Tom King

The Towers at Hendon were built to accommodate recruits. There is no longer any recruit training at Hendon thus the Towers are now redundant. Bow Street Police Station and the Court were not demolished, they are now vacant awaiting a final decision on how they are going to be developed into flats and housing. there is some talk of the Met Museum collection being located there in part of the old police station but this is a long running debate which has still to be finalised. The current collection has some exhibits on display at Empress State Building in West Brompton this is only a fraction of what can be shown as the premises is small.

I would be interested to hear what he has to say. My thoughts are that as the Justice of the Peace issue is now long assigned to history by the 1986 Public Order Act , The Commissioner DC and ACs will still be serving police officers with the powers of constable. They do have warrant cards and I believe the Silver tokens are now given on retirement and not carried any longer as a badge of office and identification.

Dave

The MPA no longer exists it is now MOPAC. The selection of the Commissioners post I can assure you is a joint decision between the Mayor and the Home Secretary it is a matter of semantics who recommends the post to the queen. Also legislation has now been passed that opens the Commissioners post to foreign nationals. I am not going to die in a ditch over this the reality is the Commissioner of the Metropolis is the most sought after senior police position in England and Wales. As I previously said each chief constable has autonomy in their own force area the Met Commissioner has no authority over them per se. But i simply do not see how you can argue the Met Commissioners post is on par with all other Chief Constables the Met has national responsibilities outside policing just the London area. Also I will think you will find both the current Commissioner and deputy Commissioner have warrant cards and I assume that as they are career police officers the powers of Constable.

I beg to differ. I think Mervyn is spot on with regards the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis and Deputy Commissioner being the Senior Police Officers in England and Wales. But I will defer the HMIC top job considering the person now in post.

You just have to look at the rank insignia to see the difference. Chief Constables in fact wear the same rank as Assistant Commissioners in the Met. I accept a Chief Constable has autonomy in his/her policing area but how can you assess that the Commissioner with National Policing responsibilities including Counter Terrorism and a staff of over 50,000 is on par with a Chief Constable who may have a total of 1500 staff in their force area? The Commissioner never even used to be a member of ACPO as he is appointed by the Home Secretary.

The towers at Hendon Police College are no longer functional and have been empty verging on derelict for several years. There were three towers which functioned as accommodation blocks for the college. This area of the estate is in the process of being sold for redevelopment which I believe has caused some problems in itself as the land was original MOD part of RAF Hendon which was given to the police so there have been issues as to ownership.