The Met faced heavy criticism after reports showed a deference to violence. (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)
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“The police are still struggling to get the basics right.” So stated Andy Cooke, His Majesty’s Chief Inspectorate of Constabulary, in his annual assessment of the state of policing in England and Wales, published last week, highlighting particular failures relating to violence against women. On the previous day, Andy Burnham published an Independent Inquiry into Greater Manchester police by Dame Vera Baird KC, which documented graphic evidence of the unlawful arrest and detention of victims of domestic abuse, sexual violence and child sexual exploitation.
Both men were in good company. This week, a National Policing Statement was published documenting significant increases in recorded crimes of violence against women and girls and describing the epidemic as a “national emergency”. And at the start of this month, Peter Skelton KC, representing the Metropolitan Police in the “spy cops” public inquiry, apologised to the many women deceived into sexual relationships with undercover officers — echoing the terms of an apology delivered nine years previously to eight women I acted for in a civil claim against the Met. The apology in 2015 coincided with the commencement of a public inquiry into undercover policing spanning the period from 1968 to 2010, when the police spied on over 1,000 political groups for the undemocratic purpose of getting intelligence on organisations engaged in political protest. More than 50 women are now known to have been targeted and subjected to state-sponsored sexual deceit — many had relationships with men they viewed as their life partners. These women discovered not only that they had been deceived about the identity of their partners, but that this deception had been enabled and funded by the police.
The spy cops scandal is merely a snapshot of the endemic and corrupt history of policing that continues to the present day. From the kidnapping, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met police officer in 2021, to the prosecution of serial rapist, abuser and serving officer David Carrick, to the almost weekly stories of other officers prosecuted for violence against women — such horrifying stories of misogyny from within the ranks of those responsible for protecting women are nothing new. How will our newly elected Labour government tackle the multiple scandals that have rocked the most vital of institutions?
I wrote about the long history of police abuse and corruption in my recently published book, Sister in Law: Fighting for Justice in a System Designed by Men, which focuses primarily on the female victims of the institution and draws on my career as a solicitor. I fought high-profile cases: from the nine-year battle by two of the victims of serial rapist John Worboys to the struggle for justice by the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, the electrician mistaken for a suicide bomber and shot dead by the Met.
These legal cases exposed abject failures in policing and established a legal precedent by which the police, previously held to be immune, are under a duty to conduct an adequate investigation of serious violent crimes. I also instructed prime minister Keir Starmer, when he was a young barrister, in cases involving police misconduct. He was an active member of the Police Action Lawyers Group which sought to hold police officers accountable for misconduct; he went on to set up the Northern Ireland Police Board in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement; and was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions where he oversaw initiatives that, for a while, led to an improvement in the prosecution of sexual offences. As I see it, Keir Starmer couldn’t be better equipped to understand the underlying problems. But it remains to be seen whether his government will limit itself to police reform or to radically rethinking the institution itself.
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SubscribeProvable misconduct is at least punishable though – in countries that have functional law-enforcement.
Australia has laws only, not functional law-enforcement.
Our police have neither duty of care/accountability, while having a monopoly on what is a crime/exclusive access to information: FOI request replies about Victoria Police’s own crimes come in Victoria Police branded envelopes – if at all, so heavily redacted, the information provided is a slap in the face contempt for the lives of taxpayers.
Australia’s corrupt police refuse to act, ignore crime reporting attempts as serious as the concurrent abduction of two teenage women, their public gang-rape, their torture over several days & their bludgeoning to death(1), or the frantic reporting attempt of an escaped victim of Australia’s worst known serial killer, Ivan MILAT(2). As a devastated crime victim I am not looking for evidence validating my forced experience – I came across these stories by accident.
Australia’s Victoria Police openly participate in crimes flashing their police uniforms.
The MARCUCCIs’ crime-frenzy of generations roam around in their dozens on motorbikes with swapped/unregistered licence-plates, terrorise women/crime witnesses who don’t know any of the MARCUCCI in our own homes in physical & cyber-space 24x7x365, break into buildings & vehicles leaving behind sickening signs of their risk-free crimes, their sadistic brutality, violate the Geneva Convention wielding government/military-grade technology – e.g. transcranial direct current stimulus, i.e. electric shocks delivered remotely to victims’ bodies through walls (DARPA)(3) – in the leafy electorate of Clare O’Neil, Australia’s Minister for Cyber Security & Home Affairs (no less), since 2009 in my forced experience. I have owned my home here since 2001.
There is no point in trying to move. Australia’s most dangerous criminals have always been police officers committing crimes with other government insiders providing the up-to-date home address of any of us. What Raymond T. Hoser documented in 1999 became far worse, thanks to 21st century technology(4).
