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By Liz S

Let’s focus on (Tory and) Labour’s record on policing elsewhere shall we (as English Mayors and/or UK Home Secretaries)?

The s*** that has continuously gone on with the London Met police in their poor record on cases that they have failed to investigate properly or dealt with, is , as far as policing is concerned , an embarrassing position to be in and also a clear example of how not to police within an area, a city or a country (like within England for example).

Since January 2012 the Mayor of London is responsible for the governance of the Metropolitan Police through the Mayor’s office for Policing and Crime. (Tory Boris Johnson was Mayor of London from 2012-2016 and then from 2016 Labour’s Sadiq Khan has been the Mayor of London).

Mayor of London governance in policing involves “setting the overall strategic direction, targets, and priorities for London’s policing, Managing resources, expenditure, and setting the annual policing budget from City Hall, holding the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to account for the delivery of efficient and effective policing and Investing in crime prevention programs and commissioning services to support victims of crime”.

The Home Secretary’s role is one that “retains the ultimate statutory power to hire and fire the Met Commissioner (though legally required to “have regard to” mayoral recommendations), provides the vast majority (roughly 75%) of the Metropolitan Police’s multi-billion-pound funding via central government grants, oversees national policing capabilities, counter-terrorism functions, and royal/VIP protection carried out by the Met that extend beyond London’s local borders and also sets national policing standards, oversees nationwide criminal justice bodies like the IOPC and holds the power to legislate structural reforms”.

Before 2000, the Metropolitan Police was under the authority of the Home Secretary.

Controversies pre 2000 and post 2012 onwards:

The 1993 Stephen Lawrence case was “heavily criticised and the subsequent Macpherson Inquiry (1999) found the Metropolitan Police to be “institutionally racist,” a landmark finding that mandated significant police reform efforts across the UK”.

In 2005 a Brazilian electrician living in London, Jean Charles de Menezes , was shot and killed by Metropolitan Police officers , the “Met Police mistakenly identified him as a suicide bomber linked to failed bombing attempts on the London transport network the day before, coming two weeks after the 7/7 London bombings” and “he was entirely blameless and unarmed, no individual police officers were prosecuted, though the Metropolitan Police Service was fined for breaching health and safety laws”.

The 2009 G20 London summit protests – “the Met faced widespread criticism over the actions of officers including the death of demonstrator Ian Tomlinson after being struck by an officer. This led to public criticism over excessive force and officers concealing their identification numbers”.

In 2011, it was disclosed that “a number of (Met) undercover officers had entered into intimate relationships with members of targeted groups, and even proposed marriage or fathered children with protesters who were unaware their partner was a police officer in a role as part of their official duties”.

In 2020, “two Met officers assigned to guard the scene of the murders of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman were jailed for taking and sharing photographs of the deceased women on WhatsApp referring to them as “dead birds”.

In 2021 “a review into the handling of the investigation of the murder of Daniel Morgan found that the Met Police was “institutionally corrupt”.

In 2023, “a report found racism, misogyny, homophobia and corruption within the organisation after the abduction of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens, a police constable. 12% of female Met employees had been harassed or attacked, with 33% experiencing sexism. Other incidents included a Muslim officer who had bacon stuffed into his boots and a Sikh officer whose beard was cut”.

In April 2024, “the Met settled a claim for misfeasance in public office and false imprisonment by agreeing to pay a five-figure sum as damages to a French publisher who had been arrested and detained under anti-terrorism laws while he was on his way to a book fair in London”.

In November 2024, “it was alleged that the Metropolitan Police was told about allegations of sexual assault against Mohamed Al-Fayed the late businessman and owner of Harrods, ten years earlier than it had acknowledged” (The Met “claimed that it first received such allegations in 2005, but the BBC was told that it had been informed by victims in 1995, but had not acted on the information”).

Not sure if the above is an exhaustive list of failings linked to the Met police, but I strongly suspect that it is not.

“The Metropolitan Police’s systemic and investigative failings have been the focus of several critically acclaimed UK television dramas. These series use real-life cases to highlight institutional errors, bias, and misconduct” .

(Some of these TV dramas highlighting failures in Met investigations included the Stephen Port murders in a TV drama called “Four Lives”, also “Stephen” – the murder of Stephen Lawrence, “Deceit” based on the 1992 undercover honeytrap operation after Rachel Nickell’s murder and then also “Believe Me” on the failings of the Met police investigation into black cab rapist John Worboys which saw “the Metropolitan Police lose an appeal against two rape victims, who won compensation over the Met’s (mis)handling of the case of black cab rapist John Worboys”).

The rule seems to be that with any major failings within England in any public service areas , be it policing, education, the NHS or anything else then the UK media and pro UK politicians must then (over) promote any (rare and odd) case that happens within Scotland.

This is not cases within Scotland of the same magnitude, as in not the same excessive amount of shocking cases that there has been involving the Met police force in England.

So a spiralling amount of investigation failings linked to the London Met police is often then (wrongly) presented, by the UK media and pro UK politicians, as being a similar situation happening within Scotland .

That is any identified case that happens in Scotland, be it Police or any other public service, then it is promoted as being a situation where Scotland is then to be seen as being no different to nor any better than England .

BTW there are also documented failings in the police elsewhere in other English regions too, like for example:

“Greater Manchester Police faced severe scrutiny for a systemic failure to record reported crimes, which significantly obstructed initial investigations. A major review exposed that the force failed to record one on five reported crimes (amounting to roughly 80,000 unrecorded crimes a year), including significant failures in documenting allegations of rape and domestic abuse , HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) said about 220 crimes a day went unrecorded in the year up to June 2020” .

Andy Burnham was Mayor of Manchester from 2017 to 2026.

So really the media, especially BBC Scotland, always try to make a meal out of any random case/situation within Scotland that they then hope will cast aspersions upon the SNP as the Scottish government.

A too obvious ploy which the BBC then also hopes will make people in Scotland doubt the SNP’s ability to run an independent Scotland.

While simultaneously the BBC conveniently (deliberately) forgets the catalogue of failures connected to other places within their British State , as in places governed by pro UK parties, that is goverened at different levels e.g English Mayors and as UK (English) Home Secretaries).

Scotland – the nation where all of the pro UK media and all of the pro UK politicians always politicise absolutely anything and everything.

Liz S

Help Talking-up Scotland keep going

Crowdfunder at: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-talking-up-scotland-keep-going

Or by direct bank transfer to: JOHN WATSON ROBERTSON Sort Code – 08-91-04 Account – 12266421