The secretive nature of the UK Met Police is a pernicious disgrace.
In the 1880s, Met Police constables worked long 12-hour shifts six to seven days a week, receiving £1 a week. Even allowing for 142 years of inflation, £1,850 a year was not exactly a king’s ransom – unless you might be Labour MP Dianne Abbott making an idiot of herself on Morning Radio in 2015.
Fact is, politicians as usual got what they deserved: the dregs doing the job of the the crème. In the period 1881-94, 80 percent of all cop dismissals were for being inebriated on duty. That said, their lives were strictly controlled, with officers required to wear their uniforms even when not on duty. This was done so the public could be aware of who was a police officer and to prevent suspicion that they were being spied on by the police.
So at least, back then the intentions in a context of liberty protection seem to have been present and reasonably correct. By the time I was a kid scrumping apples in the 1950s, the British police were generally seen as not very bright, but doing their best to maintain order and encourage good behaviour. In the mid to late 1970s, I worked on Met Police recruitment advertising – and as late as that, the senior ranks at the Met wanted to screen out police applicants who might suffer from what they called “uniform power complex”. First as an ad agency employee and later as a freelancer, I made suggestions to the Met about the design of a questionnaire designed to catch out bullies. It never got anywhere, but nevertheless the experience left me in little doubt that Civil Policing was still in the hands of a Home Office concerned to protect civil rights.
What a difference forty years makes.
Major hat-tip here to the ever-sharp eyes of my colleague Amy Boone for revealing clear evidence of politically correct fascism, and complete adherence by a lackey Met Police to delusional cultural fashion:
Thus we read that a certain Mr Goddard posted his views on “rainbow pride flags representing the LGBTQ community”: this was potentially offensive and thus in the 21st century, in and of itself an offence. So Constable Plod wants Goddard to arrange a suitable venue “for further investigation”….and should Chummy ignore the request, he stands a good chance of getting his collar felt for Hate Crime.
But the bit that particularly caught my eye was at the bottom (if such a word is not offensive) of the letter concerning wet-behind-the-ears PC Gordon and his existence as a member of the “MO6 Public Order Crime Team”.
Do you know what MO stands for? It stands for Metropolitan Operations. There are 19 separate forms of it. And they will all leave you in little doubt that Big Brother is alive and well.
With more than 43,000 officers and staff in 2017, the Met is the UK’s largest police service. It currently swallows up 25% of the entire budget for England and Wales policing: so we’re not talking about anything small or exceptional here. In contrast to the Peelers of yesteryear, they’re not only often highly educated, they’re armed to the teeth.
Even to find out the number and nature of the 19 specialist divisions took a freedom of information battle. If the reply given doesn’t scare you to death, you’re just not paying attention. The HoI at the Met generously observed:
‘I have decided to disclose the information located to you.
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) neither confirms nor denies whether it holds any
other information in relation to this request. This is because the duty in Section
1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) does not apply by virtue of
the following exemptions:
Section 24(2) National Security.
Section 31(3) Law Enforcement.
This response should not be taken as an indication of whether or not any other
information is held, apart from what the MPS have confirmed is held within this
response.’
At times, the reply is laughable
‘MPS need to be alert to requests for certain types of information, and there is a
need for consistency when neither confirming nor denying whether information is
held in order to protect policing information.
Section 24 and Section 31 are both prejudice based exemptions, which means that
there is a requirement to evidence any harm that confirming or denying whether any
other information is held would cause. There is also a requirement to consider the
public interest because they are qualified exemptions.
Overall Evidence of Harm in complying with Section 1(1)(a)
Every effort should be made to release information under Freedom of Information.
However, to confirm or deny whether any other information relating to units and
capacity in the Firearms Command is held, would reveal policing capabilities and
undermine National Security.
DISCLOSURE
‘The MPS Specialist Firearms Command has a Senior Management Team,
consisting of chief Inspectors and Superintendents. This command is headed up by
a Chief Superintendent.
The following units sit within the command: Armed Response Vehicles – each team
consists of Inspectors, Sergeants and Constables
Counter Terrorism Specialist Firearms Officers each team consists of Inspectors,
Sergeants and Constables
Firearms Training Team each team consists of Inspectors, Sergeants,
Constables and Band P police Staff
Specialist Firearms Commanders – Superintendent rank
Tactical Firearms Commanders – Inspector rank
Post Incident Coordination Desk- Sergeants and Constables
Professional Standards – Sergeant and Constable
Firearms Policy unit – Sergeant, Constable and band E police staff
Firearms Enquiry Team – Inspector, Sergeants, Constables and Band E police
staff
Firearms Engagement and Recruitment Team – Inspector, Sergeants, Constable
Duties and resourcing – Sergeant, constables
Support – constables, Band D and Band E. ‘
Well hold the front page: having believed all my life that the police was largely run by skipping men wearing only feather boas, the cast of A Chorus Line and Rupert Murdoch, it turns out that the service consists of Chief Superintendents, Superintendents, Chief Inspectors, Inspectors, Sergeants, Constables and band D to E police staff.
