Recently in Metropolitan Police Service Category

Sunday night has seen copycat looting, arson and attacks on the police in several areas of London:

The Metropolitan Police Service press bureau statement deliberately does not use the word "riot":

http://www.met.police.uk/pressbureau/Bur08/page01.htm

(save your own copy of this, since they may well amend or censor it later)

There has been looting in a number of boroughs in north, east and south London by small and mobile groups. Groups of youths continue to attack police officers and a number of police vehicles have been damaged.

[...]

Waltham Forest

[...]

Walthamstow Central


[...]

Brixton

[...]

Rival gangs attended Kings College Hospital

[...]

Enfield Town Centre

[...]

Oxford Circus

[...]

Islington

[...]

Ponders End

The Metropolitan Police Press Bureau really do not seem to understand the world wide web and social media:

The material on this page is for media organisations only. Please do not publish links to this page.

This page was last updated on
08-Aug-2011 2:18

The Met Police Twitter feed

https://twitter.com/#!/metpoliceuk

is useless.

They are not giving the innocent public any idea of the areas to avoid, but they have found the time to try to deny reports of a media coverup:


12:43 AM August 8th 2011

metpoliceuk Metropolitan Police
Police have not requested a #mediablackout and are continuing to provide updates

All that they have to say via Twitter is the very uninformative:

12:45 AM August 8th 2011

metpoliceuk Metropolitan Police
Police are responding to a significant amount of criminal activity across London and are deploying officers to tackle it.

No doubt some people will be calling for the Mayor of London, the Acting Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the Prime Minister to interrupt their holidays to return to London.

Why ? What exactly are they going to do that cannot be done over the phone ?

Any such interruption in their holidays would be a sign of weakness, giving the violent criminals more power than they deserve.

This blog was a bit sceptical about the appointment off Sir Paul Stephenson, as Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis i.e. the boss of the Metropolitan Police.

However, he was correctly and commendably utterly silent in public during the General Election campaign, unlike his NuLabour predecessor Sir Ian Blair during the 2005 campaign.

It is also very encouraging to read this Daily Telegraph report:

Met chief Sir Paul Stephenson: scrap police bonuses

All police bonuses should be scrapped to prove that officers are motivated by their duty to serve the public, according to Sir Paul Stephenson, Britain's most senior policeman.

By Richard Edwards, Crime Correspondent
Published: 10:01PM BST 17 May 2010

[...]

Sir Paul, who is paid £250,000 a year for running Britain's largest force, has turned down more than £100,000 worth of performance-related bonuses since 2005.

"If I had accepted a bonus I always felt as though I would compromise my operational independence and discharge of duties, and that is something that forms the basis to my whole approach to policing," he said.

"I am very disappointed that we still have bonus payments in policing. Now is the time to get rid of them as far as I'm concerned. They should never have been there in the first place."

[...]

We do not begrudge Sir Paul Stephenson his salary of only £250,000 a year, given that he is responsible for a budget of three and a half billion pounds a year of public money and "more than 33,000 officers together with about 14,200 police staff, 270 traffic wardens and 4,700 Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs)".

Perhaps there will really be a return to Sir Robert Peel's principles of policing

The Observer reports the apparently deepening scandal regarding abuse and fraud, by serving Metropolitan Police counter -terrorism and serious crime officers, of their corporate Amex credit cards.

It was bad enough when half a dozen of them were arrested, but it seems that the lax financial auditing and encouraged a "canteen culture" of expenses fiddling "within the rules" and some and outright theft from the taxpayer, just like with MPs expenses.

Card fraud probe targets 300 detectives

Scotland Yard officers are suspected of defrauding taxpayers of millions

* Rajeev Syal, investigations editor
* The Observer, Sunday 14 June 2009

More than 300 elite Scotland Yard detectives are suspected of defrauding the taxpayer of millions of pounds by abusing their corporate credit cards, the Observer can disclose.

300 detectives ???

Auditors who have examined the American Express accounts of 3,500 officers involved in countering terrorism and organised crime have reported almost one in 11 detectives to the Metropolitan Police's internal investigators.

A senior officer appears to have spent £40,000 on his Amex card in one year, without authorisation. Items bought by others without permission include suits, women's clothing and fishing rods.

The scale of the suspected fraud, disclosed in an internal Metropolitan Police Authority report, will send shock waves through the force. Until now, the investigation into expenses fraud was thought to have focused on fewer than 40 officers. It comes days after Sir Paul Stephenson, the Met Commissioner, faced the potentially damaging disclosure that six officers face investigation over claims that a drug suspect's head was forced into a lavatory that was flushed repeatedly.

[...]

Auditors at the Metropolitan Police Authority have spent two years examining receipts from the accounts of more than 3,500 officers. The Amex cards were issued in 2006 to detectives from specialist operations, which includes counter-terrorism and those involved in diplomatic and royalty protection.

The scheme was then extended to the specialist crime directorate, which counters organised crime, as well as conducting sensitive inquiries such as the cash-for-honours investigation.

The cards were for travel and subsistence, so that officers did not have to spend their own money while on long-running investigations away from their Scotland Yard base.

Sources have told the Observer that some detectives had fallen into the habit of withdrawing hundreds of pounds at a time from cashpoints. Other officers appear to have filled in blank receipts from restaurants to account for cash payments.

One source said: "Some people bought three-piece suits while in the far east and claimed that they needed them for work. But it would not have taken much nous to realise that it was 45C in the shade, and not the weather for a waistcoat."

The number of suspected fraudsters will be presented to the Met at a meeting tomorrow.

A report by Peter Tickner, the head of internal audit at the Metropolitan Police Authority, states that it has finished examining the Amex accounts of all officers. "In excess of 300 police officers have been referred to the Directorate of Professional Standards [DPS] by my staff and 46 of these have become formal investigations overseen by the Independent Police Complaints Commission," he wrote.

