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Last year, part one of Elish Angiolini’s government-commissioned inquiry into the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens, an off-duty police officer, considered how that outrage happened. The recently released part two of the Angiolini inquiry is just as devastating: a reminder of what happens when policing fails to face the harm in its own ranks. It confirms what the public already suspects, and many officers know: the predatory behaviour of Couzens and others like him doesn’t just slip through the cracks – it survives in the gaps created by weak supervision, flawed vetting and a culture in which silence feels safer than speaking up.
Policing’s greatest challenge is not crime, but a corrosive mindset shaped by relentless demand, inadequate leadership and structural weaknesses across a broken system. Unless we confront that truth with honesty and humility, we will fail both the public and those who serve them.
When I came to the UK from India 20 years ago, I was struck by the quiet authority of British policing – professional, restrained and rooted in consent. That early impression shaped my belief in what policing can and should be. Since then, I have seen policing at its best, but also the strain behind the uniform, and a culture that punishes reflection instead of learning from it. The findings of the Angiolini inquiry show what that culture costs.
The problems revealed are not isolated scandals; they are symptoms of deeper failures in supervision, accountability and courage. In her report into police culture and standards of behaviour, Louise Casey warned of a service at risk of losing its moral compass. BBC Panorama, with its undercover investigation into officer wrongdoing at Charing Cross police station in central London, and other similar inquiries, have exposed behaviour that has no place in any public institution, least of all one with coercive powers.
Yet the fractures in trust do not just affect the relationship between the police and the public; they are starkly evident within policing too. Over a fifth of officers have been involved in a misconduct case in which the perpetrator was another officer, and witnesses outnumber victims three to one. Nearly half of our officers do not trust their forces to handle internal misconduct properly.
Women are almost three times more likely than men to be victims in these cases, and ethnic minority officers report higher dissatisfaction and greater fear of reporting. Among officers with fewer than five years’ service, 44% say fear stops them from reporting the misconduct they see. Silence becomes a survival strategy – the very dynamic that allowed the offenders described in the Angiolini inquiry to thrive.
Let’s be clear: a service that cannot protect its own people cannot expect to earn the trust of the public. Some will argue the federation’s job is simply to defend officers. But protection without accountability is not protection at all. The public can’t feel safe, and neither can officers.
That is why early in the new year, for the first time, we are launching the victim and witness support programme, offering confidential advice and welfare support for officers who are victims or witnesses of misconduct. It includes strict ethical walls, confidentiality protections and an option to seek support from a central, impartial team – foundations of a system people can trust.
But support mechanisms alone, however welcome, will not change culture. For that to happen, leaders at every level must decide that silence is no longer acceptable. For too long, policing has met scrutiny with defensiveness and treated challenge as disloyalty. Renewal demands that we reward honesty and protect those who speak it.
We must also face the pressures shaping policing today. A third of our members say low pay has pushed them or their families into debt this year; some have used food banks. Exhaustion and financial strain weaken judgment, morale and the ability to uphold the standards the public rightly expect.
There is a phrase I often use: we cannot fix what we will not face. A harsh mirror has been held up to policing and whether we like what we see is beside the point; what matters now is whether we have the courage to act on it.
I still believe in the founding idea of British policing: service by consent. But consent relies on trust, inside policing as well as outside it. Rebuilding that trust demands humility, not slogans, and for the police, it must begin with confronting the harm in our own house.
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Mukund Krishna is chief executive of the Police Federation of England & Wales
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