It is axiomatic to state that police is reflection of society; inversely, it implies that all police organizations have to keep pace with their societies and have to reform with changing times. In the context of police and policing, the Metropolitan Police London (the Met) is considered a very revered name, at least, in the Commonwealth countries. It has usually set high standards of policing. It is, however, not infallible. It is a large organization comprising more than 43000 police officers and it consumes about 25% of the police budget for England and Wales. With this size and scale, problems and issues are likely to occur. One such event that shook the reputational foundations of the Met was the rape and murder of Sarah Everard, a marketing executive of a digital company on 3rd March, 2021. After investigation, it transpired that a police constable, Wayne Couzens, a firearms officer in the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection (PaDP) had used his position to stop Sarah on her way back home. After stopping her, he kidnapped, raped and murdered her. On trial, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced for life. One of the factors that weigh against him was his position of police officer that he had used to stop Sarah. The Met noted in its initial notes that Wayne was not a regular police officer of the Met and had been transferred to the Met from the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. The incident was strongly reacted to by public. In response, the government appointed Baroness Casey to carry out the Review of the Met. The then Police Commissioner of the Met, Dame Cressida Dick, agreed on the terms of reference and commissioned the Review to Baroness Casey of Blackstock (the Review).
The Casey Review
The Review started in October, 2021 and its final report was submitted in March, 2023. It was an exhaustive exercise in which police, public and other stakeholders were consulted and various surveys were carried out. The report comprised ten chapters that covered different aspects of the Met. The thrust of the report was on the clarity, communication and adherence to the standards of behaviour of police officers in the Met. In essence, it tried to capture the reasons behind the internal culture of the London Police. As the police and policing in Pakistan have their roots in the Common Law system that provides the operational and organizational legal framework of policing, it will be useful to examine whether there are any lessons from the Casey Review that may be of any relevance to Pakistan. The study of the Review clearly shows that there are more than one themes that must be considered by police leadership in Pakistan in firming up their views about police reforms in Pakistan; five of these lessons are:
- Gaining Public Trust
The very first chapter of the Review explains that there was a wide gap between the priorities of the police leadership and the public (Londoners). This gap is result of many factors that include dynamic nature of population of London that is unique in many ways. For example, 4 out of 10 persons are born out of the UK and speak over 300 languages. Over 66% of the population associates itself to religion which is much above 57% average in other regions of the UK. Resultantly, the operational priorities being set by police leadership are different from the expectations of Londoners; this difference leads to lack of public trust in the Met. In terms of numbers, for example, the public trust in the Met fell from a high point of 89% in March 2017 to low of 66% in March of 2022. This information is equally relevant to Pakistan where police response to urbanization and community engagement are not ideal. Responding to this, the Police Order, 2002, unlike its predecessor legislation, the colonial Police Act, 1861 that emphasized on the mechanical approach to towards people by declaring police as an ‘instrument’, opted to link policing to the aspirations and rights of people. This intention of the 2002 law, however, did not survive the realpolitik of Pakistan that saw its reversal and revival of 1861 law in the provinces of the Sindh and Balochistan.
- Better Police Administration
The Review dedicated, at least, two chapters on the organizational and management issues related to the Met. About its organization, the Review stated:
“The Met is run as a set of disconnected and competing moving parts, lacking clear systems, goals or strategies. It runs on a series of uncoordinated and short lived initiatives, long on activity but short on action.”
About its management, the Review noted:
“The management of people is poor. The Met’s processes do not effectively root out bad officers…”
Likewise, about the composition of force, it recorded:
“…the Met has remained largely white and largely male. If recruitment continues on its current trajectory, it will take at least another thirty years, until 2053, to reach gender balance. It will take even longer, until 2061, to reach 46% Black, Asian and ethnic minority representation-what is needed to be representative of London today…”
About the police leadership, the Review stated:
“…we are concerned by the disconnection between chief officers, senior officers and frontline officers.”
These observations are painful but inform on the actual state of affairs in the Met. The position of police leadership in Pakistan is, unfortunately, no different. Serious disconnect between the federally recruited officer ‘class’ that is styled as the Police Service of Pakistan and the provincially recruited frontline officers can be discerned. The provincial organizations are also modeled on rural approach of crime prevention that is fragmented and less responsive. The Police Order, 2002 tried to address this aspect by proposing different arrangement for urban centres. Insofar as the gender balance is concerned, there has been some improvement to this effect and due to reserved quota of women, now the numbers of women in police are increasing, but in terms of gender parity, these are still much low and the mainstreaming of women police officers in operational police is still a challenge.
