The Met's problem isn't bad apples, it's the whole barrel. Abolish it

After Stephen Lawrence, Ian Tomlinson and countless other scandals, it's clear the Metropolitan police is institutionally rotten. London deserves better

• 
• • Owen Jones
  • The Guardian, Sunday 9 March 2014 18.29 GMT

'It's all over for the Met.' Illustration by Andrzej Krauze

If hacking someone's voicemail is a gross invasion of privacy, what words are left to describe agents of the state with fake identities having sex with women they're spying on? One activist who had a child with the undercover police officer Bob Lambert has offered four words: "raped by the state". She is among a group of women activists currently fighting attempts by the Met to sabotage their quest for truth and justice. If phone hacking provoked anger, the use of police spies should chill.

But police spies stealing the identities of dead children and duplicitously sharing the homes, beds and lives of women is only the latest in a string of damning scandals about the Metropolitan police: Stephen Lawrence, and the Macpherson report's subsequent conclusion that the Met is institutionally racist; a stop-and-search policy that discriminates against black people; deaths in police custody; the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes; the unlawful killing of Ian Tomlinson; the treatment of protesters as social problems to be contained; the stitching up of a Tory heavyweight.

Each scandal is examined in isolation, treated as the action of rogue officers. But together they suggest an institutionally rotten system. Londoners need a force devoted to protecting their security, which treats all sections of the community equally, and which enjoys the consent and trust of everyone. Currently they do not have one, and so it must be built on new foundations.

This is a suggestion that will infuriate some, not least Met officers. Easy for a columnist, issuing grand proclamations behind the safety of his desk. Met officers, on the other hand, are taking rapists and killers off the streets, putting their lives in danger as they do so. More than 3,000 British police officers are injured a year; about 800 seriously. But this is not about individuals: it's the system that is the problem, and it traps good and bad officers alike.

The government has finally announced an inquiry into police spies, driven on by the revelation that a police force supposed to be solving the murder of Stephen Lawrence was actually spying on his grieving family. But Doreen Lawrence is right to state that police failings go to "the highest level", and the Macpherson report's damning conclusion – that the Met is "institutionally racist" – is as true as ever.

 Doreen Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, 'is right to state that police failings go to the highest level'. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

I've never been randomly stopped and searched by a police officer, but I've met plenty of young black men who have. The experience varies: sometimes officers are almost apologetic, other times full of intimidation and aggression. The evidence shows that black people are significantly less likely to use drugs, and yet black Londoners are six times more likely to be stopped on suspicion of possession. It is difficult to conclude that this is anything but racism.

It is not just black Londoners who have described the Met as "the biggest gang around here": senior officers have self-described as such. "You might have 100 people in your gang," publicly declared Chief Inspector Ian Kibblewhite, of Enfield police, in 2012. "We have 32,000 people in our gang. It's called the Metropolitan police." But a "gang" does not serve a community: it has a turf, a demand for prestige and status, a desire to smash enemies.

When Andrew Mitchell was stitched up by Met officers, the lesson was frightening and instructive. The number of officers involved – including PC Keith Wallis, jailed for falsely claiming to have witnessed the infamous bicycle incident – must give pause to those who think it is a story of "bad apples". If an upper-middle-class Conservative cabinet minister can be stitched up, what hope for the rest of us? It is a point he has passionately and rightly made himself.

A story of conspiracy and cover-up is all too familiar, although other victims do not enjoy anything approaching the power and influence of a Conservative chief whip. There have been 82 black and minority ethnic deaths following contact with the Metropolitan police since 1990, and not a single successful prosecution. Among them is Sean Rigg, a black musician who died in Brixton police station in 2008; four years later, an inquest jury found that police had used unnecessary force against him. It was in stark contrast to initial police claims, and – after a prolonged fight by Rigg's family – three officers were arrested on suspicion of perjury.

When the newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson died after being thrown to the ground in 2009 at the G20 protests by PC Simon Harwood, the initial police narrative – faithfully repeated by so many news outlets – blamed protesters, claiming that officers coming to his help were bombarded with "bricks, bottles and planks of wood". It was all lies, and symptomatic of a force that saw protest as something that had to be contained, not facilitated. Young people had been patronised as the apathetic "X Factor generation": when they mobilised on the streets, they were met with batons and kettles.

