Tag Archives: metropolitan police

NewsHound

LibLink: Wendy Chamberlain on need to tackle “serious and systemic” police failings

By NewsHound | Tue 5th October 2021 - 8:54 am

In an article for The House, Wendy Chamberlain, the only woman former Police officer in the Commons, says that the murder of Sarah Everard is a watershed moment to tackle serious and systemic failings at the heart of the Police. It’s a great follow-up to her interview on Sky News on Friday.

She describes how the abuse of power of Sarah’s murderer has led to a loss of trust in not just the Met, but Police across the country:

As a former police officer myself, I still carry the responsibility of my service with me long after I stopped wearing the uniform. Having served as a police officer does shape people’s opinions of you. At the time of my election in 2019, I viewed it as a way of demonstrating that I was someone to be trusted.

Couzens used and abused not only his position of power, but the notion of trust that Sarah placed in him as someone who wears the uniform with a duty to safeguard and protect.

That trust has been seriously eroded and damaged by this terrible crime. It is a shattering of trust that goes beyond the Metropolitan Police and applies to police services as a whole across the country.

So how is this to be fixed?

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , , , and | 2 Comments
Caron Lindsay

How on earth were the red flags around Sarah Everard’s murderer missed?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 29th September 2021 - 9:03 pm

When I first read the horrific account of Sarah Everard’s murder as it was revealed in court this morning, I felt sick, and, several hours later, that queasiness remains.

My heart breaks for her family who have to live with that awful reality every single day. I have nothing but admiration for them that they were able to put together such articulate, raw victim impact statements which show the strength of their love for Sarah and the daily hell they endure at the thought of the torture she went through as her life was taken from her.

It takes incredible self control to be able to stand in a court room, facing your daughter’s or sister’s murderer and not fall to bits.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 17 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems tell Cressida Dick to resign

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 13th March 2021 - 11:02 pm

I have been a bit worried of late that the Lib Dems, at least in England, have been a bit bland and have been pulling the punches they should have landed.

Well, credit where it’s due. After the utterly disgraceful scenes on Clapham Common tonight, Alistair Carmichael, Luisa Porritt and Ed Davey have written to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick to tell her she should resign.

Here is their letter:

Dear Commissioner,

The scenes this evening of the policing of the Clapham Common vigil in memory of Sarah Everard are utterly disgraceful and shame the Metropolitan Police.

The vigil this evening was a peaceful one brought together in the most horrific of circumstances.

Across the country, countless women have told their own painful stories of harassment and abuse. Your officers should have been standing in solidarity with those on Clapham Common tonight not being ordered to disrupt this display of grief and peaceful protest.

This was a complete abject tactical and moral failure on the part of the Police.

We therefore call on you to consider your leadership of the service and whether you can continue to have the confidence of the millions of women in London that you have a duty to safeguard and protect.

Yours sincerely ,

Ed Davey MP, Leader of the Liberal Democrats

Luisa Porritt, Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London

Alistair Carmichael MP, Spokesperson for Home Affairs

​

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News Meerkat

Siobhan Benita slams London Mayor’s mass surveillance roll-out as a real risk to civil liberties

By News Meerkat | Sun 26th January 2020 - 1:00 pm

Embed from Getty Images

Responding to the Metropolitan Police’s announcement on Thursday that it will begin to use automated facial recognition surveillance operationally, Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London Siobhan Benita said:

It is unacceptable for a new form of mass surveillance like this to be rolled out onto London’s streets without proper consultation, regulation or oversight.

Facial recognition technology is hopelessly inaccurate. It is biased against women and ethnic minorities. The evidence that it will make us safer is patchy at best, but there is a real risk that it will erode civil liberties and increase distrust and discrimination.

To make London safer we must restore effective community policing, starting with the re-opening of local police stations, which the current Mayor has shut down.

Liberal Democrats do not want London to become a city where innocent people feel as though their every movement is being watched. The fact that Sadiq Khan has given the go-ahead for this undermines his recent claim to share our liberal values.

If Londoners want a liberal mayor with a positive vision for a safer, greener, kinder capital, their best option is me.

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Paul Walter

BBC Newsnight: ‘Innocent people’ on police photos database

By Paul Walter | Wed 4th February 2015 - 1:41 pm

A special BBC Newsnight report says:

Police forces in England and Wales have uploaded up to 18 million “mugshots” to a facial recognition database – despite a court ruling it could be unlawful.

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Tony Dawson

Opinion: Crown Prosecution Service is wrong not to prosecute undercover police officers

