BBC article includes positive feedback from someone who reported to the Met’s new DASO Unit; but it is too new to measure any kind of impact yet. A specific Unit for reporting domestic abuse & sexual assaults by police officers staffed by officers experienced in those areas has to be a positive step though, I think?
Of course, it’s not much use the Met having a fancy plan for Rebuilding The Public Trust when we can’t trust they know who their VAWG Action Plan is actually for. I mean, they’ve proven themselves excellent at identifying who to be violent to on basis of sex; but I’ll be astonished if it doesn’t all become mysteriously complicated when it comes to this. Even with the new Commissioner wanting officers attending burglaries not trawling Twitter. (Or indeed MumsNet <side-eyes South Wales Police, noting ongoing failure to bring biscuits/cake/sweets to share & their STILL having never offered to make anyone else a tea/coffee/hot chocolate>…)
I think the Met Commissioner probably has a point about the Tories’ plans to just hire a load of officers not in fact being a great plan too. The astonishment from central government that we do, in fact, need a police force someone told them we’d have robots for this by now, didn’t they? & behaving as if funding more officers after slashing provisions to ribbons is some act of great generosity is baffling. Just hope he gets listened to about a flood of new recruits (as proposed) being destabilising rather than useful - in addition to concerns re: speed of process causing vetting issues!