Only detectives suspected of overcharging by more than £1,000 have been referred to the DPS. Its investigators are believed to be examining hundreds of files.

Ordinary members of the public would have been fired and / or prosecuted for far less of a fiddle than £1000 !

The use of Amex cards was halted in December 2007. A number of officers have already been arrested in connection with the investigation.

So the corporate Amex cards were issued in 2006, and withdrawn at the end of 2007- what disgraceful mismanagement by Sir Ian Blair and his senior managers, including Sir Paul Stephenson !

Will nobody at Scotland Yard have the honour to take responsibility for this scandal and resign ?

Will Mayor of London Boris Johnson act decisively to restore public confidence in the Metropolitan Police Service

What is it with the Metropolitan Police Service and public CCTV cameras ?

Not content with trying to force them on to every licensed premises, as part of the alcohol or entertainment license application process, something for which the Information Commissioner has had to criticise them for, their latest anti-terrorism poster campaign is peddling nonsensical falsehoods about terrorist bombs and CCTV cameras.

See Spy Blog: Metropolitan Police terrorism fear Propaganda Poster lies about bombs, reconnaissance and CCTV cameras

This campaign includes this false and misleading poster, which claims a non existent link between public CCTV and protection against terrorist bombs:

"A bomb won't go off here because weeks before a shopper reported someone studying the CCTV cameras"

street_chemicals_cctv_450.jpg

There is no evidence that any Islamic extremist or Irish terrorists or Animal Rights extremists or neo-Nazi extremists, who have exploded, or tried to explode bombs, or set off incendiary devices, have been deterred from doing so by the presence of CCTV cameras. Some may have been tracked down partially through the help of CCTV footage, after their attacks or attempted attacks, but that is not what this poster is implying.

There is no evidence that any of them who have actually had access to any explosives, have ever been caught in the act of "terrorist reconnaissance" of CCTV cameras, neither by members of the public (which is what this poster misleadingly claims), nor by regular Police street patrols, nor even by any covert surveillance of known suspects.

Since you do not need any equipment to check out where public CCTV cameras are, just your eyes and your memory, it is unlikely that any real terrorism or criminal reconnaissance of CCTV camera systems will ever be detected in the way that this poster implies.

This poster is just Climate of Fear propaganda, and it will no doubt be used to justify the harassment of photographers taking photos, perfectly legally in public places, which have been infested with CCTV spy cameras, something for which there is plenty of evidence for.

See Matt Wardman's Official Harassment of Photographers in the UK: I have a Little List

We are reporting this misleading poster to the Advertising Standards Authority, and urge you all to do the same.

Will Mayor of London Boris Johnson tolerate this ineffective, wasteful and repressive propaganda nonsense or not ?

The Sunday Telegraph has a report which hints at some details of the various official investigations currently distracting the most senior officers of the Metropolitan Police Service from doing their jobs..

Sir Ian Blair, Metropolitan Police commissioner, had his rival bugged

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, allegedly bugged Britain's most senior Asian policeman, according to leaked Scotland Yard documents.

By Chris Irvine
Last Updated: 3:55PM BST 17 Aug 2008

The papers allege Tarique Ghaffur, an assistant commissioner, had more than 300 of his telephone calls tapped in an elaborate operation overseen directly by Blair.

He was also photographed and taped attending more than 30 meetings with a fellow officer at restaurants and cafes in west London.

[...]

Although the surveillance operation officially targeted another officer, Ghaffur believes it was designed to trap him in a compromising position.

Officially they targeted Ali Dizaei, who was wrongly suspected of having contacts with prostitutes, corruption and spying for Iranian intelligence.

Ghaffur, 53, once the senior Yard officer responsible for signing off on surveillance operations, claims Blair was hoping to trap him into indiscretions even though he did not have the proper legal authority to monitor him.

[...]

Sir Ian Blair's snooping and investigations of his own senior officers, such as Tarique Ghaffur, Ali Dizaei and of Brian Paddick, have done immense damage to his own reputation, and to that of the Metropolitan Police Service itself.

It is only a couple of years ago since Sir Ian Blair admitted that he had secretly tape recorded a phone conversation with the then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith (astonishingly discussing telephone and other interceptions !) and also with members of the independent CPolice Complaints Commission. - see the BBC report Met chief in phone recording row

There is also the investigation into how exactly Andy Miller "a close personal friend" of the then Deputy Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, end up with multi-million pound contracts supplying the Metropolitan Police Service with "consultancy", supposedly to help with the integration of emergency 999 handling into military style C3i command and control and communications, computer and telephony systems ?

Why has it taken so long for the feeble Metropolitan Police Authority and the former mayor of London Ken Livingstone, to investigate any impropriety, some six years later ? Is it that they are simply ill equipped to understand modern computer and communications systems, and are as easily bamboozled by the false promises of easy technological magic fixes, as Whitehall mandarins and politicians are ?

Even if there was no impropriety in the contracts awarded to Teddington based Impulse Plus (which has subsequently been taken over by Hitachi Consulting), what benefit have Londoner's actually seen from the hundreds of millions of pounds which has seemingly been wasted on C3i "improvements" over the years ?

Anyone who has had the misfortune to dial 999, and then find that the people at the other end of the phone are completely unfamiliar with the geography of your location, as are the police who eventually turn up on site, will assume that the money has all been wasted or worse.

Boris Johnson needs to use the recently expanded powers of the office of Mayor of London, regarding the Metropolitan Police Authority, to root out the public perception of incompetence and the "politically correct" bureaucratic empire building, which has infected the Metropolitan Police Service, in spite of all the extra money and resources which it has been granted in recent years.

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