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(1) https :// www .couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/the-murder-victims-seen-by-many-but-helped-by-none/news-story/deea91936b2c70ff9570544c27f32f5c
(2) https :// www .bbc.com/news/world-australia-48346543
(3) https :// www .darpa.mil/program/next-generation-nonsurgical-neurotechnology
(4) “Victoria Police Corruption”, Raymond T. Hoser, (736 pp.) Kotabi, 1999. ISBN 0-9586769-6-8 & “Victoria Police Corruption 2”, Raymond T. Hoser, (800 pp.) Kotabi, 2000. ISBN 0-9586769-7-6
Hoser permitted me to share a scanned version of “Victoria Police Corruption” in pdf: https :// acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:ef8f1806-0cfc-417c-8def-68349ad37aa7
Your first three links don’t really support your points and the first two are from decades ago. I didn’t read the fourth.
The over-riding impression from the first is that numerous members of the public (mostly female as it happens) decided not to report what they were seeing rather than the police ignoring the reports.
The second involves small town police incompetence in not taking a man’s complaint seriously, but only after the serial killer had previously been taken to court and acquitted.
The third says nothing about delivering electric shocks to people through walls.
thank you for saving me the trouble
The worst outcome for someone compelled to expose Australia’s absurd crime reality to the public is indifference – thank you all, for drawing attention to what I need to share.
Not only women suffer horrendous crimes in Australia without any risk of prosecution to the criminals whose day job salaries are paid by their victims’ taxes. Last crime against me violating the Geneva Convention (yes, you have read it right) less than 14 hours ago in my home, on my own, behind locked doors (1). Writing this at 9:30pm on 29 July 2024. PTSD from thousands of crimes with no end in sight has its consequences – apologies for the messy writing. I never even dated the stalker ex-coworker, never chose to have anything to do with any MARCUCCI, Victoria Police officers or other criminals either.
Unlike Donald Mackay, Sallie-Anne Huckstepp, Lyn Woodward, Jennifer Tanner, Tina Greer, Colleen South, Bronwyn Winfield & who knows how many others, whose names were never recorded/long forgotten, I am still alive – crimes against me have never been punished either, like crimes against them. What I have been forced to learn via thousands of unpunished crimes since 2009 compels me to warn others what to expect. False security killed 8,000 men & boys in Srebrenica in 1995. Australia’s dysfunctional law-enforcement means false security – to people far beyond our borders, since the Internet is everywhere.
I became a crime-tech-demo-dummy toy for the MARCUCCI as a public servant witness to crimes punishable by 10 years in jail (Business Analyst, Victorian Electoral Commission, 2009-2012). As an ex-refugee turned MBA e-commerce world-champion from a communist country, I naively believed Australia’s fake facade of opulent harmony: it took me over a decade to resign to the fact that our most dangerous criminals have always been police officers.
I have lived long enough, I have done all that I have ever wanted to do.
While I am too outraged to contemplate suicide, I am not afraid of the price I will have to pay for speaking out about Australia’s absurd crime reality. I will draw my last breath knowing #ididnotstaysilent.
Thank you for your time.
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(1) https :// www .linkedin.com/pulse/contactless-extortion-australia-katalin-kish-upqyc/
Feminists.
Choose, between equality and difference, because you cannot, realistically, stamp one foot and demand ‘equality’, while simultaneously stamping the other foot insisting you’re different and must be treated differently. You will fall over.
Personally, I am old-fashioned and believe the differences between men and women mean that women should be treated more gently, but I think you have to deserve that courtesy, you cannot behave arrogantly, rudely and irresponsibly and still expect special treatment.
So choose, or the confusion will continue.
Manners maketh man and woman.
Claire, responding as a woman who agrees with the principle of equality you describe above. Of course, people do not all have equal strength and we all start helpless and get initially stronger and then weaker with age, but equality before the law is the only system that does not create second class citizens.
I take issue with Julie Bindel’s infantilisation of women which often appears in these pages but that is not what Harriet Wistrich is advocating here.
Proper regulation and punishment for police officers, and others in positions of power and/or charged with upholding the law, from the armed forces, to politicians and civil servants, who abuse citizens by whose consent and taxes they exist, is required for society to function.
There also needs to be acknowledgement, from the right (who argue for more police and more rights for the police to use force) and the left (who argue for more community style and outreach policing, with a strong bias against force for any reason) that historically, citizens (men, women and children) have considered the use of reasonable force, for their own defence and the protection of all around them (including strangers) where it appears to be the right thing to do.
