OFFICERS in Ealing are amongst the top in London to see a hike in the number of public complaints made against them in the past year.

In a report, prepared by the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS), the number of allegations recorded against unwarranted police action on people in the borough, has revealed a 37 per cent rise.

Figures show that in the last period there were 354 complaints, compared to 485, in the latest findings from March 1, 2009, to February 28, 2010.
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) publication, referred to as the Borough Support Management Information (BSMI) report, exposed Wandsworth officers as having the worst records with a massive 59 per cent jump in complaints.

However the difference between the total amount of allegations recorded between the two boroughs is very close when broken down, with Ealing receiving the second highest number of individual complaints, at 131, whilst Wandsworth had 138.

The results are made up under categorised incidents which include oppressive behaviour, discriminatory behaviour, malpractice, failures in duty, incivility, traffic irregularity and other.

Under these headings, in Ealing, police failures in duty made up the highest number of allegations recorded at 198, followed by 112 under oppressive behaviour and 96 under incivility, with the rest of the numbers falling under the remaining categories.

At the other end of the scale, from the 31 borough results listed, the best performers were Hounslow, Redbridge and Sutton, areas that all experienced a drop in the number of public complaint allegations recorded against local police.

Hounslow showed an 18 per cent fall with 52 less allegations since the last period, with Redbridge and Sutton decreasing by 17 per cent, even though Redbridge had 77 less allegations and Sutton only a change of 28.