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Two-thirds of CID detectives in Met are not fully trained
Justin Davenport12 May 2009
Scotland Yard is short of almost 2,000 trained detectives, it was revealed today.
Just one in three of the force's regular CID officers are fully trained detectives, leaving the Met with a drastic shortage of expertise to solve crime.
Hundreds are trainees and others are uniformed officer transferred to CID to make up numbers.
The blunders that allowed two rapists free to continue attacks on women prior to their convictions in March have been blamed on the shortages. The Met's handling of the inquiries into John Worboys and Kirk Reid is now the subject of separate investigations by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
The figures were disclosed by the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers. But the Met today conceded it had a problem finding and retaining CID officers, with 880 trainee detectives currently in the 3,000-strong CID.
A spokeswoman said the latest figures showed the Met had 1,293 trained detective constables and 880 trainee detectives. There were no immediate figures for the number of uniform officers on CID.
Assistant Commissioner John Yates has now ordered a sweeping reform of CID, whose officers are based in the 32 boroughs, by making use of highly trained officers from specialist squads.
Once a detective has completed at least five years on a specialist unit such as the Flying Squad they will be transferred to a borough post for at least two years.
A spokeswoman said: “There are a number of challenges mainly around not having enough officers who want to become detectives these days.
“There is experience in specialist squads and we want to spread that around all the areas, including Territorial Policing, which includes CID.”
Peter Smyth, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said that in the past detectives had become stuck in specialist squads and the training and expertise they picked up was not passed on to CID units or borough-based detective squads.
Mr Smyth added that less and less people were interested in the career of a detective.
“When I joined everyone wanted to be a detective but today the shift patterns of uniform are much more attractive and detectives face a more difficult work-life balance. There is also a lot more paperwork these days. “
Mr Smyth said that in the past 10 years the Met had created more specialist units which had left borough CID units as the “poor relation”.
“This means that you have relatively inexperienced officers carrying out investigations which can be quite complex. I don't think that is fair."
To qualify as a detective police have to go through a selection process, undergo a six-week course at the Met's Crime Academy and then pass a national exam. Officers only then qualify as a detective constable after two years in post.
The issue is to be raised at the Police Federation annual conference, which starts today, CID units are responsible for investigating serious assaults, burglaries, arson attacks and fraud among other crimes.
Borough-based Sapphire units are responsible for investigating rape and serious sex attacks.
Mistakes by Sapphire units in London left serial sex attackers Worboys and Reid free to attack scores of women.
In both cases detectives failed to follow evidence that should have been used to remove them from the streets.
Two years ago a CID unit was also criticised over failures to investigate a gang who went on to murder 22-year-old TV engineer Peter Woodhams in front of his family.
