30-01-2025
Police misconduct complaints jump following ‘real life Line of Duty' TV series
The number of complaints lodged against police officers rose by 13 per cent last year following the screening of a documentary dubbed the 'real life Line of Duty', it has emerged.
In the year ending March 2024, there were 54,647 formal complaints made against 46,072 officers across England and Wales for alleged misconduct.
The overall figure was up by more than 7,000 compared to the previous year.
As a result of the complaints 1,312 officers and 386 police staff were referred for misconduct proceedings, with almost 300 eventually found guilty of gross misconduct.
Responding to the figures, some forces suggested the rise may have been down to renewed public confidence following the broadcast of the popular Channel 4 documentary, To Catch A Copper.
The three-part series – dubbed the real life Line of Duty – followed the activities of the Avon and Somerset force's professional standards department as it investigated officers accused of misconduct and corruption.
In one episode a suicidal woman who was threatening to jump from the Clifton Suspension Bridge was arrested for causing a public nuisance. She was then pepper sprayed while in handcuffs in the back of a police car.
In another case, a married sergeant offers to give a drunk woman a lift home from a nightclub and then has sex with her in a lay-by.
The documentary showed the lengths to which a police force was willing to investigate its own officers and root out those who should not be serving.
The damning Baroness Casey review into culture of the Metropolitan Police and the Angiolini Inquiry into the behaviour of Wayne Couzens, the Met Officer who abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard, have also been credited with increasing public confidence in the police complaints process.
Under Sir Mark Rowley, who took over as Met Commissioner in September 2022, Scotland Yard has also renewed efforts to drive corrupt officers from the force, even setting up a hotline for whistleblowers to report misconduct.
The new figures were contained in new Home Office data published on Thursday.
The accompanying report stated: 'High-profile cases reported in the media, the Channel 4 documentary 'To Catch a Copper', the Angiolini Inquiry and Baroness Casey report have all been identified by forces as factors affecting both the willingness of people to report allegations and the culture surrounding how police forces handle allegations about the conduct of its workforce.
'Several forces have launched internal culture campaigns in order to improve standards, such as the 'This Is Not Who We Are' campaign in Avon and Somerset Police, and have reported an increase in recording of internal conduct cases coinciding with these campaigns.'
The report also pointed out that the rise in complaints could also be explained in part by the 15 per cent increase in the overall number of police officers serving, as a result of the police uplift programme.
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