What would a new police force look like? That should be left to a royal commission – headed by an independent figure, not an establishment patsy – which calls evidence from all sections of the community. Structures, training, forms of accountability: all need to be designed from scratch. It needs to be a body stripped of prejudice and bigotry, that defends hard-won democratic freedoms, as well as protecting people's security. It is all over for the Met, and time to debate the police force that London deserves.

Met Police supergrass scandal - corrupt private investigators infiltrate witness-protection programme

The Independent 26/06/2013

Scotland Yard is embroiled in a new corruption crisis after it emerged that senior officers knew for years that criminal private investigators had compromised its highly sensitive witness protection programme – and did nothing about it.

Days after the Metropolitan Police was rocked by incendiary claims that officers took part in a smear campaign against the family of the murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence, The Independent can disclose that private investigators (PIs) were employed by organised crime gangs to try to intimidate witnesses who had agreed to give evidence in high-profile trials.

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Also read

With the Met Police, if you are innocent you have everything to worry about

How can we invest our trust in a government that spies on us?

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Scotland Yard uncovered the shocking intelligence up to 15 years ago but, incredibly, did next to nothing to stop the private detectives, who also worked for the News Of The World. A registered police informant codenamed “Michael Green”, who spent years undercover working with a corrupt firm of PIs, warned his handlers at the Met that his colleagues were trying to locate “supergrasses” under police protection and “actively worked on them to withdraw their damaging allegations”.

But, for reasons yet to become clear, the Met failed to charge or even arrest the investigators for intimidating key witnesses. One of the supergrasses who was approached while under police protection later withdrew all of his original testimony, resulting in the collapse of a major criminal trial.

The news comes days after a former Met officer, Peter Francis, claimed he was asked find “dirt” and spy on Stephen Lawrence’s relatives in a bid to undermine the campaign to bring his killers to justice. Details of Scotland Yard’s witness-protection programme being compromised were included in a Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) report which was suppressed  by the agency but leaked toThe Independent.

The same documents led to last week’s revelation by this newspaper that private detectives had been hired by major companies to hack, blag and steal personal information about rival companies and the public. The latest disclosures have heaped fresh pressure on the Met and Soca, who are thought to have withheld crucial details of the criminal world of private investigators from a parliamentary inquiry last year.Keith Vaz, the Labour MP who chairs the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said: “These claims are absolutely devastating. The committee has agreed to call Soca to give evidence next week and [the Met Commissioner] Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe will be giving evidence on 9 July. It seems they will have some very difficult to questions to answer. We were very clear in our report that the link between private investigators and the police needs to be broken, so they can be properly investigated without fear and favour. However, no action was taken and we are still awaiting a Government response. This industry needs to be brought out of the shadows and be properly regulated.

“I have today written to request all the information Soca has on private investigators and their links with the public and private sector. We need to be certain there are no more skeletons to come out of the closet.”

The eight-page Soca memo referred to intelligence that PIs were employed by the “criminal fraternity” to “frustrate law enforcement”. The Independentunderstands that the same corrupt investigators have also worked for the News of the World. The Soca report includes intelligence that crime bosses were hiring PIs to access “internal police databases, including those containing serving officers’ private details” and “deleting intelligence records from law enforcement databases”.

The most shocking practice, however, involves attempts to trace protected witnesses. Soca noted that PIs often had an “abundance of law-enforcement expertise either through corrupt contacts or from a previous career in law enforcement”, and they were “attempting to discover location of witnesses under police protection to intimidate them”.

The Independent has spoken to the registered police informant “Michael Green”, who did not wish to be named for fear of reprisals.

He infiltrated a team of private investigators who worked closely with a corrupt former Met police officer, who is well-known to Scotland Yard but has never faced any criminal charges. He cannot be named for legal reasons so the informant referred to him as “Mr Brown”.

He said the gang used to “boast” of locating supergrasses in the witness protection programme and “actively worked on them to withdraw their damaging allegations”.

Mr Green said: “Indeed on one occasion I managed to get possession of a CD ROM disc which was a recording of a person in the witness protection programme being interviewed by Mr Brown who had traced him. Basically, Mr Brown wanted him to retract his evidence.

“My handlers wanted to have the disc copied, but I knew I had to hand it back, and I was concerned that if it was copied it might be discovered. I asked them to check with their own experts to see if that was possible.

Mr Green said his handlers told him that forensic experts claimed it would not be traceable. He said: “I persisted and asked for a second opinion which I believe they obtained from the security services. Their experts stated that it might be proven that the disc had been copied. As a result a sound recording was taken and the disc was not used to burn another copy.”

Despite being handed this extraordinary intelligence, the Met took no action against the private investigators or Mr Brown. The supergrass, whose identity is known to The Independent, later dramatically changed his evidence and caused several convictions to be overturned, to the great embarrassment of the Met and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The Met declined to comment and referred enquiries to a SOCA spokesperson who said: “This report remains confidential and SOCA does not comment on leaked documents or specific criminal investigations.”

Disclosures over the Met’s inability to maintain the security of its witness protection programme have also raised fresh questions over the decision by the Leveson Inquiry to ignore the bombshell SOCA report.

The confidential document was offered to the public inquiry into the press and police by Ian Hurst, a former British Army intelligence officer whose computer was hacked by private investigators employed by the News of the World.

However, in an email to Mr Hurst’s lawyer, Kim Brudenell, the solicitor to the Inquiry said: “The Inquiry does not propose to go into further detail or take further evidence regarding these matters and so will not be pursuing the [informant], utilising Mr Hurst’s statement as evidence or calling him to provide further oral evidence.”

Lord Justice Leveson then embarked on a fortnight of hearings dominated by arguably far less evidence from union officials, civilian police workers and press officers from provincial police forces. Mr Hurst told The Independent: “Leveson obviously considered the media officer for Staffordshire police to be far more relevant to his Inquiry than the experiences of a man who had spent years infiltrating a criminal gang with direct knowledge of Metropolitan police and News of the World corruption.

“There is no more sensitive system within the police than the witness protection programme. I would have thought evidence of it being compromised almost at will by corrupt detectives, private investigators who work with newspapers and organised crime syndicates would have been relevant to culture, practice and ethics of the press and police.”

However, the Met’s former deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick did manage to publicly reveal that the witness protection programme had been compromised during his evidence to the Inquiry.

He told Lord Justice Leveson: “That is something I would expect the (Met) to take with the utmost seriousness. However, there is nothing in the documents disclosed to me to suggest that anything was done.”

Despite the acute sensitivities and the Met’s bizarre, decade-long inaction to tackle the corrupt private investigators, Lord Justice Leveson barely referred to the matter in his final report, published last November – for fear of compromising ongoing criminal investigations. He said: “Although I understand the concern, it would not be appropriate for me to go further.”

Tom Watson, the campaigning Labour MP, said: “It is absolutely shocking that the media-criminal nexus could have got anywhere near compromising the Met’s witness protection programme.

“These new revelations are the strongest argument I have heard for Lord Justice Leveson conducting Part Two of his Inquiry as soon as the criminal cases are over.”

A Leveson Inquiry spokesperson said: “The terms of reference for the Inquiry were absolutely about the culture, practices and ethics of the press and how they engaged with the public, the police and politicians. Evidence on other issues would have been considered to have been outside those terms of reference.”

Met police corporate sponsorship: how about Samsung Yard?

Why not redesign uniforms, for example, and cover them in stylish logos like Formula One drivers?

• 
• • Stephen Moss
  • guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 November 2012 16.14 GMT

'With the break-up of the UK imminent, Scotland Yard is clearly an inappropriate name. Why not Samsung Yard?' Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

The Metropolitan police, one of the most sclerotic institutions in Britain, is at last making strides to join the modern world where money is short and everyone has to shape up or ship out. As well as considering the sale of New Scotland Yard in central London, which will make a very nice luxury hotel or HQ for a Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund, and moving to a refurbished terraced house in Peckham, it is also now seeking to attract sponsors, with donors supplying an increasing amount of its equipment.

There are the usual leftwing critics (Boris Johnson would have a ruder word for them) who carp that this will undermine the independence of the police. But they need to get real. Policing is expensive and our police will know where the red lines have to be drawn to ensure that their view of McDonald's is not influenced by the fact that it is paying for police mountain bikes, or that the policing of matches involving Chelsea or Queens Park Rangers is not affected by the fact those clubs have kindly given the police much-needed football shirts.

Scotland Yard robustly defends the donations, saying it has a "long history" of working with commercial partners to tackle crime. It's time to move that history along. There is no reason why many aspects of police work shouldn't be paid for by commercial organisations, following the example of UK Payments Administration Ltd, which has donated £11.9m to fund the police's dedicated cheque and plastic crime investigation unit.

Let's start thinking creatively about this and get more companies involved. WH Smith could sponsor police notepads and pencils; Dyson could pay for anti-litter units; Yale locks would be an obvious sponsor for police units dealing with burglaries; Virgin could underwrite the Flying Squad; Ann Summers could produce branded handcuffs and truncheons; the Antiques Roadshow could sponsor the art theft unit; Visa and Mastercard will want to compete for the plastic card crime contract; there must be mattress companies that would want to sponsor padded cells (with extra pocket springs); and do Black Marias really have to be black – why not orange (EasyJail)?

New New Scotland Yard, down in Peckham, could itself be sponsored. With the break-up of the UK imminent, Scotland Yard is clearly an inappropriate name. Why not Samsung Yard? And why not brand individual police stations? Instead of Paddington Green, why not Paddington Bear?

Police personnel wear drab uniforms and for some bizarre reason walk around with their fingers tucked into their tunics. Why not redesign the uniforms and cover them in stylish logos like Formula One drivers? They will look and feel better about themselves, and their forces will be making some desperately needed dosh.

This isn't rocket science. It's simple commercial thinking that will transform the face of the police in this country. As a nation we have become fearful of change and commercialisation, losing out to more innovative countries in Asia and South America which don't have hang-ups about keeping public service and tawdry commerce separate. There are no Chinese walls in China! Unless we wake up, we will be eaten by the Asian tiger and the South American (subs – please fill in appropriate animal). The police, in embracing the need to find sponsors and reduce their dependence on the state, are showing what is possible. Now for the fire service … or rather the EDF fire service.

Institutional Racism in the UK - the case of the Met Police

'If you complain about racism, your career is finished,' says Met detective

New Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe has promised to drive racism out of the force. But one officer, sacked after being smeared by his colleagues, believes his words are hollow

Nina Lakhani

Wednesday, 9 May 2012

An Asian police officer whose career was thwarted by institutional discrimination has dismissed promises by Britain's highest-ranking officer to drive out racism within the Scotland Yard as mere "lip service".

Detective Sergeant Gurpal Singh Virdi will today hand in his warrant card and become what he describes as one of only a dozen or so ethnic-minority police officers to survive 30 years with Britain's largest police force.

Last month the Met's Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, vowed to become an "implacable enemy" of racists within Scotland Yard, promising to "drive them out of the Met". But DS Virdi, whose career has been defined by a racially motivated character assassination and a subsequent smear campaign by his own colleagues, says he doesn't believe the Met has changed.

Speaking to The Independent, the retiring officer said: "The Met never wants to learn lessons from people like me."

The 53-year-old was sacked in 1998 after being erroneously charged with sending racist, National Front hate mail to black colleagues at Ealing police station. His house was searched for seven hours in the presence of his children.

DS Virdi says the raid, authorised by then Deputy Commissioner John Stevens, came weeks after he had threatened to go over the head of his superiors regarding what he felt was a sloppy investigation of a racist, near-fatal stabbing of an Iraqi and an Indian boy by five white males. DS Virdi had pointed out the parallels between the investigation and that into Stephen Lawrence's murder five years earlier; weeks later he was arrested and suspended.

"My career finished in 1998," he said. "As soon as you raise your head above the parapet, your career is finished, and everyone in the police service knows that... Most people keep silent because they know that, even if you complain, the investigation won't be done properly... That hasn't changed."

It took a year for the Crown Prosecution Service to decide there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him.

Nevertheless, Scotland Yard seemed determined to make an example of him and he was sacked in 2000. Later that year an employment tribunal found that the Met's investigation had racially discriminated against DS Virdi.

Unlike his white colleagues, it ruled, he had been subjected to an entrapment operation, been formally interviewed, had his house searched, been arrested and suspended "without sufficient evidence to support the allegations". He was awarded a six-figure settlement, mainly for the "high-handed" way the Yard had behaved and the way it had manipulated media coverage.

The Independent Advisory Group, which monitors the Met's performance on race crime, described the investigation as "disgraceful" and "a high-profile character assassination". In 2001, DS Virdi and his wife, Sathat, were assured by the then Commissioner, John Stevens, that lessons had been learnt, and he was sent an apology. An independent inquiry by the newly formed Metropolitan Police Authority concluded that there had been a smear campaign against him.

DS Virdi went back to the Met in 2002 against the wishes of his wife. In 2004 DS Virdi was assured by Lord Stevens and Mr Hogan-Howe, then assistant commissioner for human resources, that his career would not suffer as a result of a negative internal report claiming there was still "strong evidence" of his guilt.

For the past five years, he says he has "pushed pen around paper" for the Met's Sikh Association, awaiting a suitable post. "I had to go back and face them; I am not the type of person to run away," he said. "I wanted to do 30 years, and I'm glad that I've done it. I've enjoyed what I've done, but feel sad as I could have done so much more. I have been stopped from reaching my potential." Over the past five years, DS Virdi says he has supported a number of ethnic minority officers, from trainees to high-ranking officials, who have made allegations of racism but do not believe their complaints were properly investigated.

"The majority of allegations of racism and corruption have not been properly investigated – in fact they usually protect the racists rather than the victims," he said. "That has not changed.

"There have only been a dozen people, including mixed-race officers, who have survived 30 years. Most of them realise that their careers will never go anywhere and so they just go."

Born in India, Virdi grew up in Southall, west London. His father served in Delhi police, but when Virdi joined the Met in 1982, it was against his parents' wishes. He had an unblemished career in uniformed, CID and specialist squads until he was arrested in 1998.

Despite all that has happened, he says he has no regrets about returning to the police. "I can leave today with my head held high, as I can honestly say I didn't tolerate corruption or bad practice. There will be no leaving do. It wouldn't feel right after all that has happened."

The officer, or officers, who were responsible for sending the racist hate mail in 1998 have never been found; the criminal case remains unsolved. "There is nothing stopping the Commissioner [Hogan-Howe] from reopening the case should he want to, but I don't think he will, because they won't like the answers."

The Met said it did not comment on individual cases, but pointed to the Commissioner's public statements on driving out racism.

Lawrence corruption review 'imminent'

The Metropolitan Police is expected to make an announcement this week about its review into allegations of corruption within the original Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry.

The review was set up after Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the teenager killed in 1993 by a white racist gang, called for the reopening of the public inquiry into the circumstances of his death.

Mrs Lawrence's request to the Home Secretary, Theresa May, followed publication in The Independent of previously unseen intelligence reports about Detective Sergeant John Davidson, who played a leading role in the hunt for the killers, which said he was involved in "all aspects of criminality".

A former Scotland Yard commander, Ray Adams, was also the subject of an inquiry, but the findings were not passed to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry panel.

Paul Peachey

The suspects are in charge of the case

John O'Connor:

News International and the Metropolitan Police are looking into corruption at Wapping. But face-saving is their priority

Sunday, 10 July 2011 The Independent

Scotland Yard is facing its worst corruption crisis since the 1970s, when senior police officers were found to be controlling London's pornography industry. The investigation and subsequent purge left many detectives out of a job and in some case serving prison sentences. The gloom that surrounded the Yard in those days is similar to the atmosphere that pervades it today.
Each day reveals more details of misconduct by the press and the police. The investigation is going to be looking for heads to roll, and the higher the rank the better. This extraordinary state of affairs has its roots back in the Eighties, in the days when News International was dependent on the police to protect its new premises in Wapping.
Violent demonstrations occurred each night and the police were able to assist News International in getting its product out on to the streets. This was a complete turnaround for The Times newspaper, which only a decade earlier had launched the huge inquiry into police corruption that shook Scotland Yard to its foundations. News International was now best friends with Scotland Yard, and senior executives and top policemen wined and dined together on a regular basis.
Nobody could see the potential problems of a free lunch. This mutual admiration society worked very well for a time. Information passed freely both ways. The police benefited from undercover operations run by the newspapers, and in return the papers got their exclusive stories. This comfortable arrangement was cemented by regular briefings from Scotland Yard's press bureau to the national press directly and sometimes through the Crime Writers Association.
The culture of police officers mixing with journalists was encouraged, and little thought was given to the potential of misconduct. Crime writers were expected to know lots of police officers, and there was great competition to get the inside story. If only things could have stayed the same.
The News of the World began to pursue a strategy of aggressively targeting celebrities. The use of "the Fake Sheikh", Mazher Mahmood, was very effective, and produced some exclusive exposés on the greed and stupidity of people who should have known better. They were able to obtain confidential information on individuals including criminal records but they were in too much of a hurry to research public records.
Some private detective agencies realised that there was money to be earned from celebrity stories and confidential crime stories. Some of these detective agencies were run by former Metropolitan Police officers who maintained good contacts with serving officers. Some ex-police officers set themselves up as stringers, and provided a conduit for confidential information supplied by officers directly to the press. Once the Rubicon had been crossed, it was comparatively easy for police officers to contravene the Data Protection Act and supply information from the Police National Computer.
Short cuts adopted by the News of the World put them closer to the coalface. The strategy of using several intermediaries was abandoned and they employed private detectives such as Jonathan Rees of Southern Investigations and Glenn Mulcaire. This was clearly cheaper but the drawback was that if the private detectives came unstuck so did those who hired them.
The Department of Professional Standards at Scotland Yard has not been standing idly by. A number of undercover operations were mounted against ex- and serving police officers who were suspected of receiving corrupt payments. Nobody in authority was prepared to recognise the endemic nature of this corruption and each case was dealt with as a stand-alone incident. Much the same attitude was adopted when Glenn Mulcaire and Clive Goodman were convicted of hacking messages of members of the royal family.
At this stage, the number of police officers involved is unknown. News International's attempts to switch the focus of the inquiry onto the police by releasing details of payments to officers raised more questions than answers. The obvious questions are "What about payments to intermediaries?" and "What were the payments for?" Hospitality and gifts must also be probed.
The two organisations that are carrying out the investigations are... the Metropolitan Police and News International, both of whom are the subject of these allegations.
It is with breathtaking cheek that News International announced its own investigation. It is quite clear that getting to the truth is not a goal, its real objective is damage limitation and face-saving. It is quite clear that any number of junior staff will be sacrificed in order the save the skins of the real decision-makers. The News International investigation should be laughed out of court, not that it is ever likely to get there.
The new police investigation is even more curious. Everybody wants to know why the original hacking investigation was curtailed after the convictions of Mulcaire and Goodman. It seems unlikely that this decision was made solely by the police, but it is a possibility, and if so, why?
The suspicion must be that pressure was brought to bear by either News International, the Crown Prosecution Service or a very high-ranking police officer, or perhaps a combination of all three.
The new police investigation into hacking has been running since January 2011 and the police corruption enquiry has only just begun. It seems to me that this is a classic situation whereby an outside police force should be used, under the supervision of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. There is clear precedent for using an outside force, and if the public are to be convinced that this is a fair and unbiased investigation then that should clearly point to using an independent force outside of London.
This is no reflection on the skill, determination or ability of Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, but the pressure which killed off the first enquiry might still exist.
The Metropolitan Police had one go at this and fell very short. At risk is the reputation and integrity of the service. It cannot afford to get it wrong again. The problem is that senior officers did not recognise the extent of the corruption and were probably unwilling to upset their new found pals in the media.
They must accept their responsibility for what has happened. It is astonishing that with so many resources being spent on anti-corruption, they could not see it when it was right under their noses.
John O'Connor is former commander of the Flying Squad at Scotland Yard