Nearly 50 Metropolitan Police officers and 26 staff members have been suspended for alleged corruption over the past two years, according to figures obtained through a Freedom of Information request. Of the 47 officers suspended, eleven were subsequently convicted.
The Metropolitan Police said suspensions did not imply guilt, but that all allegations were taken extremely seriously. The figures cover the period from April 2012 to March 2014, during which a total of 222 officers were suspended, with alleged corruption cited as the main reason.
A report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) in January warned that the threat of corrupt activity to the Met remains significant. The report noted that in the financial year 2013-14, the Met's Department of Professional Standards conducted 419 investigations into behaviour likely to involve corruption, including drug offences, bribery, theft, fraud, dishonesty, sexual misconduct and unauthorised disclosure of information.
These investigations resulted in 69 officers and staff being dismissed, retiring or resigning. The HMIC report highlighted that the biggest threat now comes from exploitation of staff through inappropriate relationships with journalists, private investigators and criminals, rather than the previous pattern of specialist squad officers with corrupt associations.
Notable cases include former Ealing borough commander Det Ch Supt Andy Rowell, sacked for giving details of a sensitive police investigation to a journalist, and Det Ch Insp April Casburn, jailed for 15 months for offering to sell information to the News of the World. Other cases involve officers convicted of theft, assault, possession of cocaine, publishing obscene videos, making indecent images of children, sexual touching, and publishing an extreme pornographic image showing bestiality.
