Tag Archives: metropolitan police

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

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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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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 6 Comments
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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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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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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