ON TUESDAY two serving Metropolitan Police officers, PCs Deniz Jaffer and Jamie Lewis, admitted in court taking pictures of the bodies of two young women stabbed to death in a London park.
Both have been remanded on bail for sentencing with the judge informing them they face a lengthy prison sentence.
Lewis took pictures of the crime scene that were then sent and shared with a group of over 40 other police officers on a WhatsApp group, which called themselves the ‘A-team’.
According to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) Lewis ‘used degrading and sexist language to describe the victims’, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, and selfies that showed the girls’ bodies in the background.
The fact that these two police officers felt comfortable and empowered to leave the crime scene they were supposed to be guarding and risk compromising any forensic evidence and then share their repulsive pictures with other serving officers, is a clear indication of the sense of immunity that pervades the Met and the entire police force throughout the country.
It is the latest in a long litany of crimes and abuses carried out by serving officers in the Met.
The most notorious was that of the murder of Sarah Everard by serving Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens.
It emerged in his trial that allegations had been made on two occasions that Couzens had exposed himself in public without any police response.
Couzens was also a member of a WhatsApp group where violence against women was discussed.
Five police officers from this group are being investigated by the IOPC for ‘gross misconduct’.
When Couzens was arrested, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick, went out of her way to portray him as one ‘wrong ‘un’ in the force but it turns out that he is not alone.
Last week, a serving Met officer was arrested and charged with rape in London – an allegation he denies.
Another off-duty serving Met officer was charged with rape last month in Hertfordshire, while also last week a Met detective constable appeared in court charged with multiple child sex offences.
A recent Freedom of Information Request revealed that within the past three years, the Met also took on new recruits with records for actual bodily harm (ABH), multiple possession of the class A drug cocaine, drunk and disorderly, and assault.
All the recruits, including the sex offender, are still serving with the force.
In June, when the actions of the two police taking photos of the murdered women first came to light, the mother of the two sisters told the BBC: ‘If ever we needed an example of how toxic it has become, those police officers felt so safe, so untouchable, that they felt they could take photographs of dead black girls and send them on.’
Mina Smallman added: ‘It speaks volumes of the ethos that runs through the Metropolitan police.’
On Tuesday, following the admission of guilt, Smallman said the Met was ‘beyond hope’ and called for its leaders to ‘get the rot out once and for all.’
She is absolutely correct that the Met is beyond all hope of reform.
Cressida Dick, despite all her usual ‘shock’ about the crimes committed by her officers, has presided over, and been promoted through the ranks, despite all the scandals that have led to the Met being branded institutionally racist and corrupt by two official inquiries.
The reason is that for the ruling class she is the ideal leader of a force that it is relying on to police the working class.
With inflation spiralling out of control, driving up fuel and food prices and workers facing cuts to benefits and increasing taxes, the Tories need a force loyal and immune from considerations of legality to deal with the prospect of a mass uprising.
The only way to clear out the rot is for the working class to bring down the Tories by demanding the TUC call a general strike to kick them out, and bring in a workers’ government that will sack Dick and disband the Met, replacing the capitalist state with a workers’ state and socialism.
