British police forces have lost the public's trust after a series of high-profile scandals, a watchdog has concluded. His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary Andy Cooke published his damning findings on Friday.
A recent YouGov poll found that less than half of Britons felt the police were doing a good job, down from three-quarters in 2020.
"There are clear and systemic failings throughout the police service in England and Wales and, thanks to a series of dreadful scandals, public trust in the police is hanging by a thread," Cooke charged. "We have a small window of opportunity to repair it."
"The police are edging towards a tipping point where the balance of sentiment towards them is turning distinctly negative," he warned
Home Secretary Suella Braverman has sought to address the crisis of confidence by making it mandatory for officers to attend the scene of every reported burglary, which she called "a despicable crime," when many forces had largely stopped investigating such crimes as a way to "increase public confidence and see more criminals caught."
In Braverman's response to Cooke's report, she said police need "strong leaders, a greater focus on the basics and issues that matter most to the public – and to be more visible in communities."
But opposition Labour shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the report was "truly damning about the state of policing after 13 years of Conservative government."
The report comes in the wake of a series of crimes committed by serving officers, including Wayne Couzens' kidnap, rape and murder of London woman Sarah Everard in March 2021.
Alarm bells had already been rung about Couzens, who served in the London Metropolitan Police's elite armed VIP protection unit, when he was reported for flashing a female server at a McDonalds drive-through — but fellow officers failed to take action before his criminality escalated to murder.
Other scandals involved officers making tasteless and racist jokes about crime victims on mobile phone chat app groups.
High-profile Metropolitan Police Service commissioner Dame Cressida Dick resigned in 2022 over the series of revelations.
The police standards boss, a former chief constable of the Merseyside Police force which covers Liverpool, said fellow senior officers had ignored his office's calls for reform.
"A perfect example of this is that since 2016 we made a considerable number of recommendations to address police officers abusing their position with victims for sexual purpose," Cooke said. "Not enough forces took meaningful action and that's why we are where we are."
He also repeated calls for stricter vetting of new police recruits and serving officers.
"This lack of action meant it had become too easy for the wrong people to join the police and the wrong people to stay in the police," Cooke stressed. "There's only so many times we can say the same thing in different words. The time for talking has passed and it's now time for action."
A separate report by the House of Lords into the Met police, published in March, found "systemic failings" in vetting officers and investigating violence against women and girls.