In the run-up to this week’s BBC Panorama revelations about officers at Charing Cross, London’s busiest police station, advance publicity had warned of an extinction-level event. Misbehaviour that, in the words of one ex-copper, “might lead to the end of the Met as we know it”. As a former Met anticorruption officer, I wondered just how bad it could be. I’ve listened to hours of material from hidden microphones in police cars and police stations. Having heard bent coppers at their worst, it takes a lot to shock me. This is probably why Panorama’s exposé struck me as relatively tame.

The story involves an undercover journalist, Rory Bibb, who spent seven months as a dedicated detention officer (DDO). Bibb was sent to expose allegations of serious misconduct by police officers at the station. However, his findings arguably didn’t amount to all that much.

Most of the “evidence” of misconduct was simply off-duty pub talk. In one case, Bibb, posing as an aspiring constable, is in conversation with a young, foolish officer eager to impress him. The officer describes immigrants as “scum”, and says that one offender deserves to be shot. Yes, he was bigoted to say these things; it was gutter language. And yes, the officer will be sacked. Nonetheless, a hard truth is this is the type of language you’ll hear in many workplaces or bars — especially outside of Zone 3 on the London Underground. I suspect finger-wagging diversity lectures have, ironically, hardened young men’s hearts. Other officers boasted about their use of force, albeit in the context of arrests where they’d been assaulted themselves.

DDOs work solely in custody suites, an especially risk-laden, stressful role. Governed by complex law and procedure, custody suites are audio and video-monitored 24/7. Staff are obliged to deal with violent, disturbed and vulnerable people. On the whole, they perform this role with sensitivity and professionalism — which, to his credit, Bibb acknowledges. That is why this exposé feels, on occasion, disproportionate.

When Met Commissioner Mark Rowley claimed this week on BBC radio that he was proud of the service’s progress since the excoriating Casey Review, I found myself in broad agreement. Believe it or not, things do seem to have improved. In fact, I would suggest the grandstanding over the Panorama revelations is an almost welcome distraction from the Met’s other, possibly terminal problems. The service suffers from a lack of resources, an indifferent Mayor, and conflicting priorities around property crime — not to mention the crushing burden of public order policing.

Panorama’s investigation overlooks many of these graver problems. Charing Cross, or “CX”, is part of the Westminster “Basic Command Unit”, known colloquially as “Westmonster” among London coppers. CX suffers high staff turnover, including among managers, as its officers patrol one of central London’s busiest and most transient areas. The area faces soaring levels of violent crime, homelessness, mental health crises, and drug dependency. On the front line of a failing criminal justice system in an increasingly lawless city, officers feel besieged and under-appreciated.

I recently noticed how officers coming and going from CX looked scruffy, tired and demoralised. To my mind, they fitted the profile of struggling officers whom I investigated during my anti-corruption days: frazzled, in over their heads, and poorly supervised. They were also very young. Cuts have eviscerated police training, while the paucity of police vetting during the Conservatives’ “uplift” programme was scandalous.

Perhaps the most immediate problem for the Commissioner is the behaviour displayed by sergeants, revealing one of the Commissioner’s longer-term problems: a lack of effective supervision. Sergeants, especially, are like the tendons joining the muscle and bone of policing together. Given that over half of the Met’s 30,000 officers have less than four years’ service, this issue is likely to become more acute. A low experience base means, as one experienced officer recently told me, that “the blind are leading the blind.” To offer a comparison, as a new constable in the early Nineties, the PC on my team with least experience (after me) had 12 years’ service. Now, the consequences of poor retention have become a chronic problem.

This is why I agree with Rowley. Depressingly, Panorama’s findings could have been significantly worse. The Met’s problems are structural; they will take a generation of investment and root-and-branch reform to fix. Until then, we will continue to pay police officers — especially in our cities — subsistence wages, expose them to the worst society offers and yet expect them to be angels. The Commissioner has no carrots to offer his officers. Only sticks.