Tag Archives: metropolitan police authority

Alex Foster

Cross-party smackdown for Home Secretary

By Alex Foster | Thu 18th August 2011 - 5:32 pm

A tweet crosses my desk from Cllr Kemp, itself a retweet from LGCPlus journalist Ruth Keeling. It contains a link to the Association of Police Authorities – not a body I am overly familiar with, but it has a fairly self-explanatory title.

The link is directly to a fairly draw-dropping cross-party letter from chairs of Police Authorities around the country who have a fairly serious beef with the Home Secretary’s accuracy in a recent speech.

Theresa May appears to have tried to shore up support for the Conservative policy of elected police commissioners by insinuating that in London, taxpayers got a better service from the elected police chief (and Mayor) Boris Johnson, than in other parts of the country where there are indirectly elected Chairs of Police Authorities instead.

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 3 Comments
The Voice

Senior police regular met privately with News of the World staff whilst paper was under investigation

By The Voice | Tue 22nd February 2011 - 12:55 pm

Diary details released by the Metropolitan Police show that senior police officers met personally with senior editorial staff from the News of the World eight times in the last two years alone and a further five times in the previous three years. The tally excludes any general crime briefings or encounters at social events put on by third parties.

Dee Doocey, Liberal Democrat London Assembly Policing Spokesperson, has reacted to this revelation saying,

I find it quite extraordinary that when allegations about illegal phone hacking relating to the News of the World were still unresolved that the Met Commissioner thought it

…

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Mark Pack

The Met Police have an unusual problem

By Mark Pack | Fri 10th December 2010 - 10:25 am

I suspect there are many parts of the public sector which wished they had this problem:

Underspending continues to be an issue in the management of the capital programme, although unused funds can often be carried forward through reserves to support projects at a future date.

Part of the issue is large projects slipping, with the Met’s response to this being:

Agreeing an ‘opening’ programme in excess of available funding in the year.

This happens on a noticeable scale:

The MPA Finance & Resources Committee agreed a revised Capital Programme budget on 15th July 2010 at £276.3m for 2010/11 following the first quarter review. This

…

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Posted in London | Also tagged | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

Is there a secret joker in the Met Police?

By Mark Pack | Tue 26th October 2010 - 8:55 am

Working through the bureaucratic-speak and acronyms in the police’s report to the Metropolitan Police Authority about the draft London Transport Community Safety Strategy I discovered that the police intend to, “Contribute to the step change in the walking experience”. I hope there was at least a smile on the face of the person who typed up that one…

Posted in London | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Government scraps target – Met Police sets up new committee

By Mark Pack | Tue 12th October 2010 - 10:10 am

You might have thought that scrapping central government targets would result in local bodies being able to cut at least some of their own monitoring and reporting setups. But in an Alice in Wonderland style twist, Home Secretary Theresa May’s decision to scrap the “confidence target” for the police has been followed by the Met Police setting up a new “Confidence and Satisfaction Board”.

In June Theresa May announced that the police would be judged on cutting crime, ending both the set of performance targets bundled up as the Policing Pledge and also ending the judging of police by whether or …

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Helen Duffett

Dee Doocey challenges Met Police Commissioner over treatment of photographers

By Helen Duffett | Tue 27th July 2010 - 4:05 pm

Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson at City HallMetropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has said that although the Met has issued guidelines to officers about people taking photographs in public places, he cannot guarantee that officers will interpret them correctly.

His remarks came at a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority at London City Hall on July 22, where Liberal Democrat Assembly Member Dee Doocey asked him,

Are you confident that your officers are aware of the law when it comes to members of the public taking photographs in a public place?

Stephenson replied,

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Posted in London | Also tagged , , and | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Met set to lose £5m from collapse of Icelandic bank

By Mark Pack | Tue 29th June 2010 - 12:20 pm

London’s Metropolitan Policy Authority had £30m deposited with Landsbanki, the Icelandic bank which collapsed in late 2008. Combing through some of the latest financial information from the MPA, it’s clear that the MPA is now expecting (at best) to get 83% of that back, leaving the police with a £5.1m loss.

Ouch. Though not so ouch as to have stopped the £2m a year spent on chauffeur-driven cars for senior Met officers who don’t have a security need for one.

(To put these numbers in some context: the annual cost of a police constable is c.£60,000.)

Posted in London | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

The police’s serious IT failures over stop and search

By Mark Pack | Fri 11th June 2010 - 12:50 pm

The use of stop and search by the police, particularly in London, has often come under criticism. Most often it’s been about ridiculous cases where someone has been stopped or, more seriously, the deeply held suspicion amongst many communities that their members are irrationally singled out by the police for far more searches than their numbers or crime rates justify. This argument about what is sometimes called disproportionality should not only be of concern in terms of wanting to see the police free of discrimination, but also of concern in terms of wanting the police to be using their time …

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Posted in London | Also tagged | 4 Comments
Helen Duffett

Dee Doocey: London Mayor should not take over the Metropolitan Police Authority’s role

By Helen Duffett | Fri 14th May 2010 - 2:59 pm

Commenting on the statement by Theresa May, the new Home Secretary, that she intends to push through plans for directly elected police commissioners, Dee Doocey, the Liberal Democrat London Assembly policing spokesperson and a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority said:

For ten years the Metropolitan Police Service has been accountable to Londoners through a police authority. To now place all that accountability in the hands of one person would be a serious mistake.

“Boris Johnson struggled to even chair the Metropolitan Police Authority, so the idea that he, or indeed any Mayor, could now do the

…

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Posted in London and News | Also tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Innocent people deserve better treatment from Met over DNA database

By Mark Pack | Thu 25th February 2010 - 11:49 pm

A party news release brings the message:

Dee Doocey, the Liberal Democrat London Assembly policing spokesperson and member of the MPA, has today called for the Met to address its poor record of meeting requests by innocent people for the deletion of their DNA records held on a national database.

At present only 24% of the requests from innocent people to have their DNA removed are granted by the Met.

After questioning the Met Commissioner at today’s full meeting of the MPA Dee Doocey said:

“The current situation is totally unsatisfactory. The Met Commissioner has the power to delete the records of innocent …

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Posted in London | Also tagged , and | 11 Comments
Helen Duffett

Road safety advice for Londoners: avoid Boris’s bike

By Helen Duffett | Fri 31st July 2009 - 1:37 pm

You might expect the Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority and the Chair of Transport for London to be a law-abiding, safety-conscious example to the rest of us.

Not when it’s London Mayor, Boris Johnson. At the recent “People’s Question Time” in Croydon, this was his answer to the decline of the traditional English pub:

“I have just one idea, if more people rode bicycles and fewer people drove cars you would not have to worry about the drink driving laws and I sincerely believe that. I have absolutely no prohibition about drinking a pint of two of beer

…

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Posted in London and News | Also tagged , and | 2 Comments
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