Met Commish shortlist down to two

metman

Met head shortlist stands at two


Sir Hugh Orde and Sir Paul Stephenson are the final two vying for the job

The shortlist to become the next commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has been cut to two men.

The competition is now between Acting Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson and Sir Hugh Orde, Chief Constable for Northern Ireland. The two other contenders, chief constables Sir Paul Scott-Lee, of the West Midlands, and Bernard Hogan-Howe, from Merseyside, have been eliminated. Final interviews are expected to be carried out next week. It is believed that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and London Mayor Boris Johnson will both participate in the final stage of the interview process.

Sir Hugh began his career with the Met in 1977 and was deputy assistant commissioner when he left in 2002 to take on the job as head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

Sir Paul started out with Lancashire Constabulary in 1975 and, after becoming a superintendent, spent time with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. In 1994 he was appointed assistant chief constable of Merseyside before moving to Lancashire, where he became chief constable in 2002. In 2005, he moved to the Met, succeeding Sir Ian Blair as deputy commissioner. He became acting head of the country's largest police service when Sir Ian stepped down.

Sir Ian's acrimonious departure from the Met in October of last year set in motion the difficult task of appointing a new top police officer.

Source
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Personally I hope Sir Hugh gets the job. His style of leadership might be just what the job needs at the moment.

deadwood

Canvassing will disqualify, Hugh.

TheNog

Orde seems like a good fella to have in top office. Dont know anything about Stephenson though.

Question I have is why is Boris Johnson involved in the final stages of the recruitment?

CLADA

This will be interesting, didn't Stephenson have a grievance when Orde got the PSNI job?

Anyway my moneys on Orde.

AlekSmart

Interesting to note the level to which RUC/PSNI experience is figuring in the CV`s of many top-cops these days....?

I wonder will we in Èire ever reach a place where the State is self confident enough to engage in a similar selection process to our former Colonial Masters ?

metman

Handling the politics, subversive activity, public order problems and personal risk involved in running the PSNI/RUC certainly looks good on any Chief's CV when applying for London's top job.

Trojan911

metman wrote: »

Handling the politics, subversive activity, public order problems and personal risk involved in running the PSNI/RUC certainly looks good on any Chief's CV when applying for London's top job.

I agree, however, who will push the buttons when the post is filled, The Mayor or The Commissioner?

deadwood

metman wrote: »

Handling the politics, subversive activity, public order problems and personal risk involved in running the PSNI/RUC certainly looks good on any Chief's CV when applying for London's top job.

And they get to say Sittchyayshin quite a lot.

Eru

Being top dog in the RUC / PSNI looks good for both these guys as its recent.

At the first stage I said I would like to work under both so you have to be happy with that however with Orde you have to be weary of his stance on accountability. He is coming from the PSNI which cant fart at the moment without being investigated by the Ombudsman and being constantly in the middle of ****e and wrangling with political parties which are questionable when it comes to policing and thats as delicate as I can put it.

metman

First job for the new Met Chief: bring back the feel-safe factor
Simon Jenkins, 27/01/2009


London is about to get a new police chief, the second biggest job in the capital. No, don't ask. You have no choice. The name will emerge from behind closed doors, assuming the Mayor and the Home Secretary, Boris Johnson and Jacqui Smith, can stop scratching out each other's eyes and agree.

The choice is between the acting head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, and the boss of the Ulster police, Sir Hugh Orde, also formerly with the Met. Both should know where in London the skeletons are hiding. Whether either can get a grip on policing the capital remains to be seen. After a scandal-stained decade, it is as unfit for purpose as were London's docks under Jack Dash and the dockers' mafia - that is, run for the benefit of its staff, not the public.

Londoners need to remember that theirs is a relatively peaceful city not because of the police but because they are mostly a law-abiding and decent people. The police, with noble exceptions, are devoted to a different task, to turning an honest penny from the Government. If the public is safer as a result, that is a bonus.

Like many of my neighbours, I was recently contemplating the relic of my car windscreen after an overnight attack when two police officers sauntered past. They were taking a stroll, they admitted, from a tough afternoon in the sun guarding a local embassy. They detained me for loitering at the scene of a crime before settling down to an hour of enjoyable bureaucracy. This culminated in summoning a response unit, deciding against fingerprints, drawing up statements and asking if I would like a victim counselling programme.

I later recounted this to a constable of my acquaintance, who laughed. "You made their day," he said. "You were a statistic, a crime recorded, a crime resolved (that is, you took no action), a victim supported and a response unit activated. They probably took the rest of the day off."

Ask Londoners what they want of their police and they cry in unison. They can look after their houses and cars but want more police officers to make their streets feel safer, the operative word being "feel". They want an officer who knows local people, shopkeepers and businesses. They want a name.

