Does London need a police force? Outside of certain socialist sects, the question will seem absurd. Why would anybody ask whether the largest city in Western Europe needs an overarching structure to coordinate its police officers?

Yet since the publication of Louise Casey’s review into the culture of the Metropolitan Police, it’s a question on the minds of several leading publications. “It’s time to abolish the Met Police” was the headline of one article on Open Democracy, with the author calling for police to step down in the UK and abroad.

More mildly, The Guardian’s Owen Jones said the Met “must be given its final rites and buried for good”. Paul Mason makes a similar argument in The New Statesman under a headline claiming that “abolishing the Met is the only option left”.

To be fair to such writers, Casey’s review gives plenty of reasons why dismantling London’s main police force would be attractive. Included in the review’s more stinging observations is the fact it has been “bookended” by the convictions of two Met officers: Sarah Everard’s murderer Wayne Couzens at the start and serial rapist David Carrick at the end.

What’s really proposed is far drabber than the top line would imply

Many will have also heard about the many unpleasant incidents cited in the report to stand up its finding of “institutional racism, sexism and homophobia” in the Met. 

Amongst the lowlights is one Muslim officer who “found bacon left in my boots inside my locked locker”. In initiation rituals worthy of the worst university sports clubs, women were forced to eat cheesecake until they vomited. Officers were encouraged to delete WhatsApp messages after unsavoury exchanges between members of the Charing Cross force were published to widespread public outrage.

Coupled with the risible rate of arrests and convictions for crimes including burglary, violence and rape, you might well be persuaded by Jones’ suggestion of “rolling back the very frontiers of policing”. You might even think his suggestion to send mental health workers to crime scenes instead is unlikely to yield worse results.

There is a fashion for such views. Ever since the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 brought calls to “defund the police” across the Atlantic, proposing to abolish any institution charged with malfeasance — bigotry the worst crime amongst them — has become almost de rigueur.

Organisations lately nominated for extinction include the Treasury, for hoarding too much power, and the Home Office — ostensibly for incompetence and cruelty, but also, one senses, for actually trying to enforce an immigration policy.

Such arguments mirror calls in the United States to abolish everything from the Department of Education to its Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit — showing that such drastic action is not confined to one political creed. Dominic Cummings would be happy to fire most of Whitehall, rehire a small per centage of staff and build the whole thing again.

Cummings’ extreme proposal reveals the falseness of the whole enterprise. Read into the demands of the self-styled abolitionists, and what’s really proposed is far drabber than the top line would imply.

It’s true that a small portion, such as Jones, wish to redirect the effort spent on policing towards tackling poverty, homelessness and mental ill health. Less radical abolitionists are really calling for the dread term: reorganisation.

Even Mason, a man leftwing enough to have backed Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader, argues only that the bodyguarding unit of the Met should be reassembled, whilst the MO19 firearms unit would be merely subject to another round of vetting.

His most radical proposal is that some of the Met’s wider-ranging functions, including anti-terrorism work and airport security, be reassigned to the National Crime Agency — a move which would perhaps finally justify its nickname as the British FBI. “The Met needs to become an ordinary city police force, under democratic scrutiny and control,” Mason writes.

At some point Bromley and Croydon officers will have to talk to one another

If this is abolition, it’s the kind that 19th century slaveholders could have got behind. Why are people using the word to describe the kind of department shuffling that British governments do as a matter of course?

Ironically, some of it must be to affect the kind of toughness that the police’s critics so dislike in security forces. It’s a cheap insult to accuse others of being radical poseurs, but accuracy needn’t come at a premium.

One can understand that “new governance for the Met” isn’t the kind of placard dreamt of by student politicians. Nor does it inspire eager finger taps on smartphones that generate social media kudos.

Whilst basic news sense dictates that the accusations of discrimination led much of the coverage of the Casey report, her first conclusion is the more banally damning: that there are “systemic and fundamental problems in how the Met is run”. That section of the report makes very well the case against abolishing the Met. The problem, it says, “is not its size but its inadequate management”. The force is made up of “disconnected and competing moving parts, lacking clear systems, goals or strategies”.

The Met lacks a workforce plan or a strategic assessment of its needs and skills, whilst its demand modelling is “outdated”. Personnel management is a total mess, and various parts of the organisation are underfunded or overworked. The report is not a call for abolishing the Met so much as properly resourcing and integrating it.

That will chime with those of the equally banal view that London needs a city-wide police force. There are arguments to be had about exactly how it is organised, but at some point Bromley and Croydon officers will have to talk to one another.

The alternative is to import the American model in which a web of federal, state and local police compete against each other to solve crime. Whilst admittedly a rich vein for police procedurals, it appears suboptimal from a crime fighting perspective. Perhaps the Casey report has advice for them, too.