Crooks to join UK police: Minor offences to be ignored

Daniel Binns metro.co.uk More criminals could be hired as police officers for the country’s biggest force after recruitment rules were relaxed. Reformed burglars, muggers and drug dealers may be on the beat for the Met Police after it vowed to look again at applicants who had previously been rejected because of their criminal past. The shake-up is part of efforts by the force to hire 5,000 staff by 2016 and also includes a ban on employing those who live outside London in order to ‘reflect the capital’s diversity’. A spokesman for the College of Policing told Metro that forces were advised that ‘it is not possible to set out a full list of convictions that will preclude a person from becoming a police officer’. The Met’s HR director Robin Wilkinson told the Evening Standard: ‘We are saying that one minor wrongdoing should not deter you from being an effective police officer. Of course, an armed robber could not be a police officer, nor could a murderer.’ More than 900 police officers and community support officers across England and Wales had criminal records, 2012 figures showed. The convictions included supplying cannabis, domestic violence, robbery and burglary.