Mark Rowley

Sir Mark Peter Rowley, QPM, (born November 1964) is a British senior police officer who, as Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, has been the head of the Metroplitan Police since September 2022. He was formerly the Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations of the Met and the concurrent Chair of the National Police Chiefs' Council Counter-Terrorism Coordination Committee and National Lead for Counter Terrorism Policing. He was previously Chief Constable of Surrey Police (2009-2011), and also served as Acting Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police between February 2017 and April 2017. He temporarily retired from the police in March 2018.

Quotes

• Islamist and right-wing extremism is reaching into our communities through sophisticated propaganda and subversive strategies creating and exploiting vulnerabilities that can ultimately lead to acts of violence and terrorism. Ten conspiracies of an Islamist nature were stopped since the Westminster attack. And I can tell you today that over the same period police have been able to prevent a further four extreme, right-wing inspired plots in the UK.
• For the first time we have a home-grown proscribed white supremacist, neo-Nazi terror group [National Action], which seeks to plan attacks and build international networks.
• The people who have done the most ghastly things overseas, the ones who don't fight to the death, we would all like to see them never able to do anyone any harm ever again. Locking them up and throwing away the key would be a great idea.
  • "Far-right terror threat 'growing' in UK as four plots foiled" BBC News (26 February 2018)

• This man abused women in the most disgusting manner. It is sickening. We’ve let women and girls down, and indeed we’ve let Londoners down.
  We have failed, and I’m sorry. He should not have been a police officer. We haven’t applied the same sense of ruthlessness to guarding our own integrity that we routinely apply to confronting criminals. I do know an apology doesn’t go far enough, but I do think it’s important to acknowledge our failings and for me to say I’m sorry.
  • "Met Police chief faces crisis over serial rapist officer" The Telegraph (16 January 2023)
  • Following the conviction of former Metropolitan Police officer David Carrick, who pleaded guilty to 49 charges over 85 offences, including rape on 40 occasions. Carrick was sentenced to 36 life sentences to run for a minimum of 30 years.

• [When asked if women reporting violence and abuse from men could be assured they would be assisted by a police officer whose behaviour was not under review.] I can’t, I’m not going to make a promise that I can't stick to [...] I'm going to put in place ruthless systems to squeeze out those who shouldn’t be with us.
  Most of our officers are fantastic, the people who specialised in this area are great and they have the skills. But do I have some officers who shouldn’t be in the Met that I've got to identify and get rid of? Yes I do, and I'm completely frank about that.
  • Interviewed on Good Morning Britain, as quoted in Fiona Hamilton "Met chief Mark Rowley: Women reporting abuse could face problem officers" The Times (17 January 2023).
  • The Times report said the Met was reviewing 1,633 cases concerning 1,071 officers and staff who have been accused of domestic violence or sexual abuse in the past. The man responsible for the murder of Sarah Everard was a serving police officer

• When you look across violence against women and children, there are millions of offenders in the UK. Some of the numbers are eye-watering.
  The scale of this is way beyond policing and the justice system and we need a frank conversation about it, that looks at prevention work, protective work, as well as enforcement ... work.
  This is largely men offending on women and children ... You’ve got millions of men in the country who pose a risk to women and children at some level. And requires a whole step up in approach.
• I think it's a bit of an inconvenient truth about how big this problem is. If we are really nationally and in London have the scale of response that the threat to women and children from predatory men deserves, it will need a massively upscaled approach across multiple agencies.
  It's great that we in the Met in our corner of the system [are] improving and doing better, but those iterative improvements are nowhere near what the size of the problem requires.
  • At a meeting of the London Policing Board, as cited in "Met chief says millions of men are danger to women and girls in England and Wales", The Guardian (4 June 2024)
  • Using forthcoming research (so far unpublished), Rowley said there are up to 4 million perpetuators of violence against women and children in England and Wales. The London Policing Board was established in 2023.