Sir Mark Rowley, head of the Metropolitan Police, is set to deliver a speech on Friday warning that policing in England and Wales is "heading for failure" without urgent reform - a sentence that should probably alarm anyone who enjoys such luxuries as solved crimes and a visible police presence.
Sir Mark argues the system simply cannot cope with the sophistication of modern criminals, and he's proposing what would be the biggest overhaul since the 1960s. The headline act: replacing the current 43-force structure with three tiers - local teams handling neighbourhood issues, eight to 10 regional forces sharing specialist resources, and a new National Police Service tackling the most serious crimes, all supported by hundreds of local policing commands.
In January, it seemed senior police officers were broadly on board with a National Police Service, and the argument for much larger regional forces had apparently won the day. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood produced a white paper aligned with those ideas and asked former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Hogan-Howe to examine where the force boundaries might fall.
Then July happened, and Andy Burnham became prime minister. Burnham has not spoken publicly about the plans, and police chiefs are reportedly nervous they may not have his backing - which may explain why they've come out swinging today, warning of the potentially apocalyptic effect of doing nothing.
Alongside the push for large regional forces, Sir Mark is making a money argument that will feel familiar to anyone who has followed defence funding. He points out that police funding in England and Wales has fallen from 0.9% of GDP to 0.7%. The implicit message: the slice of the cake going to defending the country is growing, while the slice going to defending people's communities and homes is shrinking.
In his speech, Sir Mark will say organised crime groups, fraud networks, cyber-criminals and those involved in online child abuse increasingly operate across regional and international borders, while police forces remain organised around local areas. "We have 43 overstretched forces trying to do too much, with too little," he will argue. Merging forces, he believes, would reduce duplication and could free up thousands of roles to be redirected toward front-line policing.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Sir Mark noted that crime has changed a lot over the years, but the police is largely organised as it was 60 years ago. "Obviously the world's moved on a long way in that time."
The proposals follow a consultation launched by Mahmood in January, which included plans for a National Police Service to tackle the most complex crimes and a possible merger of the 43 forces into fewer, larger ones. Not everyone is thrilled. Some rural police and crime commissioners have described the plans as "political manoeuvring" by larger forces to "load the dice in their favour."
Dorset Police and Crime Commissioner David Sidwick reiterated his strong opposition, saying: "My concern is simple. If funding is diverted away from frontline services in Dorset to establish new national structures, local communities could end up receiving less rather than more."
Kent's Conservative police and crime commissioner Matthew Scott said Sir Mark believes "policing should suffer a decade of disruption, that local policing services should be cut back and made more remote, and that this can all be done without ever asking the public what they want from their local police force."
The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) also questioned whether merging forces is the best route, saying: "The case for modernisation and a National Police Service is clear. The case for reducing 43 forces to nine regional 'mega-forces' is not."
Asked on Breakfast what would happen without the reforms, Sir Mark said: "the risk is failure." He elaborated: "Failure means solving fewer crimes, less local presence, when you get exceptional incidents like a certain outbreak of disorder like we saw in Hampshire." In September, police clashed with anti-migrant protesters in Portsmouth when 120 migrants arrived in a single dinghy.
"Standing still looks like a degradation of policing day by day, struggling even more as criminals outpace policing because we're not organised to meet it," Sir Mark added.
A Home Office spokesperson defended the plans, saying: "Our current model of policing has not changed since the 1960s and is no longer fit for purpose."
Sir Mark also highlighted financial pressures, noting spending on policing has fallen from about 0.9% of GDP to 0.7% since 2010 - "a big hit," in his words. But he was clear that money alone won't fix things: "We do need investment as well, but if you threw loads of money at the current system it's still not going to fix the fundamental problem, it's not designed to meet today's challenges." He told the BBC: "Throwing money at the current system isn't going to work."
He will also point to years of underinvestment leaving forces reliant on ageing technology, with officers increasingly diverted from neighbourhood policing to deal with other demands including mental health and social care. And he'll cite falling performance: positive outcomes nationally are now less than half the level they were 12 years ago, while public confidence has fallen by 9%.
Meanwhile, the court system is under massive strain - Sir Mark has warned about that too - and he has accepted mistakes made over Simon Levy while defending the investigation into murders. All of which is to say: the system is fine, everything is fine.