Sir Mark Rowley will become the new metropolitan police commissioner, having won the main job in law enforcement promising to emerge from the crisis the UK’s largest force.
Rowley, 57, a former counter-terrorism chief who left the Met in 2018, was selected above Met Deputy Commissioner Nick Ephgrave, the other candidate to reach the final list of two.
He returns to find that Britain’s largest force is facing one of the worst crises since its founding in 1829. The police inspection has put it on special measures for the first time in its history.
The last commissioner, Cressida Dick, was sacked in February after a fight with Sadiq Khan. The mayor of London was unconvinced that he could restore the collapsing public confidence, which was undermined by a series of scandals, leadership failures and poor performance in the service of the victims.
The Met commissioner is formally appointed by royal order of the queen. The choice was made by Interior Minister Priti Patel, who had to take into account the views of Khan, who is also the capital’s police and crime commissioner.
The announcement came weeks earlier than expected. A Whitehall informant said it was because the prime minister’s office, which is often involved in major police appointments despite having no formal role, could not interfere this week due to the crisis surrounding Boris Johnson.
A process followed in which a panel ranked applicants in two after reading their proposals for work. Rowley and Ephgrave then took part in oral interviews, before facing further questions from former police minister Kit Malthouse, followed by the mayor of London on Wednesday. Patel held her interviews on Thursday, having been hooked on the Johnson saga the day before.
Rowley presented a 100-day plan to start turning the Met around, aware that more scandals and setbacks would come, with part of the force’s leadership denying the organization’s serious problems.
Rowley appeared in 2017, but lost to Dick and has been working in the private sector since he left police four years ago. He is a former Surrey police chief and spent most of his police career outside the Met, beginning with the West Midlands Force.
Even his critics in policing accept that he is intellectually brilliant, but he now faces the series of greatest challenges any modern-day commissioner has faced.
The salary of the Met commissioner is £ 293,000 a year.
Since Dick’s departure, his deputy, Sir Stephen House, has been acting commissioner. Several Met leaders are expected to leave in the coming months.
Ephgrave was a surprise choice to make the last two, having been a trusted lieutenant for Dick’s five years in charge of the Met, in which the force’s reputation plummeted.
Following the imprisonment of Met officer Wayne Couzens for a lifetime after he kidnapped and murdered Sarah Everard, Ephgrave said women could get off a bus if they were worried about an officer approaching the street. He added that the scandal meant the Met needed to “examine our own culture”.
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Scandals over race, homophobia and the treatment of women have affected the Met, but it was management and response from management that alarmed the government and the City Council, as well as the defensive perception of Dick.
Rowley joined the Met in 2011 and in 2014 had become head of the fight against terrorism, facing the threat of the Islamic State and its ability to attract young British people to its campaign of violence. This was joined by a rise from the far right.
He was at the forefront and under strong pressure in 2017 after a wave of attacks in the UK, centered in London and Manchester. Rowley is married to a lawyer and holds a degree in mathematics from St Catharine’s College, Cambridge.