By Gabriel Princewill And Tony O’Reilly-
The three-year prison sentence handed to former Greater Manchester Police officer PC Tubah Hamid should not be treated simply as another corruption conviction. It should be read as another warning that the fight against police corruption cannot end when an officer passes the recruitment gate. It has to continue for as long as that officer carries the powers, privileges and public authority of a police constable.
Hamid, 25, was convicted at Liverpool Crown Court after using confidential police intelligence to assist a man involved in the supply of Class A drugs. The Independent Office for Police Conduct said she provided information that helped him avoid police detection and surveillance, while also using police computer systems to search for people without an apparent legitimate policing purpose.
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The case included three counts of misconduct in public office, four counts of computer misuse and an offence concerning the illegal transmission of communications from a prison.
The disturbing feature is not merely that a police officer broke the rules. It is that information gathered in the name of protecting the public was allegedly turned into an asset for someone connected to criminal activity. That is precisely the kind of insider vulnerability that a modern anti-corruption system must be designed to detect before it becomes a criminal case.
The latest Home Office statistics provide an important measure of the wider misconduct problem. In England and Wales, 8,031 identifiable police officers were involved in a misconduct allegation in cases finalised during the year ending March 2025. That represented 5.2% of the police officer workforce, up from 4.4% the previous year. That statistiics does not amount to a finding or conclusion that 5.2% of officers were corrupt.
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An allegation is not a finding of wrongdoing. The more significant figure is what happened after cases reached formal proceedings. Of 1,687 officers referred to misconduct proceedings, 790 — 47% — were found to have committed gross misconduct, while another 579 — 34% — were found to have committed misconduct.
Taken together, 1,369 officers were found to have committed misconduct or gross misconduct. As a proportion of the overall workforce, that equated to about 0.9% for cases finalised in that period: 0.5% found guilty of gross misconduct and a further 0.4% found guilty of misconduct.
Those numbers are neither a reason for complacency nor evidence that the police service as a whole is corrupt. They are evidence of something more precise. A significant integrity workload exists inside a very large organisation, and the system must be capable of identifying the minority who present a serious risk before that risk becomes a public scandal or, worse, a criminal tragedy.
Britain’s senior police leadership has recognised this problem for several years. National Police Chiefs’ Council Chair, Chief Constable Gavin Stephens, said in 2023 that policing needed stronger powers to identify and remove people who were not fit to serve.
The government subsequently changed the disciplinary and vetting framework, including measures allowing officers who fail vetting to be dismissed. Stephens said the changes strengthened the ability of chief constables to “root out” officers who should not remain in policing.
The reforms have not remained on paper. In January 2024, policing completed what the NPCC described as the largest integrity-screening exercise in its history. More than 307,000 officers, staff and volunteers were checked against the Police National Database. Of those records, 461 people were referred to an appropriate authority.
Nine cases triggered further criminal investigations, 88 triggered disciplinary investigations, 139 triggered vetting-clearance action and 128 resulted in management intervention.Those figures are revealing.
The screening exercise did not uncover a vast army of corrupt officers. It did something potentially more important: it demonstrated that systematic checking can find matters that might otherwise remain hidden.
It also exposed the limitation of a one-off exercise. A database check conducted once can discover yesterday’s problem. It cannot automatically discover tomorrow’s. That is why the next stage — continuous integrity screening — matters.
The NPCC has been working with the Home Office on a system designed to alert forces to new information about officers, staff and volunteers rather than waiting for the next periodic review. In 2025, the NPCC said it was developing a continuous integrity-screening solution that would regularly check the police workforce against the Police National Database and flag changes requiring attention.
The architecture of police vetting has also changed. The College of Policing’s strengthened guidance states that vetting should be treated as a continuous process rather than a single recruitment hurdle.
It introduced mandatory randomised re-vetting, strengthened annual integrity reviews and made clear that vetting should be reconsidered when adverse information emerges. It also introduced a national vetting application form intended to replace the fragmented approach in which forces used different.
The legal framework has moved in the same direction. The Police (Vetting) Regulations 2025 created a duty for officers to hold and maintain vetting clearance and established a route for officers to be dismissed when that clearance is withdrawn.
Criminal Associations
The Home Office’s statutory guidance makes clear that vetting can consider matters including criminal associations, significant financial changes, new associations with people involved in criminal activity and criminal or misconduct investigations.
The pertinent question is whether has the reform programme worked? The honest answer is that there is evidence of substantial progress, but not yet enough evidence to declare the problem solved.
HMICFRS reported that, by 2023, policing had made significant progress against recommendations on vetting, misconduct and counter-corruption. The NPCC reported that 73% of vetting recommendations were either addressed or likely to be addressed by the relevant deadline, while 90% of recommendations relating to counter-corruption and misconduct had been or were likely to be addressed.
HMICFRS also found that 96% of the vetting decisions it reviewed were correct, an improvement from 90% in its earlier assessment.
