Equality and diversity in Specialist Crime Directorate

Report: 11
Date: 7 February 2008
By: the Assistant Commissioner Specialist Crime on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

This report provides an update on equality and diversity in Specialist Crime Directorate (SCD) since the last report in January 2007. It summarises the work undertaken by SCD, provides details of its relationship with the Diversity and Citizen Focus Directorate (DCFD), outlines SCD’s Diversity Strategy, and compares the profile of SCD’s officers and staff with last year. The report describes what SCD OCUs are doing to increase recruitment from ethnic groups and to challenge the perception that BME colleagues are under represented in the management structure.

A. Recommendations

That members note the report.

B. Supporting information

The work undertaken by SCD

1. Specialist Crime Directorate (SCD) is responsible for reducing the impact of serious and organised crime and counteracting the human cost in the damage and harm caused to individuals, neighbourhoods and communities. SCD provides support to specialist operations, Borough OCUs and works with a wide range of partners in both public and private sectors.

2. SCD’s strategic objectives are:

• To provide covert assets (human and technical) to deliver operational support to meet the SCD and MPS objectives through a recognised tasking process
• To safeguard children and young persons from physical, sexual and emotional abuse
• To protect London from the activities of criminals targeting our economy, institutions and communities
• To deliver the highest standards for homicide and serious crime investigation and to prevent homicide by using disruption tactics
• To provide a corporate-level intelligence service for London
• To disrupt criminal networks, seize their assets and reduce the harm they cause
• To increase the number of offences bought to justice as a result of forensic intervention
• To work in accordance with MPS leadership values
• To be a well managed, effective, efficient and professional Directorate.

3. The operational command areas were described in detail in our previous report. There have subsequently been some changes to SCD’s structure and the current Operational Command Units (OCUs) are summarised below.

• Homicide & Other Serious Crime is responsible for all murder across London; manslaughter and attempted murder offences; high-risk missing persons; linked series of two or more stranger rapes; other critical incidents which require support due to their serious nature, complexity, or organisational risk.
• Child Abuse Investigation Command deals with child protection and paedophile issues, working closely with colleagues in Territorial Policing and in other child agencies.
• Economic and Specialist Crime includes fraud; dedicated cheque and plastic crime; money laundering investigation; stolen vehicles; arts and antiques; computer crime; extradition and international assistance, regional asset recovery and human trafficking.
• Serious Crime and Criminal Networks investigates commercial robberies by firearms; kidnaps; extortion; blackmail; contract killings; class A drugs suppliers; firearms users and traffickers.
• Trident is responsible for the investigation of murders and non-fatal shootings committed with ‘lethal barrelled weapons’. Trident teams investigate shootings where the victim and suspect are from the black community; Trafalgar teams investigate non-fatal shootings where the victim and suspect are from other distinct communities. Equality and diversity in the Trident OCU is the subject of a separate report to this meeting.
• Covert Policing comprises a number of units that provide covert operations and policing, including surveillance teams; technical support unit; special intelligence section; authorities office; telephone intelligence; prison intelligence; witness albums; covert source management; covert operations group and Crimestoppers.
• Forensic Services offer corporate services including specialist evidence recovery imaging services, fingerprint bureau, forensic development and services for Territorial Policing, Specialist Operations, Central Operations and Specialist Crime.
• The Met Intelligence Bureau (MIB) was launched on 2 April 2007 and brought together a number of intelligence units and functions from across the MPS. MIB provides comprehensive intelligence support to tackle the priority issues for London. Although located in SCD, the MIB is a resource for the whole of the MPS and has a key responsibility to provide the intelligence that will drive corporate Tasking and Co-ordination.
• Operational Information Services (OIS) brings together the Disclosure Service, Police National Computer Bureau, Overseas Visitors Records Office and Personnel Security Vetting. OIS represents an opportunity for the MPS to deliver information in support of organisational objectives, particularly in relation to the security and integrity of the service and the safety of children and vulnerable groups.
• The Crime Academy provides all detective training in the MPS and a co-ordinated approach to investigative, forensic and intelligence training from the initial investigation at a scene of a crime through to presenting evidence at court.

