Met police placed in special measures due to litany of new ‘systemic’ failings

Exclusive: watchdog's decision follows nearly 70,000 unrecorded crimes and errors in stop and search

The policing inspectorate's unprecedented decision to place the Metropolitan police into special measures followed the uncovering of a litany of new systemic" failings in fighting crime and serving victims, with tens of thousands of crimes going unrecorded and errors in stop and search.

The decision was taken by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and follows an inspection that found 14 fresh significant failings, coming on top of a flood of scandals chilling" in their damage to public confidence.

Performance falling far short of national standards for the handling of emergency and non-emergency calls, including too many instances of failure to assess vulnerability and repeat victimisation, failures to provide crime prevention advice and failures to properly advise victims on how to preserve evidence."

A barely adequate standard of crime recording accuracy, with an estimated 69,000 crimes going unrecorded each year, less than half of crime recorded within 24 hours, and almost no crimes recorded when victims report antisocial behaviour against them."

Failing to tell some victims investigations into their crime were being dropped.

Not seeking or considering victims' views.

Poor supervision of some investigations and failures in public protection.