The confidence to use reasonable force is disappearing, due to encouragement from thr right (“the police should protect me”), the left (“no violence please”), and safetyism by the police (“don’t get involved you might get injured”).
As women, we need to acknowledge that we are adults, and with that comes a responsibility to put ourselves in danger to protect the society we live in, one hopes with the help of men who also recognise that as citizens they are jointly responsible for civil order. It is not always someone else’s job.
The police, whether you trust them or not, can’t do everything.
Claire (and Harriet), your country needs you!
Interesting. The author doesn’t trust the police because she is convinced they don’t properly address her woke phobias – racism, misogyny and homophobia.
I don’t trust them because they only prosecute 3.9% of burglaries, don’t prevent criminal damage to cultural artefacts, arrest people for tweets, and spend huge amounts of public money on DEI, unconscious bias training and other nonsense.
Maybe the fact they no longer are capable of stopping actual crime is the relentless attacks of people like the author.
Or maybe it’s because they hire on protected characteristics rather than competence, like the gay female in charge when Mendes was shot, going on to become head of the Met.
The author happens to be Julie Bindel’s partner.
The misandry shows
Back in the 80s, when I was a child, I recall that there was an increase in police admin – having to fill out forms following an arrest or something. I can’t remember the details but that was the jist of it – the kind of thing we’d automatically assume would happen these days.
Even as a child I remember thinking that this would mean they wouldn’t be able to investigate as much crime. And here we are with many crimes barely investigated and yet seem to have more issues with corrupt police.
We used to have a strong police presence on our streets to prevent crime as well as respond to it. New Labour and the Coalition got rid of it. We now have a purely reactive police force instead.
They risk their lives every day dealing with violence and brutality, They need to be tough and capable of violence to survive, they also need to be loyal to each other, within reason.
If they break the rules of engagement there needs to be careful scrutiny and fairness in judging them.
The writers prescription, then, is to dilute the last remaining tittle of that esprit d’corps which sustains men and women as they put themselves in harms way for the protection of the commonwealth.
I am not persuaded that encouraging tale-bearers and informants to shop in their fellow officers is going to raise the level of decency and honesty among police officers. Rather, perhaps, the opposite.
All that could be expected if that did happen, as we have seen in Ulster and with the Modern Met, is that the average copper would blithely transfer his automatic loyalty from his brother officers to the progressive orthodoxies and reward structure of the managerial state. There can be no sincerity to it.
Always and ever we are reminded that there are no structural answers to spiritual problems. There is no HR solution. The Law cannot save us.
We must hope for men who ‘know why they fight and love what they know’ as Cromwell put it. And that requires a spiritual regeneration. When hard men and worldly men can hear that sentiment without a mocking smile we will know that the ship has turned towards back righteousness.
The Police recruit from the population. Since the late 1960s everal changes have taken place. chivalry has been mocked by the Left wing middle class: chief Constable are no longer colonels and above with considerable experience with the career police officer being the Deputy which is like having a Chairman and Managing Director running a company. The Police are no longer recruiting ex sergeants from the Armed Forces especially The Guards, Royal Marine Commandos or Royal Navy who are over 5 ft 10 inches in height. Men who are experienced in fighting, fit, tough and trained know when to diffuse a confrontation with a joke, a pithy comment and only use violence as a last resort. Most violence is undertaken by uneducated unskilled males from the age of 15 to 35 years of age. They normally are very good at risk management – knowing whern they are confronting someone who is better at fighting than them.
Ex military who have pensions will be less suceptible to corruption. Having someone who is a sergeant enables The Police to examine their careers, anyone who shows a history of uncontrolled violence is unsuitable. Experienced Police Sergeants no longer interview the parents of applicants in their homes. Parents who live in a squalid home, have alcohol on their breath in the morning and Nazi literature in the home would unlikely bring up suitable children. Require applicants to have undertaken sport. Have stringent fitness regime for applicants while application is being processed. If someone is not prepared to undergo rigorous training say, 1.5 hours per night, 5 days per week, they lack the sense of responsibility to become a Police Officer. All police officers to trained to the fitness and hand to hand combat skills of bodyguards in the Royal Military Police Close Protection units . Academic standards to be the same as Royal Navy Accelerated apprenticeships.
A Police Officer needs to have the intelligence one would expect of someone who has completed a RN accelerated apprenticeship.
All humans suffer from fear and anxiety when confronted by situations which are beyond their abilities. The result is normally paralysis or panic and over reaction. The only way to prevent these reactions are rigorous selection, rigorous realistic training and rigorous realisting testing.
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Royal Military Police Close Protection Unit – Wikipedia
Specialist Roles Royal Military Police | The British Army (mod.uk)
A solution would be to only hire women as police officers.