 Whilst still with South Yorkshire Police, he was identified as a high-flier and selected to study for a MA degree in Law at Merton College, University of Oxford, which he began at the age of 28.He later went on to gain a postgraduate diploma in Applied Criminology from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from the University of Sheffield.On Merseyside, Hogan-Howe had called for a "total war on crime" and argued that the health and safety case which was successfully brought against the Metropolitan Police after the de Menezes shooting was restrictive of allowing the police to do their work.