By Ethan Davies

The ‘majority’ of police officers criticised in the review of Greater Manchester Police’s treatment of women and girls in custody are still employed by the force, the Chief Constable has said. 

Dame Vera Baird’s damning report was released to the public on Thursday 18 July. It found a ‘problematic culture’ at GMP led to officers using the strip-searching of multiple women as ‘a weapon of control’. Chief Constable Stephen Watson apologised for the findings, and said the force would fully implement the recommendations from Dame Vera, the former victim’s commissioner who hails from Chadderton, Oldham. 

He said ‘the majority’ of the officers involved in the ‘horror stories’ — as Dame Vera put it — are still on GMP’s payroll.

He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “The majority of those complained about are still GMP staff, and they are subject of detailed investigation as to the nature of the complaints. 

“In some circumstances we have allegations that have been made of a serious criminal nature. They are being independently investigated, and we stand ready to give fulsome support to those charged with establishing the truth.

“GMP has no room for people who break the law, and misconduct themselves in such a way as to reveal themselves unfit to wear the uniform.”

Before rising the ranks to lead the second-largest police force in the country, Mr Watson was at one time a custody sergeant. He said the behaviour of serving GMP officers was not something he experienced in previous roles.

“Candidly, some of these examples were wrong when I was a custody sergeant, and they are wrong now,” he added.

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, whose role involves ‘holding GMP to account’, said he still has confidence in the Chief to turn things around. Mr Watson was installed in May 2021 after GMP was placed in special measures by inspectors, and has improved in several areas – including 999 waiting times and arrest rates – since his arrival.

“I know as a Greater Manchester representative – and I’m talking about my time before the mayor – that there have been deep-seated issues within GMP going back, I would say decades, not just years,” he told journalists after the press conference at The Lowry Theatre in Salford. “I don’t think within that time, if I think about the 20 years before Stephen Watson became chief constable, GMP ever had the scrutiny it needed to have. 

“And consequently, some of those cultures and practices became embedded, deep-rooted. He came in as a reforming chief constable and I think he’s the first true reforming chief constable this police force has seen in a very, very long time and the independent evidence now is of a police force that is improving, that has been taken out of special measures and that is improving across the board to be honest.

“I have full confidence in Stephen Watson as our chief constable. He actually never turns away either – nor do I – from these things.”

Dame Vera Baird said shaking up a force’s culture is ‘especially difficult’. She added that she had ‘not seen anything worse’ than the behaviour of officers in her time in public service, ‘giving [her] cause to worry about the culture’. 

“It’s a quasi-military, hierarchic organisation,” she added. “You get up from the bottom by pleasing your supervisors, who have lived through that very same culture.

“It’s a waterfall down. It’s very difficult and it needs really strong, firm leadership with plenty of declarations that they serve the public.”

(GMP headquarters image by David Dixon, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0)

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