OPINION: With ethics frequently bound to professional standards in UK policing, the current reform proposals offer an opportunity to reset the issue of ethics as one of aspiration rather than compliance, says police officer and ethics specialist Dr Richard Cockbain – but failure to do so could leave policing risk building a future “with a ceiling that was only ever meant to be the foundations”.

OPINION: The Metropolitan Police’s recent use of Palantir AI to identify more than 600 officers involved in wrongdoing and corruption may have been successful in its aims, but has also proved controversial; police officer and ethics specialist Dr Richard Cockbain warns that while the approach may have achieved compliance benefits, addressing unethical behaviour is not the same as building ethical approaches, and the covert deployment of AI serves to undermine the trust of both the public and the workforce.

OPINION: With UK police reform now firmly on the agenda, ethics specialist Dr Richard Cockbain sets out why policing needs to shift its focus from the risk-averse approach of minimising failure at all costs to recognising, articulating and learning from successes, and the challenges around culture, structure and incentive that will need to be addressed if reform is to deliver positive transformation.