Police state or the state of policing

[HanoiVillan]

[Chindie]

Now let's all move on from this nastiness and draw a line under it.

[bickster]

The Met wheel out the Dick... again... to apologise... again

I get the feeling that she kept her job because they need her to front up for all the shit that goes on under her watch

 

[bickster]

Just had a visit at work from the Met.

Three plain clothes police officers looking just like three plain clothes police officers. I could tell from the other side of the car park! 

It's an actual talent they don't realise they have.

A tall man in his mid to late thirties wearing a pair of cut off shorts, cut off at the knee with neat sewn turn ups and a pair of loafers, like an extra from an early Style Council video. 

A three year old child would have made him as a copper in Liverpool

The usual failed bullying tactics were then underway and they left muttering under their breath

 

 

 

[Mark Albrighton]

Quote

A police officer who took selfies at a murder scene where a teenager was stabbed has been sacked.

PC Ryan Connolly, who worked for Merseyside Police, also shared racist and homophobic pictures and took photos of mentally ill people being sectioned.

Merseyside Police said he was sacked for gross misconduct after an anti-corruption investigation.

The force said it had found the "severely offensive" photos taken between 2015 and 2018.

The investigation found he had taken "photographs of vulnerable people whilst on duty" and his phone contained "appalling homophobic, racist and offensive images".

BBC link

Reading that news report, it brought to my attention this other story at the start of the month that I somehow completely missed.

Quote

A pair of Met Police constables who took photos of two murdered sisters and shared the images on WhatsApp groups have each been jailed for 33 months.

PCs Deniz Jaffer and Jamie Lewis were sent to guard the scene where the bodies of Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry were found in June 2020.

While at Fryent Country Park, they left their post to take photos of the women.

What the men did was a "betrayal of catastrophic proportions", the sisters' mother said in an impact statement.

Another BBC link

[bickster]

Oh look the Met choosing not to investigate again...

 

[HanoiVillan]

Meant to post this a while back:

Anthony De Simone of the BBC did a very good in-depth look at the errors that the Met made that allowed the serial killer of 4 gay men, Stephen Port, to continue killing, and it is just the most damning indictment of incredibly shoddy work. The article is here: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59576717

I will try to summarise the errors, numerated, with quotes. Beware this is long, because there were a lot of mistakes. I've put it in the spoiler tabs, but it's worth your time to capture the full extent of the ineptitude:

