, accused of murdering a man who he shot during a firearms operation. The officer was found not guilty by a jury after less than 3 hours deliberation. In case you haven’t heard about this case, let me set out the basic details: Chris Kaba was shot dead by officer “NX121” (his pseudonym) in London on 5 September 2022. The vehicle he was driving, an Audi Q8 SUV, was linked to

Every right minded person will be shocked and appalled at the violence delivered in Hainault early yesterday morning, when an attacker armed with a sword targetted innocent people on their way to work and school. My thoughts are with the family and friends of the teenager who died, and those who have been injured. Amongst the injured were two unarmed police officers, who with colleagues ran towards the danger, armed with only taser and baton. Armed police were still some dist