Police that can’t be trusted

Abolition? Are you serious?!
What do you plan to replace it with.... ex teachers, students,
Night club bouncers, ex Debenhams staff?

But we can’t pretend these are problems endemic only to the Met. It’s a problem with policing overall, which is why a top to bottom review and overhaul needs to take place, even if it won’t be abolition which I’d prefer.

Lemongrove
Totally agree. The Met has always been different always will be. They think they are the elite as they police the capital.

The officer who was charged today was in the same unit as Couzens. The whole unit need to be checked thoroughly now.
The Met has always had problems with corruption, but has been better in the last few years, but this is even worse.
This doesn’t mean that other forces around the country have the same problems or that all police should be distrusted, as one or two posters seem to imply.

Thanks Laura the Australian police have their own bad apples to equal the Met it seems.

I agree that it’s time for Cressida Dick to go but who will be willing to pick up the poison chalice.

Harriet Hartman says Met comishoner Cresida Dick should go
Establishment Starmer said she should stay.

Short clip from Novara Media discussing this.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=NeKzcPoCxm4

Some details (it was breaking news on th Guardian website)
A serving Metropolitan police officer has been charged with rape, the Crown Prosecution Service has said

PC David Carrick, 46, of Stevenage, Hertfordshire, will appear via video link at Hatfield magistrates court on Monday. Scotland Yard said Carrick, who is based within the Met’s parliamentary and diplomatic protection command, was charged with rape by Hertfordshire constabulary on Sunday

The officer was off duty in Hertfordshire at the time, the force said

Carrick was arrested on 2 October by Hertfordshire constabulary and suspended the same day by the Metropolitan police. The force said it was awaiting the outcome of criminal proceedings, adding that a referral had been made to the Independent Office for Police Conduct

Metropolitan police commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said: “I am deeply concerned to hear the news today that an officer from the Met’s parliamentary and diplomatic protection command has been arrested and now charged with this serious offence

I haven’t read that yet Maw, but I’m sure there will be many women coming forward who were previously afraid of not being believed.
A big overhaul is long overdue so that the vast majority of good and decent police officers can go about their duty.

Just read that a serving Met officer has been charged with rape.
Is this the tip of a very nasty iceberg?

Time was, the head of the Met would be sacked for this kind of mess. Under Johnson, no one is accountable.

I cannot stop thinking of that poor young woman and what she went through. Couzens ought to have been suspended and investigated at the VERY LEAST. This was “allowed” to happen.

I don’t think that every single police officer is bad. But I do think the police force as a system is so rotten that it needs to be thrown out, frankly.

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Great posts Foxie

Annie

I agree BlueBelle. Complete no tolerance policy.
Lemongrove you ask about policing in Australia.
I can only answer from experience of the Queensland Police Force in the seventies and early eighties when the motto was ‘Firmness and Courtesy’.
The force lost a good many good and decent officers due to corruption at the highest levels. Good officers who tried to change things were forced out by misogynistic and corrupt senior people in the force along with government officials. This finally ended in a judicial enquiry when the then Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner were charged.
The name was then changed in 89 or 90 to Queensland Police Service and the motto changed to ‘With Honour we Serve’.
Not sure if the name change has made a difference but by then the best had resigned and given service elsewhere.
Shame to drop courtesy, surely we can serve with honour and courtesy.
I hope someone in Queensland can update us with the current situation and hopefully Nanna8 will let us know about Victoria when she wakes up.

I believe every officer who was party of this monsters nickname, party to his WhatsApp group, and party to his flashing, should be sacked without a moments doubt

They are guilty too

Police officers are drawn from society and should reflect it. We need a more ethically diverse force. Brian Piddick former senior officer, now Lib Peer said this week that he was told the force welcomes people from ethic backgrounds, gays, lesbians etc. The difficulty is that once accepted, the expectation is to behave and present like a straight white male.

I work with vulnerable children, some people who do the same job are unpleasant, abusive etc etc. I am not upset when people point this out and certainly not upset when steps are taken to try to protect children from abuse.

I don’t think anyone is saying all police are bad, Anniebach but the problem for us is that we, as women, have no means of telling who are the ones to avoid.

There are some horrific accounts in the papers of the endemic misogyny in police forces. If other men don’t call out their fellow officers, then they are complicit in misogyny.

As Marina Hyde says in the Guardian, people will often comment that someone like Couzens is just one bad apple. We forget the rest of the saying - one bad apple spoils the barrel which essentially means everyone is contaminated by that one bad apple.

User7777

I am amazed that his overriding need for power over a young woman led him to think he would get away with it. The cameras in peoples cars, showing a tall person showing him clearly trying to convince her, which was his warrant card, and handcuffing her. Right down to claiming a gang made him do it. Poor, beautiful, girl met a monster. We all know his life sentence will be hell. Justice is served

User7777
It just added another layer to his warped thinking.
Just as Jimmy Saville assaulted a young girl in full view of millions on viewers watching Top of the Pops.

Pammie1

There are calls for every single police officer in the UK to be re-vetted. Not sure how practical that is, or whether it would change anything. My worry is that if we don’t find a solution, some will use mistrust of the police as an excuse for civil disobedience and we’ll end up in a worse mess.

I'm not sure what re-vetting would achieve, Couzens didn't have a criminal record. Also the PNC check on his car following the incidents at McDonalds would not have identified him as police officer. I also worry that mistrust of the police will be misused by some people. I wonder if all the proper checks are being done when officers transfer from one force to another? fwiw in the Shipman case, a revue led to changes in issuing death certificates which would have made it much more difficult for him to certify the deaths of those he had murdered as far as I can remember there was no overall scrutiny of every GP. Although many have slated the advice given out by the MET, I actually think it's useful to have some guidance with regard to male police interacting with women. As others have said, I would have got in the car with Couzens but now I wouldn't!

Agree with the sentiments above but serious urgent questions must be asked about the Vetting process? Or if his colleagues knew something, why didn't they " Whistle blow" the Met has some first class police but this has made Cressida Dick et al stink!
However, not just the Police who cock - up look at Harold Shipman.

Right! So that’s all the main political parties that refuse to respect and look after women’s needs! I was just waiting for the Tories to join the cavalcade!
Now is the time for one, even just one party to stand up and say ‘Violence against females is a serious crime. Removing safe spaces for females is unacceptable. Hate crime against females is a serious crime.’
These are all interlinked, so no picking and choosing.
Which party do you think will not just stand up and publicly say it and also do something about it?

There are calls for every single police officer in the UK to be re-vetted. Not sure how practical that is, or whether it would change anything. My worry is that if we don’t find a solution, some will use mistrust of the police as an excuse for civil disobedience and we’ll end up in a worse mess.

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
·
1h
I reiterate THE GOVERNMENT ARE REFUSING TO CATEGORISE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AS SERIOUS CRIME.