An official report published on Wednesday presented in devastating detail the ‘prevalent’ culture of thousands of police officers in England and Wales who are ‘predatory’ towards women but are allowed to join and to stay in the ranks.
The report by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services was ordered after the public outrage at the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard in 2021 by a serving Metropolitan police officer, Wayne Couzens.
The report details the unwarranted stops of women in an abuse of power by police, known in the force as ‘booty patrols’. Crimes of sexual assault were covered up and ignored, along with the widespread harassment of members of the public and female officers.
According to data released under a Freedom of Information request from the Evening Standard newspaper at least 420 of Scotland Yard’s 35,000 serving officers are currently under investigation after being accused of committing a range of offences.
Some have been suspended and others put on ‘restricted duties’ but a total of 109 continue to work as normal, free to carry on with no restrictions.
According to the inspectorate: ‘We also found 131 cases where the employment decision was questionable at best. In these, we found officers and staff with criminal records, or suspicions that they had committed crime (including serious crime), substantial undischarged debt, or family members linked to organised crime.’
The leading inspector for this report, Matt Parr, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he believed UK policing was experiencing a ‘tipping point moment’. Parr added that police chiefs have ‘got to take more interest in recruiting the right people and they’ve got to take more interest in driving out misconduct, because if they don’t, these problems are going to keep coming back, and they can’t’.
It is not a question of police chiefs taking more ‘interest’ in who they recruit. All the official inquiries into the police over the past decade have concluded that the police force is ‘institutionally racist’, ‘institutionally misogynist’ and ‘institutionally corrupt’, with nothing being done except for chief constables and the Tories to promise things will get better and reforms are on the way.
The situation is not a case of a ‘few bad apples’ that can be weeded out – the institutionally corrupt and racist police force is a crucial part of the capitalist state that exists solely to defend the ruling class by whatever means necessary to maintain the ruling class in power.
By stuffing it full of criminals, racists and sexual predators the ruling class have formed a force that will obey any order, and mete out violence if instructed to by their masters.
Such a force is necessary for the ruling class today.
This week, The Guardian newspaper revealed government plans to cope with energy blackouts of up to seven days as a result of the energy crisis exacerbated by the imperialist war against Russia.
According to this report, the Tories are preparing for disruption to transport, food and water supplies, along with communications and energy for a week in the coming period.
The powerful working class will not sit back to freeze and starve in darkness for a week watching their children go hungry and cold while the oil and gas companies make billions in super profits.
There will be an eruption of anger with workers rising up threatening revolution against a capitalist system that is trying to drive them into the gutter.
Faced with an insurgent working class, the Tories would inevitably declare a state of emergency and martial law, relying on the police and army which it has assembled to take on the working class.
The only way forward is for the working class to exert its enormous power by demanding that the TUC and trade unions leaders stop evading a fight with this Tory government and call an immediate general strike to close down the country and kick out the Tories, bringing in a workers’ government and a workers’ state.
The burning issue of the day is for the working class to put an end to the police state being prepared by the Tories by putting an end to capitalism itself through the victory of the socialist revolution.
