So when an independent legal chair of the kangaroo court fails to sack an officer. This Muppet thinks the CC should have the right to over rule the decision!! As for undermining public trust. What has ever happened to any of the SMT who routinely blow millions of pounds on failed IT projects. Or lead forces into the being placed into special measures because of their mismanagement. Answer absolutely nothing as in most cases they move on to another force and repeat the cycle again. Yet again the focus is on having a go at the only people who are daily risking their lives for an increasingly hostile public who are being brainwashed into this anti police view by the constant drip drip of negative MSM. Just as an aside watched a tv interview with the Portuguese athlete who got pulled over by the Met the other day. Shocking interview. Got away with slagging the police off once again and not once was he asked why he failed to stop( footage shown shows him being overtaken by marked police car with blues on and he drove round it and sped off) refusing to open the car door. That is the kind of poison the MSM is guilty of spreading on a daily basis.

I am not sure how MARSH can distinguish between objective evidence of harm to the reputation of the service and subjective media commentary. They are intertwined. He talks about Misconduct panels consideration of the scale and depth of local and national concerns of the behaviour in question when those local and national concerns are mainly driven by subjective media commentary.

The disciplinary process changes are yet another example of "reforms" imposed on policing by an out of touch Government, who clearly anticipated the change would result in greater public confidence in the process. The logic of the change was that independent LQCs would be better judges of alleged misconduct than had been the case when panels were chaired by officers. In reality LQCs doubtlessly are fairer and probably therefore better judges, hence a lower percentage of the cases they hear result in a dismissal. The fact is that there is no harsher judge of a corrupt or deviant officer than another police officer, so the change has almost certainly resulted in fewer officers being forced out than would otherwise have been the case. Doubtless disappointing the architects of this change. This intervention by the CoP will probably change very little in reality as LQCs are independent and they will rightly continue to judge each case and the appropriate outcome of each case on its merits. Still, it makes for a good headline for the CoP when this topic is guaranteed to attract media coverage.

Rather like Rowley who wasted millions on IT while DCC in Surrey, now appointed Commissioner of the Met.

To change the subject slightly, does anyone else think that Andy Marsh looks a bit like Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket?

So Marsh is saying that independent legally qualified chairs of Gross Misconduct hearings should not be independent after all! What arrogance. Experienced chairs should follow the evidence based upon the facts at hand. Whilst the VAWG agenda brings policing in to a new era of self loathing owing the actions of Couzens. The true independence of chairs should be left intact to preserve the integrity of the process and outcomes.

This article must be one of the rare instances where College Of Policing and common sense appear in the same sentence.

I had to refresh my memory of Gunnery sergeant Hartman from a clip of him introducing himself to the recruits. Yes, I can see that.

Interesting. So legally trained and independent chairs should be replaced due to not enough dismissals...... Perhaps judges / magistrates should also be replaced with cops to improve criminal conviction rates ?. Errrrm. Perhaps the misconduct did not warrant dismissal in the first place !.Kangaroo court.

There's a concern here that public opinion and outrage is actually a loud and aggressive social media minority with an agenda and a media that are no longer independent.

Yet another article about how the police need to be more transparent/rooting out bad officers. It already happens! In fact a teacher friend of mine told me how transparent she thought the police were compared to other public services. Far more I would add. That’s the absolute irony of it. Loud mouth journalists, lawyers, politicians. anti police outriders, outside observers seem to think that they are unaccountable. As somebody had noted before, PSD (mostly made up of police) are far better at getting rid of bad officers than say the IOPC

I don't disagree that the small number of bad apples should be rooted out, however I am concerned that the drip drip of stories such as this suggests to the wider public that we have a major problem with dishonest, violent officers who can't be trusted. we are not America, we don't have their problems or their guns to deal with. I would love to have more general support than constant criticism. its a far harder job to do today and people who criticise from their ivory towers would do well to remember that.

There is so much talk about police officers need to reflect our society so when we find a bad apple in the midst we seemed shocked and it is the end of the world however the same can't be said for the general public as it is an everyday thing. If our selection processes were tighter and more stringent then we could weed out these failures before they start. I remember back in the late 80's when I was involved in recruitment we ran a three day extended process and the candidates were tested in numerous ways and even watched in their spare time in the evenings which when relaxed it became very clear in the general discussions that some person might have a point of view that wasn't conducive to policing - that was then tested further and the person 99% of the time failed the final interview. Surely spending the money in the first place makes it cheaper in the long run.

All this and yet if you are Novlett or is it Novelty Williams a black female lesbian Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police you can get away with being a child pornographer and registered sex offender. And before anyone starts I'm BME myself

Pathfinder1960 you speak with experience and with common sense ,sadly 2 basic factors lacking in many in seniority who determine where policing is going both in Officer roles and in Civilian Management roles. Society will suffer for it and the public will get the police service they so clearly want and deserve.