Metropolitan Police Service Chief Sir Mark Rowley on Thursday accused the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of failing victims by ‘cherry-picking easy cases’ to fast-track through courts. The CPS reacted by saying the comments “risk damaging public confidence.” In the London Evening Standard newspaper, Sir Rowley said that a “big effort was needed to reform the justice system to let juries and magistrates decide” on suspects’ guilt “rather than lawyers in advance.”

He continued to say that :

When you look at the fact that the cases the CPS prosecute, 80 per cent of them are successful, guilty pleas or convictions, that suggests that we’re not taking on the harder cases, cherry-picking the easy cases rather than trying to get as many cases [to court]… To be successful for victims of all types of crime we need a system that’s prepared to take more difficult cases through and let juries and magistrates decide rather than lawyers in advance.

Max Hill, Director of Public Prosecutions, said: “I am surprised and disappointed by the inaccurate comments made by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner,” stating that the CPS “does not cherry-pick’ cases” and is “a demand-led organisation that can only prosecute cases that are referred to [them] by the police themselves.”

This has prompted a range of views from across the legal sector with some such as ex-Victim’s Commissioner Olivia Baird agreeing with the Met Commissioner, whilst others have disagreed saying it is “utterly ludicrous to have the UK’s biggest police force and the CPS openly briefing against one another.”