Croydon is to get a new police borough commander, as Andy Brittain is leaving the role he has held since 2019.
Community policing: now former Borough Commander Ch Supt Andy Brittain
The Cambridge-educated copper, the most senior officer across Croydon, Sutton and Bromley, has been promoted to Commander, for future duties Scotland Yard has so far failed to specify.
The Metropolitan Police was asked for a comment on Brittain’s promotion from Chief Superintendent, but none has been forthcoming.
The now-Commander Brittain started his working career as a store security officer in Croydon’s Allders department store, joining the force as a constable in 1994, initially patrolling the streets of Sutton, then Lambeth.
With the role of “borough commander” merged into units across three boroughs, with Borough Command Units, Brittain took command of the “South BCU” in late 2019. His term in the job, which included a previous promotion, has been often fraught.
While he won the admiration of some community leaders, Croydon was dubbed “the knife crime capital of London” during Brittain’s spell in charge, and in 2023 there were 11 killings on the borough’s streets, including the murder of schoolgirl Elianne Andam.
Warning signs: Ch Supt Brittain champions the use of LFR in Croydon
Some have been sceptical of the Met’s, and Brittain’s, reliance on third-party, outsourced community liaison, which has increasingly appeared ineffectual while coming at significant cost in terms of grants from MOPAC, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.
Extraordinarily, in Croydon throughout Brittain’s entire five-year stint as Borough Commander, there was just a single meeting of the police-council-public oversight body, the MOPAC-funded Safer Neighbourhoods Board, while it was chaired by self-appointed “community activist” Donna Murray-Turner.
Initiatives such as Operation Cleveland around West Croydon, with increased stop and search, produced positive results in terms of arrests and confiscation of deadly weapons, but did not deliver a longer-lasting solution.
More recently, and against a background of reduced officer numbers, Brittain championed the frequent use of live facial recognition technology in Croydon’s town centre, but again only with mixed results and strong criticism from civil rights groups who accused the system of racial profiling.
Staffing does appear to have been an increasing management issue for Brittain across Croydon, Sutton and Bromley. In Croydon, funding for a dedicated town centre team of 25 officers ended in 2023 and was not replaced. And at any one time, at least 1-in-4 officers from South BCU were “abstracted” – moved to other duties in central London, policing demos, football matches or royal celebrations.
It was during Brittain’s time in charge that veteran Police Sergeant Matt Ratana was shot and killed inside the police custody centre on Whitehorse Road.
There were repeated, and usually upheld, complaints about the conduct of officers in Brittain’s command, such as when the IOPC – the Independent Office for Police Conduct – published a lengthy ruling into the misconduct of Croydon officers PC McCorley Clewes and former PC Benjamin Morgan and their forcible restraint and hand-cuffing of 14-year-old schoolboy Deshaun Joseph at the Blackhorse Lane tram stop in June 2022.
Low point: Andy Brittain addresses the press after Elianne Andam’s murder in September 2023
The death of a young black man while in custody in Croydon was also subject to external investigations, while the arrest of a black woman for fare evasion on a London bus, when she had a valid ticket, went viral on social media and caused considerable controversy in 2023.
The incident saw the Met self-refer to the IOPC, but only after the woman had herself submitted a complaint.
The officer at the centre of the storm, PC Perry Lathwood, would later be convicted of common assault, a conviction he had overturned on appeal. Lathwood, of the Roads and Transport Policing Command, continued to work in Croydon (albeit on “restricted duties”) throughout the conduct of his case, including the period after he had a criminal conviction.
Asked for details of Commander Brittain’s replacement as Sutton, Croydon and Bromley borough commander, a Scotland Yard spokesperson said, “Details of his replacement will be shared in due course.”
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