4. SCD’s Director, Business Support, is the Command Team lead for diversity and is supported by an SCD Diversity Coordinator. Each OCU has nominated a colleague to lead on diversity within the OCU. SCD has a Diversity Forum, which is an opportunity for the OCU diversity leads to share good practice and learn from each other. The Forum includes members from each OCU, as well as representatives from the staff associations and Diversity & Citizen Focus Directorate.

5. The SCD Diversity Forum monitors SCD OCU’s diversity action plans and their progress on improving representation across all strands of diversity. The Forum has a meeting plan, which covers the six diversity strands, and the last meetings have discussed disability, with a presentation from the Disabled Staff Association, and age, with a presentation from the Employers’ Forum on Age. Future forums will cover the other strands with speakers from both inside and outside the MPS.

SCD’s relationship with the MPS Diversity & Citizen Focus Directorate

6. SCD is represented on the MPS Diversity Board and presented its Diversity Strategy at the July 2007 meeting. The SCD Diversity Forum is updated on discussions at the MPS Diversity Board and colleagues from DCFD attend the SCD Diversity Forum to provide regular reports on corporate initiatives. SCD is also represented on a number of other diversity related groups, including the Equalities Scheme Reference Group meeting and the MPS Race and Diversity Learning and Development Programme Board.

7. SCD has started working with the recently appointed DCFD Diversity Advisors to identify areas for further improvement. There have been early discussions on is developing a simple equality impact assessment (EIA) template for SCD planners, which has been introduced to encourage colleagues to consider the impact of their business plans on the communities we serve.

Equality & diversity monitoring in SCD

8. SCD introduced a Quarterly Diversity report at the start of this financial year. This report monitors the number and percentage of BME and female officers and staff within each SCD OCU, their seniority profile (by rank and band), the age profile, public complaints, disciplinary action, fairness at work, flexible working, non mandatory training courses requested and transfer in and out. The first two reports have been well received and SCD has had requests from other business groups to share this good practice.

9. The SCD Diversity Forum monitors progress on the diversity action plans. All the actions identified in the previous Diversity Excellence Model assessment were completed by March 2007. The Quarterly Diversity Report informs discussions at the SCD Diversity Forum.

10. Assistant Commissioner Specialist Crime (ACSC) and the SCD Business Manager visit each OCU every six months to discuss performance. The briefing packs for these visits, prepared independently by SCD’s Performance Improvement Unit, include information on diversity in the OCU and discussions on diversity form part of the performance review. In addition, a report on the activities of the SCD Diversity Forum is tabled quarterly at the SCD Senior Management Team meeting.

SCD Diversity Strategy

11. SCD has developed a Diversity Strategy that is aimed at integrating diversity into SCD’s normal working practices. The SCD Diversity Strategy, together with the supporting outline programme plan, is presented in Appendix 1. The Strategy supports the MPS mission of working together for a safer London and is based around the MPS Equalities Scheme. The two major themes are ‘doing the right things – policy and performance’ and ‘making SCD a welcoming place to work – living the values’.

12. In doing the right things, SCD will make sure that:

• we are treating people fairly (the MPS Equalities Scheme)
• our functions, policies and procedures do not discriminate (Equality Impact Assessments)
• we are clear about the standards and services the public can expect (Quality of Service Commitment)
  and we will measure our performance by:
  • continuing to challenge diversity performance in our OCUs, including setting targets for diversity that exceed MPS targets in specific areas
  • testing diversity skills in our performance development reviews.

13. If we do the right things and live the values, we will make SCD a welcoming place to work and improve our diversity. We will measure how we are improving our diversity in the SCD Quarterly Diversity Reports and whether we are becoming more welcoming in staff surveys. The supporting programme plan highlights the projects that we need to do to make the necessary changes in SCD.

