Met chief Bernard Hogan-Howe: unfit police officers must shape up or go
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Version 0 of 1. Overweight and unfit police must improve their physical condition or risk losing their job, Britain’s most senior officer has said. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe described the standard of an annual fitness test officers must complete as too low. The 15-minute assessment, which became compulsory in September, requires officers to run a short distance back and forth in time to a bleeping sound. I think you’ve got a duty to your colleagues. If they shout for help, they want fit people to come Hogan-Howe said he had passed his assessment “very well with no preparation” but added: “It’s taken too long to get the annual test, but it will start to have an increasing impact. For me, the standard is too low: I think it should be higher. It’s relatively easy to pass.” In an interview published in this week’s Radio Times, the Metropolitan police commissioner said those who failed the test would be given time to lose weight and get fitter. “If they don’t, then we haven’t got a job for them. I think you’ve got a duty to your colleagues,” Hogan-Howe said. “If they shout for help, they want fit people to come. They don’t want somebody waddling down the road who’s never going to arrive, and when they get there they’re out of breath.” Figures published weeks before the tests became mandatory last year showed hundreds of officers failed. Hogan-Howe, who rose through the ranks in South Yorkshire and Merseyside before landing the top job at Scotland Yard in 2011, said he missed the hands-on side of being an officer. Related: Two per cent of police officers fail new fitness tests He said: “I joined as a policeman, I didn’t intend to be commissioner. It’s not exciting to chair meetings. There are some exciting outcomes … but it’s never quite as joyful as finding somebody who has raped or done a burglary.” Asked about whether a surveillance culture was present in the UK, Hogan-Howe appeared to suggest taxi companies had more powers than the police. He said: “They will know where your phone is and where the taxi is and then put you together. But when people ring the police, we haven’t got a clue where that phone is. You may have been stabbed and expect us to come and help.” He said police could not use location data in “real time”, adding: “We have to make an emergency application; there’s a process to go through.” The commissioner, who was raised by his mother in Sheffield in the 1960s and rarely saw his father, rejected the description of his early life as tough, insisting: “I think I had a good childhood. We weren’t financially well off … we didn’t get holidays and things like that, but I don’t regard that as tough. But I think you understand the problems people have who are in those circumstances.” He said he did not know if his father followed his career: “The last time I saw him I was around 18. I remember seeing him walking through a subway in Sheffield.” Asked what he would say to his father if he was still alive, he said: “As you get older, you want to hear a little more about someone’s reasoning. I’d probably want to hear his side.” Hogan-Howe, whose favourite music is opera, revealed he enjoyed the crime drama Prime Suspect. “I liked the thoroughness of it,” he said. “The people are passionate but they know it’s complex and they don’t let go. “People sometimes think detectives are big extroverts with loud ties. But the best detectives listen carefully, speak less, pay attention to detail and are patient.” The Radio Times interview ties in with the start of The Met, a five-part BBC1 documentary series about the UK’s largest police force. |