Police ‘scared’ to tell recruits what to do over fears of misconduct claims, former detective says

Police officers are terrified to tell junior recruits what to do in case they are accused of misconduct, the real-life inspiration for the lead detective in Prime Suspect has said.

Jackie Malton, a former Scotland Yard detective, said there was a “culture of fear” among officers.

She said one had told her that policing had become “cannibalistic”, with junior recruits increasingly making complaints about “really minor stuff” against more senior staff.

Ms Malton said that while she encouraged reporting of inappropriate behaviour in the wake of recent scandals, misconduct proceedings were now regularly being used to deal with minor complaints.

The Metropolitan Police embarked on a concerted clean-up process in the wake of Sarah Everard’s murder by Wayne Couzens and the 2023 conviction of serial rapist David Carrick.

Ms Malton, who was the inspiration for DCI Jane Tennison in the Prime Suspect drama, said that complaints were now often being made against officers by new recruits for minor issues, such as if they were asked to do something they didn’t want to do.

She said: “I would probably be chucked out within a day if I said, ‘Pc X, I want you to go and do this and do that.’

“They can say now: ‘I don’t want to do that.’ You get people who are saying, ‘Actually, you know, I don’t really want to do that.’

“The examples I’ve been given are just normal policing requests. It’s nothing fantastic. But nevertheless, they are fundamental jobs. As a police officer, you’re expected to do them. That’s your job.”

Ms Malton said she spent three hours on Thursday night listening to the experience of one serving Met officer who was facing misconduct proceedings, and was about to hand in his notice.

She described him as a “truly dedicated, kind, compassionate” officer who “thought outside the box”.

“The word he used, which I found shocking, was cannibalistic. They’re all being eaten up. You know, officers are eating up each other. That is what he meant.”

She said the officer, who after speaking with her decided not to resign, had told her “everything turns into a complaint”.

She believes front-line officers were being “thrown under the bus” and put through unnecessary misconduct proceedings to boost the number of cases forces could say they were “uncovering”.

She added: “If a junior police officer talks to a supervisor about it, the supervisor says, ‘Oh yeah, make a complaint. Make a complaint.’ They encourage it.

“Whereas what I would have done is a resolution on the spot, a quiet word in the officer’s ear, and asked them, ‘How do you feel about that? Tell me what your intentions were,’ etcetera.”

While there were clearly officers who should be kicked out and sanctioned, Ms Malton said, there were a number of “middle ranking” officers who just wanted to “justify their existence” by authorising more misconduct proceedings.

A backlog of cases

The number of complaints made against Met police officers has risen rapidly in the past few years, from 842 officers facing misconduct allegations in 2019 to 2,284 in 2023, the last year for which figures are available.

Last year, the Met carried out 1,051 gross misconduct investigations, an 80 per cent increase on the previous year.

Because of the increased reporting of abuse, there is a large backlog of cases waiting to be heard; in February this year, there were 377 officers awaiting gross misconduct hearings.

Ms Malton praised Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Commissioner, for his attempts to clean up the force but said the reporting of minor matters as misconduct had now become “too extreme”.

Ms Malton, who retired from Scotland Yard as a detective chief inspector in 1997, was one of four female DCIs in her Hammersmith-based squad when Linda La Plante worked with her for six months while researching her police series about a woman detective. Ms Malton later became the model for Dame Helen Mirren’s character.

A Met spokesman said: “The commissioner has commented several times recently on the urgent need for police accountability reform. That said, we absolutely don’t recognise the claims of officers trying to boost the number of hearings in the way that is alleged.”