14. In the discussion following the presentation of the SCD Diversity Strategy to the MPS Diversity Board, the Board indicated that the strategy needed to be more outward focused and work is ongoing to integrate the SCD Diversity Strategy with the developing SCD citizen focus strategy. SCD is due to bring the revised strategy back to the MPS Diversity Board in March 2008.

Profile of SCD officers and staff

15. At present, SCD can analyse information on the age, ethnicity and gender within each OCU. The following paragraphs compare SCD’s position with the MPS position at the end of November 2007.

16. SCD has only been regularly monitoring age since April 2007 so it is too early to identify trends. More than half of SCD’s police officers (1706 out of 3002 or 57%) are in the 40 - 49 age group, 30% are between 30 and 39 and 10% between 50 and 59. None are under 20 and two officers are over 60. SCD’s police staff are more diverse in terms of age with the majority (808 staff or 31%) in the 30 – 39 age group, 20% between 20 and 29, 28% between 40 and 49 and 17% between 50 and 59. Five members of police staff are under 20 and 93 are over 60.

17. In SCD, 5% of police officers (147 officers) and 18% of police staff (471 staff) are from a BME background, compared with 8% and 23% respectively in the MPS as a whole. Both show an increase since last year’s report (136 officers – 4%, 374 staff – 15%). SCD still has some way to go to reflect the increased number of BME recruits into the Service over the past few years, although in time SCD is expected to benefit from this corporate increase as the recruits build up their experience and skills in Territorial Policing so they can apply for a transfer to a post in SCD.

18. The highest percentage of BME officers (8.1%) is in the Trident OCU and the lowest in Covert Policing (3.4%) and the Crime Academy (2.8%). The Crime Academy also has the lowest percentage of BME police staff (4.3%) while Operational Information Services has the highest (31.6%). The highest number of BME police officers is in Homicide & Other Serious Crime (45 officers). Forensic Services has the highest number of BME police staff with 120 BME members of staff, 12.2% of the total Forensic Services staff.

19. SCD has 21% female police officers and 58% female police staff, which matches the MPS as a whole and remains unchanged since last year. As with BME recruits, the increases in female recruits are starting to feed through into the more specialised roles. While SCD overall is in excess of the target of 20% female officers, there is an imbalance between the OCUs. Only 13% of officers in the Economic & Specialist Crime OCU, the Serious & Organised Crime OCU and MIB are female, compared with 43% in the Child Abuse Investigation Command.

20. The highest percentage of female police staff (81%) is in the Child Abuse Investigation Command with the lowest in the Crime Academy (20%). Just over half of Forensic Services staff (51%) are female.

21. SCD has a relatively high proportion of senior female officers and staff. Three out of SCD’s current eight Command Team members are female and SCD has nine female superintending ranks, six female detective chief inspectors, 30 detective inspectors and 96 detective sergeants. SCD has proportionately more female detectives than the MPS at superintending ranks, detective inspector and detective sergeant ranks.

22. SCD does not yet have enough data on disability, faith or sexual orientation to analyse. These fields can be recorded confidentially on the MPS’s Human Resources system (MetHR), but are not currently mandatory and most people choose not to supply this information. Only 87 colleagues or 1.6% of SCD have provided information. 65 colleagues (1%) have completed the disability field and of these, 11 have declared themselves disabled, 86 colleagues (1.5%) have declared a religion, faith or belief and 79 (1.4%) have declared a sexual orientation.

23. The challenge in collecting this information has been debated at the SCD Diversity Forum, as well as at the MPS Diversity Board and the MPA EODB. This is not purely an SCD issue; HR Directorate has recently commissioned some work to try to improve corporate self-declaration rates, and SCD has asked to be involved. Colleagues in SCD are reluctant to complete the information for a variety of reasons, including not being confident that the data will remain confidential, not understanding the need to collect this information, not having the time and not knowing how to complete the MetHR fields. SCD is exploring ways of explaining to colleagues the benefits of declaring this information and reinforcing the confidentiality of the data.