1. Spoiler

   1. The ambulance service received a phone call about a drugged man lying in the street. Port used his own phone to make this call. The ambulance service requested the police attend the scene. The police did so, and worked out the phone number belonged to Port, who 'lived in the flat right next to where Anthony's body was found . . . A police records check at the station revealed Port had previously been accused of drugging and raping a teenager, but somehow investigators on the ground did not become aware of this for several days.'
   2. 'The case was then left with local officers from Barking, rather than being taken on by a specialist Scotland Yard murder investigation team.'
   3. The treatment of families by police was terrible. Here is the first example: 'Anthony's mother Sarah Sak says the call she received from police was so brief it was like a discussion about a lost pet. She says police liaison officer, DS Paul Slaymaker, described Anthony's death as "not suspicious at the moment".'
   4. 'Port was arrested for lying to police about his dealings with Anthony, and was questioned at Barking police station - but only by a junior borough detective on his own.' Port continued to change his story about how this event had occurred, now having changed his story all the way from seeing a body while driving past to admitting he had hosted the deceased in his flat and that the victim had died after taking his own drugs. 'DCI Tony Kirk, head of Barking and Dagenham CID, asked for a murder inquiry team to take over', but . . .
   5. . . . the request was refused. When specialist detectives were sent to interview Port, he told them about an incident when he had been stopped by transport police for 'helping' a sick friend. 'Officers thought this information seemed significant and left a note for the borough team. But nothing was done to establish any more detail and Port was released on bail. A police intelligence log, available on a national database, would have shown Port was referring to an incident two weeks before Anthony's death, when British Transport Police were called to reports of him assaulting an unwell man at Barking station. But a basic check wasn't made . . . It was not until more than a year later - by which time four men had been killed - that a murder investigation team traced the victim of the assault. He described having been surreptitiously drugged, waking naked and disoriented in Port's flat. Homicide officers now accept they would have taken on the case had they known about the incident.'
   6. 'Months after Port's police interviews, he was charged with perverting the course of justice for lying about his dealings with Anthony. But nothing more was done to investigate the death itself - Scotland Yard's homicide division was not contacted again by Barking officers despite an order for them to be updated and consulted on developments.'
   7. 'The inquests would also hear that, at that time, formal advice from homicide officers to check a laptop and phone belonging to Port was ignored. Had they been sent for forensic analysis Port's obsession with drugging and raping young men would have been uncovered. When they were eventually analysed the following year - after a request from a coroner - they showed that Port had persistently watched "drug rape" pornography.'
   8. 'Even then, a detective failed to even look at the relevant sections of the forensic report.'
   9. 'DS Martin O'Donnell, who was managing the inquiry, told the coroner that Port "stated he hadn't used escorts before and didn't know about the costs" even though he had told detectives he used male prostitutes and had worked as an escort himself.'
   10. Port then got a Slovakian flatmate, who he killed within days (while on bail mind you), again drugging him using GHB. His body was found in a graveyard near Port's flat. 'Police treated the death as unexplained but not suspicious. The resulting inquiries were shallow . . . Detectives could have discovered that he moved to Cooke Street - where Port lived - if they had sought out a man who helped Gabriel move to Barking. The young Slovakian had sent his friend a map showing the new residence and several photos from inside Port's flat.'
   11. Then another dead man, found in the same spot of the same graveyard (by the same dogwalker no less). On him, a note 'claiming' he had killed the second victim. The note, of course, really written by Port. But did murder detectives take the lead? Oh: 'Again, the case remained with local officers.'
   12. 'No forensic tests were conducted on items found with Daniel and Gabriel. Had they been, Port would have been identified since his DNA was on record.'
   13. 'Police could have established the "suicide note" was fake if they had scrutinised it properly. It was not sent to a handwriting expert, despite promises being made to Daniel's family.'
   14. 'His father Adam Whitworth was emailed a small piece of the note, with DC Yinka Adeyemo-Phillips of Barking police then telling officers that he had confirmed the writing as Daniel's. But Mr Whitworth says he never confirmed it, and says he has "no idea" how the detective decided he did.'
   15. 'The note also stated "btw please do not blame the guy I was with last night". Officers failed to establish that person's identity. If they had, it would have led them to Stephen Port.'
   16. 'Detectives also refused to show the note to Daniel's long-term partner, Ricky Waumsley, with whom he shared a home and a bank account, after refusing to class him as next of kin.'
   17. 'Questioned about Daniel's whereabouts at the time Gabriel had died in east London, Ricky Waumsley checked his phone and told officers they appeared to have been together at home in Kent, far from Barking. This gave Daniel an alibi and meant he could not have killed Gabriel. But officers ignored this fundamental point. DS Slaymaker, was ordered to get mobile phone data, which would have shown Daniel's real location on the key date, but failed to do so.'
   18. 'Detectives also ignored a series of warnings about the two deaths being linked to that of Anthony Walgate. Gabriel's former flatmate John Pape and boyfriend Thierry Amodio both suggested there might be link, after reading an anonymised local newspaper report about the earlier death. But they were ignored.'
   19. 'Officers did not bother taking a statement from Amodio, who lived in Spain, and refused to keep him updated as they did not regard him as 'next of kin'. When Amodio resorted to emailing the local coroner for information, one of the leading detectives on the case - DS Debbie Turrell - wrote to her colleague that he was "fishing for information".'
   20. 'Pape persistently contacted detectives to raise concerns about the threat to gay men, but he was totally ignored. In one email he wrote: I worry about what is happening to young men in Barking". He resorted to asking LGBT organisations to contact the Met, but the force continued to be dismissive.'
   21. 'The officer who ignored Pape's warnings was DC Jacqueline Baxter, who had also been appointed as "family liaison officer" for Gabriel's family in Slovakia. But she failed in her role by not making any effort to contact them.'
   22. 'DC Baxter then misled a coroner's officer. In an email, she wrongly stated that "uniformed officers kept this case as it was not deemed suspicious.'
   23. 'She then named the wrong country by stating, "I just dealt with the burial company in Lithuania".'
   24. 'The inquests also heard about serious failings by DI Rolf Schamberger, who oversaw the Barking and Dagenham Police team that examined the deaths of Gabriel Kovari and Daniel Whitworth. He signed off a series of actions as complete, even though they had not been carried out, such as the crucial demand to obtain phone data on Daniel.'
   25. 'He falsely told the coroner that a "diary" had been used to confirm Daniel Whitworth's handwriting on the suicide note, even though no diary was ever seized.'
   26. 'Having been asked at Gabriel's first inquest in 2015 about a possible link to the death of Anthony Walgate, the detective said "there was consideration given to there being a link, but, to the best of my knowledge, no link was ever established". The officer, who has since been promoted, claimed at this year's inquest not to have known anything about Anthony's case at the time, saying it is "hard to say" what he meant in his answer back then.'
   27. 'In 2015, Schamberger told the coroner that no testing had taken place on a bedsheet found with Daniel's body, contrary to a pathologist's recommendation, adding the "circumstances at the time indicated towards no other external parties being involved". He now says he "can't really explain" that answer, given the investigation had considered the possibility that other people might have been involved. The bedsheet was covered in the killer's DNA.'
   28. 'Even before the pathologist's report on Daniel had concluded, the detective had written "the investigation is complete and the report can be closed".'
   29. Then another dead man, died of a GHB overdose, found in the same graveyard. You might think police would be starting to draw some links at this point, but! 'Despite some detectives attending the scene who had been present at the earlier deaths, no connection was made to them. Officers decided Jack's death was non-suspicious.'
   30. 'PC Jon Taylor, whose job was to patrol local parks, found out he was running the investigation from a digital crime report entry, rather than because anyone told him. He was not a detective but had been put in charge because he had been the person flagged down in the street when the body was discovered.'
   31. 'He asked for help from the local CID team - the same unit that had run inquiries into the earlier deaths - but a detective refused'
   32. At this point, the fourth victim's sisters essentially did their own investigation, and did it embarrassingly better than the police. 'For example, when police confirmed there was CCTV of Jack meeting a tall man at Barking station and walking away together, the Taylor sisters insisted that officers issue a public appeal to identify the stranger. At first, officers refused to do so, but relented following pressure from the sisters. It was one of the original Anthony Walgate detectives who recognised the tall blonde stranger as Stephen Port after seeing the appeal images on a colleague's desk.'

