WHEN Tory Home Secretary Priti Patel is forced to say that she is ‘appalled and sickened’ by the behaviour of Metropolitan Police officers, then you know that the stench from the police has reached stomach churning proportions.
Patel, known for her devotion to the forces of the state and willingness to use them against migrants and all other ‘undesirables’ in the eyes of the ruling class, was forced to condemn the Met following a damning report into officers mainly based at Charing Cross in London.
This report by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) identified ‘bullying and aggressive behaviour; “banter” used to excuse oppressive and offensive behaviours; discrimination; toxic masculinity; misogyny and sexual harassment.’
The IOPC uncovered a litany of jokes about rape, along with racist and homophobic messages that were shared by serving police officers on WhatsApp and Facebook and which they attempted to write off as just ‘banter’.
14 officers were investigated, two were dismissed for gross misconduct and barred from future employment by the police. Two more resigned and several others faced disciplinary action. However nine are still serving and another is now employed as a contractor in a staff role.
In a statement, the IOPC said: ‘We believe these incidents are not isolated or simply the behaviour of a few “bad apples”.’ A few ‘bad apples’ was precisely the excuse used by the head of the Metropolitan Police, Dame Cressida Dick, after the rape and murder of Sara Everard at the hands of a serving police office.
When police attacked and arrested women attending a vigil for Sarah on Clapham Common, Dick was quick to defend these actions saying it was just ‘fiendishly difficult policing’.
The outcry that followed demanded Dick’s resignation but it was Priti Patel who stepped forward slapping down these demands and defending the Met chief.
However, yesterday Patel changed her tune slightly when she told the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee that not only was she shocked and appalled but she acknowledged that the police had ‘problems’ with its culture that could not be dismissed as ‘one-off’ incidents that suggested a ‘failure of leadership in some quarters.’
Since the murder of Sarah Everard in March 2021 the scale of violence against women by police officers has been revealed. Over 600 serving officers have faced allegations of sexual misconduct since 2008, while several have been charged with rape and sexual assault in recent months.
A Freedom of Information Request revealed that in the past three years the Met recruited people with records for actual bodily harm, multiple possession of the class A drug cocaine, drunkenness and assault. This is on top of the recent conviction of two officers for taking selfies with the dead bodies of two murdered women in west London.
Despite all the police scandals surrounding Dick, she has been seamlessly promoted through the ranks, awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and defended to the hilt by Patel and previous Tory home secretaries, even after two official inquiries branded the Met as institutionally racist and corrupt.
Dick was seen as the ideal leader by the Tories of a force that they are relying upon to police the working class. Today, however, with the Tories facing complete collapse, despite the intervention of the Met to delay the final report into Johnson’s lockdown parties, Patel clearly believes it is time to distance the Tories from Dick and the Met.
With the Tories seeking to use the police to impose poverty on the working class through enforcing bans on strikes and protests, Patel is attempting to convince workers that the Met and the entire police can be transformed by another inquiry and by throwing Dick out.
It is not just Dick that must be thrown out but the Met and the entire UK police force disbanded.
The only way to put an end to the corruption and rot that pervades the police is the working class demanding the TUC call a general strike to kick out the Tories and bring in a workers’ state that will disband the police and replace the capitalist state with a workers’ state and socialism.