The new commissioner of the Metropolitan Police swore allegiance to King Charles III as he officially began his challenging new role just four days after the Queen’s death.
Mark Rowley was believed to be “the first senior police officer” in Britain to swear an oath to the new monarch and is tasked with ensuring the security of the Queen’s funeral next week, “when scores of foreign heads of state and up to a million visitors are expected to flood into London”, reported Sky News’ crime correspondent Martin Brunt.
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“It’s a massive challenge for the Metropolitan Police and for me personally, but we have been preparing for many, many years,” said Rowley as he took up his new role on Monday. But the funeral represents just one in a series of hurdles ahead for the new police chief, as the London force faces “one of the worst crises since its founding in 1829”, said The Guardian’s police correspondent Vikram Dodd.
Who is Mark Rowley?
Born in Birmingham in 1964, Rowley attended Handsworth Grammar School before studying mathematics at Cambridge, where he rowed for the St Catharine’s College 1st VIII. “But even before he went to Cambridge he knew he wanted to be a police officer,” said the BBC’s home affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford.
Rowley was turned down by the Metropolitan Police, however, owing to “poor eyesight”, and instead “joined his local force, West Midlands Police, in 1987”, Sandford continued. In 1989, while “still a probationer, he was beaten unconscious and had his nose broken while responding to a pub fight”.
That same year, Rowley wed a lawyer. Little is known about his private life, for security reasons, but his wife “is now an Upper Tribunal judge in the Administrative Appeals Court”, according to Sandford.
Rowley also climbed “through the ranks” in his own profession, after “pioneering some innovative ideas to tackle the 1990s burglary epidemic as a young detective”, before joining the National Criminal Intelligence Service, a forerunner to the National Crime Agency.
In 2011, he joined the Met as an assistant commissioner, and led the response to the riots sparked by the police shooting of Mark Duggan.
He was appointed head of counterterrorism at the force in 2014, as the UK faced the threat of Islamic State “and its ability to attract young Britons to its campaign of violence”, along with “a rise in the extreme far-right”, said The Guardian’s Dodd.
Rowley was “the man who had to steady the nation’s nerves” during multiple terrorist attacks in London and Manchester in 2017, said the BBC’s Sandford.
The then counterterrorism chief applied for the role of Met commissioner that same year, but lost out to Cressida Dick. He retired from police in 2018, before returning to take up his new role this week.
Rowley “will now encounter the biggest series of challenges any commissioner in modern times has faced”, said Dodds, after the Met was placed in special measures in June by the policing inspectorate, “for the first time in its history”.
‘Baptism of fire’
Rowley is taking over “at a critical moment” for the Met, said The Independent’s home affairs editor Lizzie Dearden. The policing operation surrounding the Queen’s funeral next Monday “will be among the biggest in the UK’s history, seeing officers pulled into London from across the country”.
After being sworn in, Rowley said that “we will be putting thousands of officers into this because of the level of security required and the millions of people who want to pay their respects”.
With “thousands-strong crowds lining the streets”, said Dearden, “and world leaders flying in from around the globe, the security risks are stark”.
Rowley is facing a “trial by fire” over the coming days on which the rest of his tenure “will be judged”, she added.
The 100-day plan to ‘turn the force around’
Rowley replaces Dick as commissioner following a series of controversies and scandals involving the Met, including the murder of Sarah Everard, the strip search of Child Q, and findings of misconduct at Charing Cross Police Station.
The police shooting earlier this month of a 24-year-old unarmed black man, Chris Kaba, has also sparked street protests in the capital in recent days. The Independent Office for Police Conduct has opened a homicide inquiry into the death, and the Met officer who shot Kaba dead has been suspended from duty.
Dick was ousted from the Met chief role in February, following criticism from London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
The Guardian reported that Rowley’s arrival marks the “launch of a 100-day plan to turn Britain’s biggest force around”. He is seeking to “lift public confidence” in the force by “increasing the proportion of crimes the Met solves and boosting the number of officers in local neighbourhoods to build relations”, the paper said.
Rowley reiterated his commitment to reforming the Met as he took up the role, pledging to “begin the journey of reform to renew policing by consent”.
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