But implementation is not the same thing as proven prevention. The Angiolini Inquiry’s subsequent work is instructive. Its Part 2 report records the extensive reforms undertaken after its first report and notes the introduction of stronger vetting arrangements, including the work towards continuous integrity screening. Yet the inquiry’s wider assessment reinforces the need for sustained action rather than a short burst of reform after a major scandal.
There is another reason to keep the pressure on. The Home Office’s latest statistics show that 15,843 police misconduct allegations were finalised in the year ending March 2025 — a 20% increase on the previous year.
The number of identifiable officers involved also increased from 6,950 to 8,031. Some of that increase may reflect improved reporting, stronger professional standards capacity and the clearing of older cases rather than an equivalent increase in underlying wrongdoing. Indeed, Professional Standards staffing increased substantially between 2019 and 2023 and then increased again.
That makes the statistics more complicated — but also more useful. Rising detection is not necessarily evidence that the police are becoming more corrupt. It can mean that the police are becoming better at finding misconduct.
An insider from the NPCC told The Eye Of media.com on the condition of anonymity that: ”The real test should therefore be shifted from the number of scandals exposed to the effectiveness of the systems that identify risk, intervene early and prevent unsuitable people from retaining police powers. That requires several further safeguards’.
He said: ”Firstly, continuous vetting should become genuinely continuous. A police officer’s suitability should not be reassessed only when a complaint arrives or an annual form is completed. Relevant intelligence, criminal proceedings, serious misconduct allegations, significant financial changes and identified criminal associations should trigger automated alerts for trained human assessment.
”Secondly, national databases must talk to each other effectively. A person should not be able to move between forces, policing bodies or related law-enforcement organisations and leave critical adverse information behind. The national vetting framework should make information transfer routine, rapid and auditable.
”Thirdly, forces should use a combination of database screening and human investigation. Algorithms can identify unusual patterns, but they cannot replace professional judgement. A sudden financial change, an unexplained association or unusual access to police intelligence may be entirely innocent — or it may be an early warning sign. The system needs trained investigators capable of distinguishing the two.
”Fourthly, access to police intelligence should itself be treated as a risk that requires monitoring. It is not enough to vet the person who receives access. Forces should monitor who is searching which databases, how frequently they are searching them and whether those searches have a legitimate policing purpose. An officer repeatedly accessing information about people with whom they have a personal connection should trigger scrutiny.
”Fifthly, whistleblowing must be made safer. The national Police Anti-Corruption and Abuse Reporting Service, launched in 2024 and operated by the independent charity Crimestoppers, gives members of the public an anonymous or confidential route to report suspected corruption and serious abuse. That mechanism should be aggressively publicised inside policing as well as outside it, because colleagues are often among the first people to notice behaviour that does not look right.
”Sixth, forces should publish more meaningful performance information about vetting. The public should be able to see how many applicants fail vetting, how many serving officers have vetting reviewed, how many clearances are withdrawn, how many officers leave following vetting decisions and how quickly serious concerns are investigated. Transparency would make it possible to measure whether reforms are actually producing better outcomes.
We add that there should be independent testing of the system. HMICFRS has already moved towards an integrity inspection model covering vetting, professional standards and counter-corruption. That scrutiny needs to remain rigorous and comparable across forces. A force should not be able to mark its own homework when the issue is whether officers can be trusted with extraordinary state powers. Finally, policing should measure prevention, not simply punishment.
A three-year sentence for a former officer is a significant consequence. But by the time a police corruption case reaches Crown Court, the system has already failed to prevent the conduct. The more meaningful question is whether the warning signs could have been identified six months, one year or five years earlier.
The Hamid case makes that question impossible to avoid. She had access to confidential information because she was a police officer. The privilege was legitimate. The alleged use of that privilege was not. That is the central lesson.
Vetting is not merely about deciding who gets a police warrant card. It is about deciding who can continue to hold one. A system that checks an applicant carefully on day one but fails to notice dangerous changes on day 500, day 1,500 or day 5,000 is not truly a continuous integrity system.
The overwhelming majority of police officers and staff are not accused of misconduct. The Home Office figures make that clear. But public confidence does not depend only on the behaviour of the majority. It also depends on whether the institution can identify the minority(who are a lot in actual numbers) who abuse their authority — and remove them before the damage spreads.
The challenge now is to make the badge a symbol of accountability as well as authority.
The test of Britain’s new vetting regime will not be how many new rules have been written, how many databases have been checked or how many recommendations have been marked “complete”.
The test will be whether the next officer who attempts to exploit confidential intelligence, abuse police powers or develop dangerous criminal associations is detected early enough for the public never to have to read about the resulting scandal. That is the standard by which the next phase of police reform should be judged.
P.S: Joint bylines recognise articles to which more than one contributor has made a substantial contribution, whether through research, reporting, analysis or writing.
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