No glass ceiling for women in the Met, says Deputy Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball

 
No glass ceiling: The Met's Deputy Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball Picture: Glenn Copus
Justin Davenport25 April 2014

Female police recruits are no longer stopped from rising up the ranks by a “glass ceiling”, one of Britain’s most senior policewomen said today.

Scotland Yard’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball said women officers had reached the top positions in all fields of the police service in Britain. Ms Ball, the UK National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing, said she had not experienced prejudice in her career in the Met, which included heading London’s gangs squad. She was speaking at the launch of a national campaign aimed at helping Muslim women to persuade young men not to go and fight in Syria.

Ms Ball, 53, who first trained as a teacher, joined the Met in 1987 and rose up the ranks, working in the firearms squad and becoming a trained hostage negotiator.

She was the first woman to head the Operation Trident squad tackling London’s growing gang problem in 2007. She spoke out as the number of female officers in the Met reached 7,700 — 25 per cent of the whole force.

The latest figures also reveal that seven out of the 32 Met officers at commander rank or above are women.

Ms Ball is celebrated in security circles for being part of the only triumvirate of women in charge of a counter-terrorism operation in the world.

She sits alongside Deputy Assistant Commissioner Pat Gallan, who is in charge of security and protection, and Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick, who is in overall charge of UK counter-terrorism operations.

In her first major interview, she told the Standard she no longer believed there was a glass ceiling in the police service. “I really don’t,” she said.

“There are women at the top of the profession, there are women in specialist roles. They are still in smaller numbers than men but that is just a feature of the way recruitment works.

“I have had nothing but the most wonderful positive support from male and female police officers throughout my whole career. Policing is a great job for women.”

Ms Ball is passionate about trying to tackle the crisis involving young Muslim men travelling to Syria to fight.

She believes between 200 and 300 Britons have travelled to the country for combat. Separate estimates suggest as many as 20 have been killed.

Scotland Yard says 40 people have been arrested travelling to and from the country on suspicion of fighting for terror groups in the first three months of this year, up from 25 in the whole of last year.

Ms Ball said: “I think it is incredibly sad that people feel so compelled to go and put themselves in such danger. They are mistaken, Syria is such an ungoverned territory now.

“We know there are terrorist groups who are fighting there and I don’t understand how an 18-year-old will be able to distinguish between people who have the purest of motives but are fighting and those involved in terrorism, they cannot be expected to do that.”

She drew parallels between her role as head of Trident and her current position in counter-terrorism in trying to prevent young men being drawn into violence, saying some of those travelling to Syria were influenced by the “gang” who were already there.

Police are working with women from charities and community groups to encourage young men who wish to support humanitarian efforts in Syria to donate to charities rather than travel.

Ms Ball explained that a large part of the Met’s counter-terrorism work involves families with children who have left home to fight.

“We are meeting families who are reporting their sons missing and this is tearing them apart,” she said.

“We support families very much in trying to trace their loved one and support them to bring them home before they get to Syria.

“Now we want to get further ahead and help mothers and sisters identify the signs of being radicalised online.

“Then if women call us we can arrange for someone to meet them privately and discreetly and discuss the ways they could help.

“It might be that someone is being lured into a group through peer pressure so they could be supported to handle that peer pressure, or they might need educational or housing support.” She added: “In my Trident days I did everything I could to stop young men misguidedly getting involved in gun crime. I think people [are] misguidedly thinking that they are helping when in fact the most courageous thing to do is to give humanitarian support.”

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