They do not want a distant force showing off in helicopters, racing cars and blaring sirens at night - the Met's Blade Runner form of civic terrorism. A South African friend says he can always tell when a Test match is in London because of the ceaseless sirens behind the radio commentary.

Londoners are baffled that Boris Johnson refuses to order his police on to the streets, as happened with Rudolph Giuliani in New York. I am told there are roughly 10 New York officers on the streets to one indoors; London's ratio being the opposite. Yet like Ken Livingstone before him, Johnson will not stand up to the police unions and prefers to flood the city instead with an alien army of silent traffic wardens.

The result is a crazy priority. There can be mayhem on the estates, knife fights outside the clubs and chaos in the West End, but no Londoner dares be a minute late on a meter or stray his tyre an inch from a white line. The one London crime to which the Mayor applies zero tolerance is traffic crime. He hates the middle classes. Every Londoner would swap a dozen traffic wardens for just one beat constable, but nobody asks them.

The best way of policing a city, including for terrorism, has always been to have eyes and ears on the street in every neighbourhood. A beat officer not only deters petty crime and is reassuring to the public, he is also a one-stop-shop intelligence service and a focus of community discipline.

For three decades, the story of London's police has been of a relentless drift from that principle, towards the car, the office and pseudo-technology. The Metropolitan Police claims to have put more police on the streets, but do not believe it. More officers are assigned to neighbourhoods but press them and they admit that they hate leaving their stations, and rarely do so on their own and unless on a "target" operation.

The Police Federation insists on officers patrolling in pairs, thus doubling the cost. Covered in weapons and stab vests, they wander even the safest shopping streets two-by-two, chatting to each other and therefore ignoring the public, shopkeepers and any passing crook.

Two policemen are less than half as good as one, and twice as expensive. The Met has not had a chief in decades with the guts to tackle this so-called "four-handed" racket.

The image of the London bobby is no longer that of a reassuring Dixon of Dock Green. It is of two actors playing blood brothers and smashing members of the public in the face. The Met loves this image and has allowed it to re-inforce a macho canteen culture that, for all its sincere efforts, remains sexist and racist.

The task of the new chief is to rid the Met of this gun-toting élitism, exposed by the shocking de Menezes affair. The force is still a coalition of independent fraternities, dealing with riot control, VIP protection, counter-terrorism, drug detection, fraud and "liaising" with everything under the sun. It is a fraternity (never a sorority) to which every constable aspires.

This culture responds to the Home Office target culture, where crime prevention has no meaning unless part of an "operation" attracting overtime, bonuses and ministerial publicity. The recent campaigns against mugging, gun crime and crack houses were presented as if these were not part of everyday policing. Such operations are then validated by bogus statistics, as last month for knife crime.

London's new chief should join his colleagues in Surrey, Leicestershire and other provincial forces in refusing to accede to Jacqui Smith's Home Office targets. They have become a classic of bloodless, brainless, quantitative public service. The dissident forces will answer instead to their publics.

Sir John Stevens, the last Met chief but one, used to complain that he had a dozen points of accountability and it was chaos. Policing London cannot be politics-free, but it should answer to the citizens of London. That means to the Mayor and public opinion.

Public opinion should come first. Ask Londoners what they want from their police, and deliver it. As for the police unions, the Home Office and the target culture, dump them in the Thames, the lot of them.

Source.
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I posted this article as I thought it might be of interest to highlight the anti-police crap that gets published under the guise of respectable journalism. What utter rubbish. Mr Jenkins is clearly living in a part of London where its still 1955 :rolleyes:

The name of the new Commissioner will be released in the next 24 hours.

eroo

Chief of Ulster police??:rolleyes: Someone needs to give him a geography lesson!

CLADA

Excellent article from a man who obviously has his finger on the pulse. Many thanks metman for posting an article most of us would not have seen otherwise.

Hope the new man can turn things around

metman

Yes his insight is staggering. I think his 'constable acquintance' must be Sir Robert Peel.

eroo

CLADA wrote: »

Excellent article from a man who obviously has his finger on the pulse.

Methinks his finger is elsewhere.;):eek::D

Whitewater-AGS

The Police Federation insists on officers patrolling in pairs, thus doubling the cost. Covered in weapons and stab vests, they wander even the safest shopping streets two-by-two, chatting to each other and therefore ignoring the public, shopkeepers and any passing crook.

Above says it all really, the author is clearly living in the past and very anti-police

JonAnderton

Obviously not heard of the proximity patrol policy...

Many boroughs put officers out on there own, as homebeats always were. The sorry sight of seeing single crewed cars is becomming more frequent and PCSO's are supposed to patrol solo but you rarley see this.

and ACPO states that AFO's are only to be deployed in pairs for obvious reasons but the job get around it by saying that they can get backup to any lone AFO in central London within 4 minutes and the Federation agreed to this but, in contradiction, it's 'policy' that AFO's wont conduct stop and search unless there's two officers present???