By Tony Dawson | Wed 27th August 2014 - 2:34 pm
It is now widely-known that the Metropolitan Police Force has engaged numerous undercover police officers in covertly infiltrating various organisations which ‘might be’ dangerously subversive over many years. Several such officers have’deepened’ their cover by forming sexual and emotional relationships with memebers of the organisations concerned and have even brought up young children in these circumstances: two such officers have now been named in court proceedings and the existence of almost a dozen others has been acknowledged.
Although private civil prosecutions are proceeding against both individuals and the Metropolitan Police, the Crown Prosecution Service has recently published statement that there is not sufficient evidence to obtain a reasonable chance of a successful prosecution in a prosecution for ‘misconduct in public office’ and a number of other potential offences.
Much of the evidence of the women concerned is already in the public domain and it is totally clear (and not contested) that there was no possibility whatsoever that they would ever have commenced any sexual ‘relationship’ (sic) with any person who revealed to them that they were a member of a clandestine police surveillance unit. It is also clear that there was no reason whatsoever why the police officers involved ‘needed to’ form such ‘relationships’ in order to continue to perform their covert work. The formation of such ‘relationships’ although they may well have deepened the ‘cover’ and ‘trust’ in which the officers were held, was created by the police officers concerned for their own comfort, convenience and sexual gratification after manifesting to the women concerned, over a prolonged period and in a sustained way, the premise that they had a genuine wish to create a genuine relationship with them. This latter premise is demonstrably-false:the entire persona presented to the women by each of the officers concerned was a deliberate deception. They knew that no such relationship could be sustained once the truth emerged.
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Stephen Tall

Andrew Mitchell – victim of a police stitch-up?

By Stephen Tall | Wed 19th December 2012 - 9:55 am

Andrew MitchellThat’s the heavy implication of Michael Crick’s revelations on Channel 4 News last night.

The bare facts appear to be that, when told the police wouldn’t open the gates at Downing Street to allow him to ride his bike through, then Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell swore at them, saying “I thought you guys were supposed to f****** help us”, a sentence he admits uttering in exasperation. He then cycled off and thought no more of it, until contacted by Downing Street and told The Sun was about to run

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Stephen Tall

Paddick: some Met detectives adopt a “she wants it really” attitude to women alleging rape

By Stephen Tall | Fri 2nd March 2012 - 7:26 pm

The Lib Dems’ London mayoral candidate Brian Paddick is interviewed in today’s Guardian, and has some strong words for his former employers, the Metropolitan police:

Paddick warns that some detectives adopt a “she wants it really” attitude to women alleging rape and sometimes refuse to acknowledge that some types of men, such as licensed cab drivers, can be rapists.

The former deputy assistant commissioner is placing the Met’s mixed performance on dealing with rape at the heart of his campaign as the Liberal Democrat candidate in May’s London mayoral election. Paddick, who told the Leveson inquiry this week that he toned

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Posted in London and News | Also tagged , and | 1 Comment
Sid Cumberland

Has our police force been ‘completely transformed’ by the Lawrence case?

By Sid Cumberland | Fri 6th January 2012 - 1:15 pm
Like the summer riots, the Stephen Lawrence case provides us with yet another attitudinal Rorschach test; we screw our eyes up, peer closely, and conclude that what we have seen is just what we expected. At least, that’s my view, after hearing Paul Dacre’s astonishing self-congratulation on Tuesday.

For him, the verdict was ‘a glorious day’ for the Lawrences, the police, British justice, politicians, British newspapers (especially, of course, the Daily Mail, without whose ‘relentless campaigning’ none of this would have happened).

For me, it was a good day; but it was also a reminder of

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Brian Paddick

Brian Paddick writes: What’s good for the Metropolitan Police is not good for politicians

By Brian Paddick | Tue 19th July 2011 - 11:50 am

The evening after the Metropolitan Police shot an innocent Brazilian at Stockwell I went and saw the then Deputy Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson. I asked whether it was true that the Commissioner had barred the Independent Police Complaints Commission from their legal duty to investigate the death. He said it was. I told him I thought it was the most stupid decision I had ever heard of (I knew by then that we had made a terrible mistake). He smiled and said “It’s my job to support the Commissioner.” I was concerned from then on that Stephenson might be giving …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 5 Comments
Richard Morris

So, Rebekah Brooks has finally resigned

By Richard Morris | Fri 15th July 2011 - 10:53 am

This is obviously a good thing, and the right thing. Her position was untenable, and as I’ve blogged before – whether she knew what was going on in the newsroom when she was editor of the News of the World is irrelevant. She was in charge, and needed to take responsibility.

However, I can’t help but worry that this is a still all part of a bigger tactical game being played by News Corp. Wait til Friday to resign – fewer journalists working over the weekend, less time to make more of the story. Time it for the morning the …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , and | 18 Comments
Brian Paddick

Brian Paddick writes: The Lib Dem Guide to phone hacking

By Brian Paddick | Fri 8th July 2011 - 11:53 am

Uniquely perhaps, I was a victim of the News of the World’s private investigator, Glen Mulcaire, when I was a senior police officer at New Scotland Yard, working along the corridor from the officers who conducted the first phone hacking inquiry in 2002. But they never told me I was victim.

It was only a couple of years ago when my solicitor received a call from a Guardian journalist, that I knew Mulcaire had my name and mobile phone number in his notebook.

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The Voice

Green Party called it wrong on phone hacking

By The Voice | Wed 6th July 2011 - 8:49 am

Just a month ago, London Green AM and Mayoral candidate Jenny Jones criticised the Metropolitan Police for spending too much time investigating phone hacking:

Jenny Jones, the Green Party member on the authority, said that the investigation, which is being handled by the Met’s serious crime directorate, was diverting officers away from more important crimes.

“Although this is not a victimless crime it is not something we should be spending a huge amount of time on,” she said.

“There are murders, child abductions and rapes that these officers could be investigating. All these people have to do is not use the

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