The Metropolitan Police Federation was extremely surprised to hear Deputy Mayor for Policing Kaya Comer-Schwartz tell the London Assembly's Police and Crime Committee today that she has "regular meetings with Staff Associations" from the force to gauge police morale.
Since Ms Comer-Schwartz was appointed as Deputy Mayor for Policing, she has not had a single meeting with our Chair or General Secretary - neither does she have one arranged. There has been no correspondence to the Metropolitan Police Federation to this end, either from her or her office.
As the Metropolitan Police Federation is the voice of and represents more than 32,000 frontline police officers, this does seem a strange thing for Ms Comer-Schwartz to say. We are of course happy to meet her, as we did with her predecessor. And then her claims of regular meetings would be far more accurate.
What we can say to Ms Comer-Schwartz is that the hard working police officers of London are emotionally and physically exhausted.
There aren’t enough of us. Colleagues are continually facing relentless redeployments, having days off cancelled, working longer shifts and being moved between areas to catch criminals, protect the public, counter terrorism and facilitate seemingly never-ending protests.
We would be delighted to share this reality with the Deputy Mayor for Policing at regular meetings.
Matt Cane, MPF General Secretary
Paula Dodds, MPF Chair