Recruiting and retaining BME officers and staff

24. The SCD OCUs have recognised the importance of improving the ethnic mix of their officers to reflect the communities that they serve. Good practice in the Trident OCU is described in a separate report to this meeting.

25. Detective constables and detective sergeants are recruited locally and posted through the Monthly Posting Panel, which agrees transfers of officers between business groups. When OCUs have selected detective constables and detective sergeants for vacancies, the officers are added to the select list for the panel, and the panel determines what postings will take place, taking into account the needs of both the MPS and the individual officer. If particular OCUs are below their minimum strength, they are given protected status, which means that no officers of that rank will be permitted to leave the protected OCU until the numbers at that rank are increased.

26. SCD and the other central business groups face a challenge in obtaining enough officers through the posting panel process because of the number of protected borough OCUs, for example, at the December posting panel SCD could have asked for approximately 22 more officers had it not been for the protected OCUs. The situation has arisen for two reasons. Firstly, a reduction in the number of uniformed officers following the detective pathway in part due to the better work/life balance afforded by other police roles. Secondly, recruits are not classed as deployable until after they have completed their initial training course, therefore, are not counted on the BOCU’s strength.

27. These challenges in recruiting detective constables and sergeants, in the main from Territorial Policing, make it more difficult to increase the proportion of BME officers in SCD. If there are fewer officers taking the detective pathway, there will be fewer officers in the pool from which SCD selects its staff.

SCD OCU initiatives

28. The Covert Policing OCU ran a successful open day at Empress State Building in September 2007. The MPS staff support associations (representatives from the S.A.M.U.R.A.I group) were at the event, which attracted over 400 people. Covert Policing has a number of initiatives in place to support the recruitment and retention of BME staff. The surveillance attachment days, to give colleagues in under represented groups an understanding of surveillance work, is ongoing and working well, although care has to be taken due to the highly sensitive nature of the work.

29. Covert Policing has developed a process for undertaking, recording and evaluating the results of exit interviews, which gives colleagues leaving the command an opportunity to have an interview with their unit head, as well as completing the corporate exit interview process. The mentoring scheme is ongoing and awaiting details of mentoring training.

30. The Homicide & Other Serious Crime OCU is planning an open day in April 2008 to target under-represented groups. The OCU is also setting up a buddying and mentoring scheme to facilitate attachments as well as general interest and support for the OCU. Homicide & Other Serious Crime are also running induction courses for new joiners and ensuring that induction packages are provided in 100% of cases and exit interviews are conducted and used positively to improve the working environment.

31. The MIB is a relatively new OCU within SCD. One of the first pieces of work the unit has done is to develop a monthly diversity report that highlights areas for improvement. An analysis of the current MIB staff has identified an under representation of BME officers and staff. Work is underway to address this through recruitment and an action plan.

32. The Serious & Organised Crime OCU has a positive action mentoring scheme in place. The OCU is currently being restructured and once that is complete, will focus on developing and marketing positive action recruitment packages.

33. The Specialist & Economic Crime OCU is reviewing its diversity action plan and, although this work is not yet complete, the strategy will include recruiting and retaining members of staff from under represented groups and a marketing programme in relation to recruitment, which encompasses the diverse nature of the OCU. A Buddy and Mentoring Scheme has been introduced for new members of the OCU and visible points of contact have been identified to highlight the current diverse workforce. The points of contact will engage with prospective members of staff and offer further information and advice.

34. The Child Abuse Investigation Command aims to create a balanced workforce within SCD5. One initiative is to identify and seize all recruitment opportunities at careers fairs and open days to increase detective police officer workforce in the OCU.

35. The Crime Academy is aware that it is not currently attracting BME colleagues and regularly discusses constructive approaches to recruitment. Vacancies are circulated through the S.A.M.U.R.A.I. group and the Crime Academy has started to identify potential trainers amongst its students for future positive action initiatives.

Challenging perceptions

36. In SCD, the highest percentage of BME officers is in the Trident OCU. A separate report to this meeting discusses Trident’s stated intention, with the support of the black community, to set a more ambitious target of 15% for officers from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.