Eru

JonAnderton wrote: »

Obviously not heard of the proximity patrol policy...

Many boroughs put officers out on there own, as homebeats always were. The sorry sight of seeing single crewed cars is becomming more frequent and PCSO's are supposed to patrol solo but you rarley see this.

and ACPO states that AFO's are only to be deployed in pairs for obvious reasons but the job get around it by saying that they can get backup to any lone AFO in central London within 4 minutes and the Federation agreed to this but, in contradiction, it's 'policy' that AFO's wont conduct stop and search unless there's two officers present???

Lone patrols are dangerous to the officers for no reason other than stupid pr stunts to fool the public.

JonAnderton

BBC and Sky are saying it's Stephenson in the bosses chair...

metman

Looks like Boris and Jacqui opted for the devil they know. An opportunity missed in my view.

TheNog

Sir Paul Stephenson is to become the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, BBC News understands.

Sir Paul, 55, who was deputy to the previous chief Sir Ian Blair, was chosen ahead of Sir Hugh Orde, the Chief Constable for Northern Ireland.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith made the decision but conducted interviews with London Mayor Boris Johnson, whose backing the new chief requires.

Sir Ian quit as Met chief, saying he did not have the mayor's support.

His tenure, which began in February 2005, had seen a number of controversies including the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, mistaken for a suicide bomber.

Sir Paul, who had been deputy for four years, took over as acting commissioner when his former boss stepped down in December. The Home Office had been so keen to keep it under wraps it physically drove the letter confirming Sir Paul's appointment round to the Queen for her to sign

David Thompson, BBC News


Profile: New Met chief

Days later, he faced tough questions after the arrest of Tory frontbencher Damian Green by officers investigating leaks from the Home Office.

The resulting furore put Sir Paul into the media spotlight and left politicians outraged at the search of the MP's Commons office.

But BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Savage said it is understood his handling of the arrest worked in his favour during the selection process.

He said the episode showed Sir Paul was prepared to stand up for officers who took a difficult decision, rather than pass the buck.

Our correspondent added: "Sir Paul is described as a gritty, no nonsense copper, who likes an argument."

His new role at Scotland Yard commands a £253,000 salary and combines regional and national responsibilities.

Leading a staff of more than 50,000 and overseeing a £3.5bn budget, Sir Paul will be expected to continue the fight against terrorism, lead police strategy nationwide and secure the 2012 Olympic Games.

Distinguished careers

The two final candidates for the vacated position had been seen as evenly matched.

Both men have distinguished careers spanning more than 30 years, counter-terrorism experience, and perform well in the spotlight.

Sir Hugh began his career with the Met in 1977 and was deputy assistant commissioner when he left in 2002 to take on the job as head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

Two other contenders, chief constables Sir Paul Scott-Lee, of the West Midlands force, and Bernard Hogan-Howe, from Merseyside, had earlier been eliminated from the running.

Sir Paul Stephenson started out with Lancashire Constabulary in 1975 and, after becoming a superintendent, spent time with the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

In 1994 he was appointed assistant chief constable of Merseyside before moving to Lancashire, where he became chief constable in 2002.

In February 2005, he moved to the Met, to fill Sir Ian's role when he stepped up to the top job.

So far his role has included the oversight of strategy, modernisation and performance.

Sir Paul was awarded the Queen's Policing Medal for services to policing in May 2000 and received a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours List last June.

Source

Trojan911

metman wrote: »

Looks like Boris and Jacqui opted for the devil they know. An opportunity missed in my view.

Probably more easier to handle than Orde, toe the line etc.

Or was it Ordes' off duty antics that ruled him out?

Eru

Sounds like a good choice too be honest. I like the part about sticking up for the poor copper having to make the calls on the spot. Hope its true and he doesnt become a politician.

miceal

Looks like Orde has gotten a promotion after being passed over for the Met job

Source

http://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/national-news/psni-chief-orde-to-take-up-new-job-in-britain-1710637.html

PSNI chief constable Hugh Orde is set to become the new president of the British Association of Chief Police Officers.

The 50-year-old took on the PSNI job nearly seven years ago after previously working with the Stevens Inquiry into police collusion in the Pat Finucane murder.

He is widely respected across the political divide and his term has coincided with Sinn Fein's decision to endorse the PSNI and take up its seats on the Policing Board.

Mr Orde is expected to stay in the North until the end of the summer Orange marching season, after which a full competition will have to be held to find his successor.

300th post

Our man in Havana

Does he remain as a chief constable in his new role? Will he be attached to any constabulary?

eroo

Bond-007 wrote: »

Does he remain as a chief constable in his new role? Will he be attached to any constabulary?

No to both going on RTE.