We’re not even, by the way, allowed to know the identity of the author of these revelations, but by God he’s a risk-taker and a man after my own heart. His fearless testimony in the face of the On-Message Hobgoblins at his door is a lesson to us all.
And that lesson is, “All coppers are careerist, stupid, bent, ignorant bastards upon whom education was utterly wasted”….just ask Murdoch: he knows more than most.
In the US, cops drive proven nutters to the upcoming crime scene and watch from a distance as they massacre schoolchidren. In the UK, the criminalisation of people who abhor the idea of a culture in which homosexuals can do no wrong is daily meat and drink to the modern Bobbie..
I fail to see the difference between an Establishment rim-licking contemporary 19-division Met Police force, pc US cops and the East German Volkspolizei of unlamented infamy….or indeed the NKVD force that spearheaded Stalin’s killing machine. The obvious link between all of them is that they swapped civil status among the People for untrammeled power over them.
But fear not fellow radical constitutional democracy reformers, Commiephobes and fascistiphobes: further excavation reveals a situation far worse than you thought.
The Metropolitan Operations (MO) reorganisation took place in something of a hurry during 2018-19….just before Covid19 of such sweet memory. Do you remember hearing anything about it? I don’t.
Let’s start with a numerical issue: there are 19 MOs, but not 19 explanations:
As the sharp-eye among you will have spotted, MO numbers 13-19 are missing. The mind boggles at what these Fab Five might be up to, although contemporary archaeology helps us a little with the riddle: terms like covert governance, public order planning and detention suggest the use of secret State enforcers to “bend” everything in our Constitution from wire tapping, secret eye-photography, in camera trials and habeas corpus suspension to armed defence against resistors.
For example, I am informed that Specialist Firearms Command MO19 is in fact a euphemism for the Mr Bigs to whom MOs 1-18 report. But just eight days ago, Met Police chief Sir Mark Rowley admitted there were “certain offences” for which he is not allowed to fire serving officers.
In fact, if one replaces the ‘M’ with an ‘S’ (Specialist), the 14-18 gap is quickly solved, and the answer obvious: these five groups are almost entirely devoted to protection of the State and its various self-styled “élites”. For example, SO14 (Royal Protection), SO16 (Diplomatic Protection) and SO18 (Bigwig Aviation Protection).
Filling up the gap there, SO17 protects Westminster MPs and buildings. 503 cops do nothing else but this, and it works out at almost one officer per legislator. In short, a huge proportion of the Met budget is spent protecting Royals, diplomats and MPs who are above the law already. Something out of kilter there: 2,000 officers taking care of circa 5,000 bureaucrats, celebs, Royals, MPs and assorted other troughers….with the remaining 30,000* on the streets of our Capital, a multicultural population of 9.7 million – which, for those mathematically challenged pro-vaxxers among you, represents 1 officer per 323 citizens. Do we think some thinkers out there thinking about how best to suck dick (and we aren’t talking Cressida here) among those they think can further their ambitions perhaps spend too much time thinking when they should be nicking? Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
The stats speak for themselves:
*Apart from 2020/21 (Covid Lockdown) violence has continued to rise – by almost exactly 20% in just six years. Hint of interpretation: The Met strength was cut from 43,000 to 32,000 during the 2018-19 bunfight. The cuts were overwhelmingly in front line policing of the citizenry.
Last year, the theft rate in London rose 14% year on year, drug offences have increased every year since 2015, from 2015-20 knife crime rose 65%, and fewer than one in six crimes involving murders, rapes, knives and grievous bodily harm, are being solved by the Met.
Among all these at times amazing statistics, the one that most staggered and terrified me was this one: there are now 82.9 crimes per 1,000 citizens in London.
Give that some careful thought: the next time you walk along a busy thoroughfare to work in London at morning rush-hour, you will on average pass something in the region of 4,000 people. Three hundred and thirty of them will be criminals.
In just eight years, the number of per annum murders in the capital city during the period 2014-22 has risen from 533 to 719….that’s almost exactly 25%.
Does any of that really justify a cut in frontline services?
It’s time to wake up, people: Britain is a Police State run for the convenience and privileged use of the UKEUNATO unelected State obsessed with the idea of a unipolar planet upon which all policy in all areas of life is dictated by the Dollar as the dominant feature of digital central banking.
The growing strength and confidence of the Bric alliance will, eventually, ensure the failure of Secret Establishment arrogance. But that process will lead to millions of pointless deaths unless the First World beyond Washington and Langley gets its socio-cultural act together.
John Ward is fed up to the back teeth of recording the disastrous decline of his homeland as a result of total monetary, educationalist and civic sellout by political and bureaucratic whores to the cultural fashions and geopolitical fascists of the day. If others have the answer to that, can they please let him know.
The Slog 