37. As discussed earlier in this report, SCD uses the MPS recruitment processes and selection and posting are on the basis of skills and competence. BME colleagues are spread throughout the command with the highest number of BME officers (45) in Homicide & Other Serious Crime, while that command, Trident and Economic & Specialist Crime all have above average percentages of BME officers (5%, 8% and 6% respectively, compared with an SCD average of 4.9%).

38. At last January’s EODB meeting, SCD was asked about the effectiveness of recruitment fairs. SCD has assessed the long-term outcome of the SCD Discovery Day held in June 2004 in terms of meeting its objectives of attracting colleagues from minority groups into SCD. The day attracted over 400 people with 89% saying they were satisfied with the day. Three years later, 23 police officers and eight members of police staff that attended the Discovery Day are now in SCD. These included four BME officers and one BME member of police staff. On reviewing the outcome, SCD decided it was more cost effective to focus recruitment and positive action initiatives at OCU level.

39. From the information available, it is difficult to assess whether BME officers are deterred from applying to work in SCD because they perceive a small number of ethnic minority colleagues in SCD’s management structure. SCD’s last staff survey (in 2005) found very few significantly different responses, including on diversity, between white and BME respondents. The results of the current MPS staff survey are not yet available for analysis by business group.

40. Altering these perceptions is a complex and lengthy process, partly developing an understanding of how SCD compares with the MPS as a whole in the seniority of its BME officers, partly working to change SCD’s culture to value difference and partly identifying and dismantling the barriers. SCD is at the start of this journey.

41. Some recent internal research about working towards a balanced workforce has highlighted some of the challenges that SCD, and the MPS, faces to increase the number of staff from minority groups. BME colleagues who have reached senior positions in 2008 would have joined in the early 1980s when BME officers made up less than 1% of total officers. Since 2000, the MPS has increased both the number of officers and the proportion of BME officers. An increasing number of BME officers are becoming eligible to apply for specialised roles and the challenge is to encourage them to apply to join SCD and to progress up the rank structure.

42. An analysis of BME police officers by rank has indicated that SCD has a higher proportion of BME detective officers in all ranks than the MPS as a whole, except for detective constables and ACPO officers (September 2007 data). The most senior BME detective officer in SCD (and in the MPS) is a detective superintendent and SCD has seven of the MPS’s 10 BME detective chief inspectors, nine of the 28 BME detective inspectors and 23 of the 80 BME detective sergeants. However, SCD currently has no BME detective chief superintendents (the MPS has two BME chief superintendents).

43. One specific example of encouraging BME colleagues to think about a career in SCD is one of our OCU commanders who has personally mentored two middle ranking BME detectives, one of whom applied to SCD and is now working in the Homicide & Other Serious Crime OCU.

Abbreviations and terminologies

ACSC

Assistant Commissioner Specialist Crime

BME

Black and Minority Ethnic

BOCU

Borough Operational Command Unit

DCFD

Diversity and Citizen Focus Directorate

EODB

Equal Opportunities and Diversity Board

EIA

Equality Impact Assessment

HR

Human Resources

IAG

Independent Advisory Group

MetHR

MPS Human Resources System

MIB

Met Intelligence Bureau

OIS

Operational Information Services

OCU

Operational Command Unit

S.A.M.U.R.A.I.

MPS staff support associations (Staff Associations Meeting Up Regularly And Interacting)

SCD

Specialist Crime Directorate

C. Race and equality impact

Equality and diversity is the subject of this report. The key race and equality issues for SCD are to continue to make SCD a welcoming place to work and to encourage officers, from a diverse range of backgrounds, to consider the detective career path. SCD has increased the percentage of BME officers and staff and expects this to continue as recently recruited officers gain the experience to apply for roles in SCD, and progress to more senior positions.

D. Financial implications

All the equal opportunities and diversity activity described in this report is incorporated in SCD’s day-to-day operations and there are no additional financial implications from this report.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: Ann Middleton, MPS.

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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