POLICE ACADEMY
Sex & Money Scandals At Cop Charity with £10m of Your Money
A taxpayer-funded charity on a mission to change the “toxic” culture of UK policing is facing whistleblower claims of hushed up sex and financial scandals.
Police Now, which seeks to reverse the collapse of public confidence by turning graduates from diverse backgrounds into ethical leaders, is set to have the inner workings of its academy exposed at an employment tribunal to be heard next month.
The charity’s former director of programmes says she was sacked after challenging the culture of Police Now, which was founded by former and serving cops.
Police Now receives an annual budget of over £10m, half from the Home Office and the rest from the 36 police forces who pay the charity to recruit and turn graduates into “inspiring” detectives and beat officers.
The programme director was sacked within days of writing an email to staff in which she compared the charity’s culture to that of UK policing, which has been found by numerous enquiries to be defensive, arrogant, tone deaf, intolerant of internal critics and vindictive.
The senior manager was moved to write the email after a spate of sex and financial scandals at Police Now that went to the very top of the charity.
The whistleblowing claim raises questions about the training programmes the public finances to plug a gap in police officers across the UK.
Are those who come from the very policing culture that has seen an unprecedented collapse in public trust capable of changing it?
And does Police Now’s training programmes really equip graduates for life on broken Britain’s streets or are they a blue washing exercise in box ticking diversity?
Society is certainly in desperate need of ethical but effective new cops who can make brave and robust decisions outside as well as inside the police station when navigating not just austerity and the hopeless war on drugs but time-consuming culture wars too.
In continuation of this newsletter’s expose of the cosy arrangement where, on retirement, failed or failing senior officers seamlessly move into influential positions in the myriad charities, think tanks and academic institutions that make up the police lobby, The Upsetter examines a nasty row inside Police Now.
