Police Commissioner’s Christmas tweet

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Bernard Hogan-Howe, spent last night answering tweeted questions on the Met’s future challenges. Hogan-Howe proved himself to be an able politician, although many of the answers he gave were even briefer than Twitter’s 140 characters allow.

The Commissioner answered some questions like “What are you doing to ensure we have enough bobbies (not PCSOs) on the beat in Hackney?” and “What are you going to do to restore the trust of peaceful protestors intimidated by kettling, agg trespassing etc” simply by saying there would be a review, other questions, like those on police corruption and the killing of Mark Duggan, he simply said were out of his hands – but there were some more substantive answers.

When asked to define his often touted stance of “total policing” he said “War on crime, care for victims, in a totally professional way” and earlier to another question “Total victims support is key to total policing”. All this despite the fact that less funding means “We’ll have to work harder”.

This seems to come dangerously close to saying that the Met will do simply everything that needs doing through the application of elbow grease. It does little to give a sense of where the Met’s priorities will lie in the year ahead as it is unlikely that all crimes, from white collar offences to speeding in back streets, will be pursued with equal vigour.

Hogan-Howe sees his main challenges as “Less money, pubic protest, Olympic preparations” and that officers will have to work longer hours as they are asked to do more with less officers.

When asked what his personal highs and lows of the year the Commissioner gave the perfect interview-question style answer. “In 12weeks high point getting the job, low point break at xmas!”

I hope his family didn’t read this to discover that spending Christmas with them is his low point of the year. However, I think we can be charitable and regard this as similar those who answer the interview question “What’s your biggest fault” by saying they are a workaholic.

The Met have stated they will answer many of the 900 questions that couldn’t be dealt with in the one hour slot online over the coming weeks.

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