West Mercia Police pledges to build back confidence after murder of Sarah Everard

The murder of Sarah Everard by serving officer Wayne Couzens last year and a report published this week into the behaviour of officers at Charing Cross Station were cited by force bosses as examples of recent incidents which had knocked public confidence in policing.

In response, the service has committed to bolstering its professional standards department to ensure unacceptable conduct by local officers is “rooted out”.

An additional 125 officers are set to be recruited in West Mercia in the coming year, in a move Police and Crime Commissioner John Campion says will increase visibility, ensure more crimes are detected and improve conviction rates.

Five of these new roles will be within professional standards.

Speaking at a meeting of the force’s Police and Crime Panel on Friday, Chief Constable Pippa Mills said: “It’s really important to recognise that public confidence in policing has taken a really significant blow since the murder of Sarah Everard.

“The investment of officers into my professional standards department will provide assurance to the public that the force is really serious about rooting out officers who lack the integrity that the public expect of our police service.”

Mr Campion added: “One of my key drivers as commissioner is to maintain confidence in policing, and we have seen that dramatically knocked in recent times.

“To ensure that West Merica Police are using enough of their resources to police themselves appropriately is absolutely right, and to make sure that the upstanding police officers who stand on our thin blue line have got the backing of the organisation to maintain those standards for the public is vitally important.”

Worcester councillor James Stanley said it was difficult for members of the public to have confidence in their local police service given the decline in police presence communities have seen in recent years.

He said: “In light of some of the news stories that have emerged both recently and going back some time about behaviour that isn’t what we would expect of a police officer, particularly in the Met, I think that process of rebuilding is quite critically important.

“We all know the overwhelmingly vast majority of police officers are people we can have pride in, who do their job extremely conscientiously.

“However, it’s getting that message over to those people who don’t see police officers on a particularly regular basis. That visibility factor is quite important in building that relationship.

“Are we content that we are pushing resources into areas where the public will see uniformed officers, building that level of positive relationship back up to the point where we would wish to see it?”

Mr Campion said an additional 15 safer neighbourhood team officers across the force area would help improve visibility, and 55 extra officers to be brought into investigations teams would ensure neighbourhood officers were freed up to spend more time in their communities.

Mr Campion said he was “sickened” by the report by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) into the behaviour of officers at Charing Cross.

He said: “We’ve seen a whole raft of incredibly damaging and indeed sickening behaviours of police officers come to light in recent times. It is a very small number of the service, but we have to work ever harder to root it out.”