To think the Met Police need to be abolished?

[WhatScratch]

And a new force/forces created?

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/24/met-apologises-to-academic-for-sexist-derogatory-language

They arrested a woman for trying to give a legal rights card to a 15 year old caught in a stop and search sweep. They laid charges against her of that she was later cleared of in court but they also held her down, strip searched her and humiliated her.

’In a cell, three female officers bound Duff by her hands and feet, pinned her to the floor and cut her clothes off with scissors. Duff described the ordeal, which left her with a number of visible injuries, as like a sexual assault.’

The comments and attitude from the women officers show that institutional misogyny is just as big an issue as institutional racism for the Met.

They then lied for years about what they had done and why

*’Duff said: “In every detail the footage backed up what I had said in my statements for years and years.” Officers had claimed they had acted with professionalism, strip-searching her for her own safety because she would not give them her name.

“There was such a barrage of misinformation that they put out that I actually, even though I was there and I knew that it was false, had almost started to doubt myself,” she said.

“It was such an effective gaslighting: ‘We were just concerned for your mental health, that was why we had to – for your own good – forcibly strip you naked and mash you up.’’*

How can anyone have any faith in them?

I read this and I was just horrified but I don’t think abolishing them is the answer.

Her experience was horrific.

The thing is, though, if you abolish the Met and make, say, four forces in London, it will still be the same officers?

The whole culture is corrupt. I don’t know how you fix that but I’d imagine you’d need to get rid of the worst, replace the leaders from the top to the bottom and maybe have outside monitoring of CCTV and bodycam footage.

Every organisation is led by example.

Abolishing a police force is not the answer as this would create a gap in policing which wouldn't serve anyone's interest, apart from the criminals.

Removing Cressida Dick and its current leadership team is a start.

Retraining officers and ongoing investment in training is a step forward.

Cautious and regular vetting helps.

A culture of reporting irregularities and holding officers to account is needed.

I agree with you in that MP is unfit for purpose atm.

Culture change within an organisation occurs from top to bottom and takes years. The big issue here is that nothing is being done, CD seems untouchable no matter how badly it's run and Priti Patel shuts her eyes. One has to ask why?

It's really difficult I think.

These stories are horrible and it beggars belief that this kind of thing is still going on in the 21st century, in our capital city's police service. (I'm pretty sure it happens in other police services too.)

But I don't think scrapping the Met and plonking in a new police service would be practical or helpful, ultimately.

There aren't thousands of fully trained police officers and support staff sitting there ready to go in the event of a new police service being formed. So surely a new force would end up employing pretty much everyone who was involved in the last one? Same corruption, new paint.

And training officers takes time, so in practical terms it's surely preferable to work with what we've got.

I'd prefer the Met to be made more accountable for the actions of its officers and staff. For it to be overhauled and overseen more transparently. Because it's clear that if you're a woman, black, or gay, you get at best a second rate kind of service from the Met, and at worst you get left to be murdered, disproportionately targeted, treated with prejudice, or abused by officers.

They behaved like this on camera and suffered no consequences. The footage still exists. That means that senior officers knew what they’d done and covered it up for years.

How can anyone trust a police force that arrest someone without cause, search them without reason, lay false charges against them and then lie about what they did while senior management back them up?

As a society we are having problems with abuse of power within large institutions. A lot of what you describe here is connected to that. It's very similar to the recent Post Office scandal; all those sub-postmasters who were falsely prosecuted for theft, despite the Post Office knowing all along and covering up that their own IT system was responsible for, and continuing to add to, the financial discrepancies. A lot of those sub-postmasters were women, many black and many of Indian or Pakistani backgrounds. So there was a misogynistic and race element to that as well.

I don't know what the answer is, in a detailed sense. But I do think abuse of institutional power is something we have to get our heads around, and to grips with, as a society. Because these things keep happening and ordinary people are being crushed by huge organisations (and businesses).

The met is rotten to the core, absolutely.

But if you get rid of it, you still need something. And you'll just end up with the same people and the same problems.

North Yorkshire police covered for Saville

The rot goes all the way

We need something like a police force to protect the vulnerable from the predatory

But this set up protects the rich and private property over the poor and apparently doesn’t understand the concept of ethics