- Addressing ‘Frontline Policing’
The Review explained ‘frontline policing’ as:
“Frontline policing is the part of the Met that connects most with Londoners day to day…”
Frontline policing, the Review noted, got restructured in 2018 when long established 32 Boroughs Operational Command Units (OCUs) were restructured into 12 Basic Command Units (BCUs) each having five teams relating to emergency response, negihbourhood (undertaking community policing functions), Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Public Protection and Headquarters (for non-operational work). These BCUs have an average of 18,818 officers (about 40% of the total strength of the Met). After analyzing different aspects of the working, the Review states that BCUs are ‘beleaguered frontline’ which is ‘over-stretched and under-resourced’. When compared to Pakistan, the state of frontline policing is much worst. The basic unit of frontline policing is a police station that has to deal with all the work under the sun from security to protection to investigation to aid to other departments to judicial work. There is a little or no time for local policing. Reorganization and budgeting are long overdue. The impact of experiment of introducing police station budgeting in the Islamabad Capital Territory Policing, Khyber Pakhtunkhawa and Sindh has not been examined. The administration and financial management are mostly centralized at provincial level. The Police Order, 2002 has as a principle acknowledged that police should be ‘service oriented’, but much is to be done to actualize this in practice.
- Protection of Women & Children
In the chapter titled as public protection, the Review examined the state of protection of children and women separately. On child protection, it stated:
‘The Met has not listened and not learned’. On women and girls protection, it stated that ‘the response by police is not good enough’. The negative reviews about the Met show that one of the best and most trusted police organizations in the world has shown limited progress in this area. However, from viewpoint of design of police reforms in Pakistan, it can help to understand that nations put special premium in protecting the vulnerable segments of their societies. Pakistan has to invest heavily in this area. The latest Anti-Rape Act of 2021 has many gaps that limit its implementation. Justice and police sector reforms must accord highest priority to protection of children and women in their agendas. The Police Order, 2002 acknowledged this and provided for statutory responsibility of police to do so, but actual implementation will take years before the matter gets centrality in public policy domain. Another issue that was discussed in the Review that must be noted for shaping police reforms in Pakistan is the role of women police officers in the police organizations. The Review noted that ‘sexism was in plain sight on visits. We observed women being spoken over, put down and their views dismissed as inaccurate’. In case of Pakistan where the society has yet to accept the role of working women in general, women police officers face lot of pressures including about their performance and about their mainstreaming. Any meaningful reform effort in Pakistan’s police reforms’ discourse will require to address this issue as well.
- Better Governance & Comprehensive Accountability
The Met has ‘statutory tripartite system of governance’ that involves Mayor and the Home Secretary and the Police Commissioner. As this governance scheme is asymmetrical, it has not produced effective accountability mechanisms resulting in ‘…no ultimate sanctions in policing’. The Review referred to Lord Patten’s typology of accountability (that he noted in his Report on establishing new police for Northern Ireland in 1999) that talks about democratic accountability (to elected representatives), legal accountability (to check abuse of power), financial accountability (to check value for money) and internal accountability (internal controls by senior police officers) and then analysed different aspects of the Met on the basis of this typology. There are two broad issues that can inform police reforms in Pakistan from this: one, the governance structure should be straightforward with authority and responsibility lying at one place and two, besides holding police officers individually accountable, the whole police organization should also be held accountable towards public at large in terms of service delivery and responsiveness. It may be noted that police accountability in Pakistan is fragmented. Legally, the accountability of the much hyped issue of ‘police corruption’ has been kept with anti-corruption organizations like the Anti-Corruption Establishments of the provinces and the police leadership’s role has been confined only to ‘efficiency and discipline’ with paltry penal regimes.
The purpose of highlighting these lessons is not to compare the Met with any of Pakistan’s police organizations; these two belong to different societies and are not comparable. But the exercise of poring through the Review was to infer ideas that can be applied to design of police reforms in Pakistan.
“I found this article to be very informative and insightful. The author does a great job of highlighting the challenges facing police reform in Pakistan, and I agree that the Casey Review can provide some valuable lessons. I hope that this article will help to spark a conversation about how to improve the police force in Pakistan, and I look forward to seeing what reforms are implemented in the future.”