article: Last week, it was the Daily Mail's turn, in a reference to Operation Midland, the investigation into allegations involving members of the establishment, it said: "'Shambolic' VIP child sex abuse and murder inquiry to close". In January, the Daily Telegraph weighed in, highlighting the controversy over the commissioner's Â£65,000 Range Rover: "Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe criticised for taking new luxury car amid police cuts row". And last September, in one of a number of critical articles in the Times, the Thunderer column said: "The Met Police's record on big investigations is dreadful." It should come as no surprise the press highlights police failings, blunders and unusually large items of spending - that is news. Readers are not interested in police inquiries that tick along nicely, crimes solved without fuss and senior officers who never change their car. But over the past year or two, I have found myself asking whether the media, myself included, are giving disproportionately negative coverage to Scotland Yard. After all, the Met's record on crime, in keeping with other constabularies, has been largely positive. Between 2000-01 and 2014-15, the total number of offences logged by the force plunged from 994,233 to 709,174, a reduction of 29%. Murders fell from 171 to 93 - the lowest figure since the 1970s, though it has edged up in the past nine months. Confidence in the UK's biggest police force increased to a record level in 2014. And, despite a number of hugely controversial cases - Stephen Lawrence, undercover policing, Mark Duggan - independent inspectors have not pressed red warning lights on the Met's performance, as they have done with some other, far smaller, forces. In a city with a population of 8.6 million, and growing, where in some boroughs 100 different languages are spoken, and where the vast majority of police officers patrol the streets without guns, unlike New York or Paris, that is quite some achievement - even more so given the bruising budget cuts the Met has had to make since 2010. "The Met represents all the problems the police have - on stilts," says the criminologist Roger Graef, an independent adviser to the force, who has made award-winning police documentaries. "What they're trying to do is incredibly hard," he says, adding that over the past 20 to 30 years, Scotland Yard has slowly begun to change its culture to be more professional, less corrupt and less racist. The force has been praised, for instance over its investigation into the killing of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, but there is undoubtedly a sense within its St James's Park headquarters that the media tend to gloss over its successes, such as: Profile: Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe Instead, the force appears to be continually on the back foot - no more so than with Operation Midland. The Met made a mistake by initially describing the allegations from its key witness, known as Nick, as "true". It was unwise for police officers to make such a judgment at the start of an inquiry. Indeed, Scotland Yard later acknowledged it may have given the false
summary: Barely a day goes by without a newspaper headline condemning the Metropolitan Police or its Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe.