Danny Shaw

Twelve months after Sir Mark Rowley embarked on a mission to re-boot the Metropolitan Police following a wave of scandals, the force has revealed that it has suspended or placed work restrictions on a thousand of its officers.  More than 200 are currently suspended and 860 are on ‘restricted duties’ while criminal or misconduct allegations are investigated – taken together that’s as many as people as work in a small constabulary. In addition, there has been a 66 per cent increase in dismissals for gross misconduct – with 100 in the last year, and 300 more hearings in the pipeline.

When a man has spent 17 years in prison for a crime that he didn’t commit, there are many urgent questions about policing and the criminal justice system which need answering.  Andrew Malkinson, who will never get back those years after being wrongfully convicted of raping a woman in a violent attack in 2003, certainly deserves the answers. Why did officers from Greater Manchester Police (GMP) single him out as a suspect? Why was strong evidence that pointed away from him, such as the absence of scratch marks caused by the victim, seemingly overlooked? Why did police fail to disclose to Malkinson’s lawyers vital documents showing the long criminal records of two prosecution witnesses?

These are busy times for the police watchdog. It’s just started an investigation into serious allegations of misconduct against Devon and Cornwall’s Chief Constable, Will Kerr, who’s been suspended. An inquiry has been announced into missed opportunities to root out the serial rapist, former Metropolitan Police officer David Carrick. And this week came an investigation into the police handling of an incident in which a woman was accused (wrongly) of dodging a bus fare.  It might seem odd for the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) to be examining a case of alleged fare evasion when there are so many other priorities, including fatal police shootings and deaths in custody. But after a social media clip of what happened sparked controversy, an inquiry became inevitable.

Huw Edwards is in hospital. That shocking news, in a statement from his wife, Vicky Flind, delivered an icy blast of reality to a news story that had bubbled out of control for six days, dangerously so for the BBC. Although reporters in its News division, where I worked for 31 years, had covered the events rigorously and sensitively, breaking new lines and analysing developments with care, the same surefootedness cannot be said for the BBC’s corporate arm. Their handling of the affair raises serious questions about complaints procedures, staff welfare and privacy. The BBC’s rationale for not naming Edwards (until his wife did so) remains unclear When the initial complaint about the News at Ten presenter was received on May 19, alarm bells should have sounded.

‘I am immensely proud of the exceptional work of our officers who prevented criminal disruption, damage and danger destroying such a unique occasion,’ said Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. He was talking of course about the coronation amid the controversy that has swirled around the Met since reports emerged that people were wrongfully arrested as part of its operation in central London last Saturday, appropriately codenamed ‘Golden Orb’.  Frankly, the Met will regard the arrest of a handful of innocent people and a row about protestors’ rights as a price worth paying Among them were six members of the anti-Monarchy group, Republic, mistakenly suspected of having equipment for a ‘lock on’ style demonstration.

A call from my younger son’s secondary school was not what I was expecting at 11.30 a.m., but as soon as I heard the secretary speak I knew what had happened to him. He’d just got himself a pair of Apple AirPods and was keen to use them – why wouldn’t he be? As he stepped off the bus, with his new wireless earphones in place, he was followed up the road to the school by two boys. A strategy which targets crime gangs is more likely to yield results than a drive to investigate every phone theft Suddenly, from behind, they made their move, grabbing him in a headlock. It took only a few seconds but enough time for them to get what they wanted: the AirPods, of course – and his smartphone.

For the past 12 months, the Metropolitan Police has been in the organisational equivalent of a body scanner. Every vital organ of this 194-year-old beast has been examined in detail by Baroness Louise Casey and her review team enabling them to understand the Met in a way that no one has done before. The results, from top to toe, are alarming – and demand emergency surgery.  Scotland Yard commissioned the report after one its officers, Wayne Couzens, was jailed for life for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard in March 2021. The backdrop also includes a string of other shocking scandals that has contributed to plunging levels of public confidence: in five years the proportion of people who believe the force does a good job locally has fallen from 70 to 45 per cent.

For more than 47 years, Dennis McGrory got away with murder. But last week justice was finally delivered: the pensioner was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing 15-year-old Jacqui Montgomery, in Islington, north London. His conviction was in large measure due to the work of Metropolitan police forensic scientists and detectives who never gave up on the case, which dates back to June 1975. So it was with Zafar Iqbal, who strangled his wife, Naziat Khan, in front of their young daughters in Norbury, south-west London, in 2001. Iqbal fled to Pakistan but Scotland Yard, working with other law enforcement agencies, tracked him down and eventually brought him back to the UK. He was jailed in December. How could the Met have hired Carrick?

At 2.30 in the afternoon on September 22, 1999, Harry Stanley left the Alexandra pub in Hackney, east London, with a blue plastic bag containing a table leg that had been repaired by his brother. Unbeknown to Stanley, someone in the pub had called the police to report ‘an Irishman with a gun wrapped in a bag’ and minutes later, 100 yards from his home, two armed officers arrived. They challenged the 46-year-old (who was in fact Scottish) before firing two shots. He died instantly. Five years later, a jury at the second inquest to be held into Stanley’s death returned a verdict of ‘unlawful killing’ and the officers involved, Inspector Neil Sharman and PC Kevin Fagan, were suspended from duty.