 

Phew! So there we are, I count 32 errors identified in this report about this case, the vast majority of them major, many of them presenting open-goal opportunities to identify Stephen Port which were missed time and time again by the police. Still, such a terrible effort that pretty directly helped a serial killer continue killing vulnerable young men must have had some pretty negative career consequences, though, right?

Right?

Oh: 'Seventeen police officers involved in the original response into the four deaths were investigated by the police watchdog. The Independent Office for Police Conduct did not refer any of them for misconduct proceedings. Seven of the officers have since been promoted.'

[ml1dch]

Curious to know (a) what law is being applied here that lets the police arbitrarily swab people for traces of drugs, and indeed what law they think would have been broken if they find them and (b) why they thought a jaunty-soundtracked video of them doing it was a good comms move.

[Xann]

.... all but one of 12 lavatory areas in Parliament that were tested showed traces of cocaine...

Sniff Sniff, Hooray!

[Davkaus]

I read through that post by @HanoiVillan with increasing anger and incredulity, until I got to this point at which, you just have to laugh, don't you? It's like something out of A Touch of Cloth. The incompetence is just almost impossible to believe.

1. 'The note also stated "btw please do not blame the guy I was with last night". Officers failed to establish that person's identity.

Might as well say "It was definitely suicide, don't look in to this, for real, no need. It specifically was not the guy from, last night, who, I must say, was very very handsome".

Edited January 3, 2022 by Davkaus

[Rds1983]

3 hours ago, ml1dch said:

Curious to know (a) what law is being applied here that lets the police arbitrarily swab people for traces of drugs, and indeed what law they think would have been broken if they find them and (b) why they thought a jaunty-soundtracked video of them doing it was a good comms move.

I don't believe it's actually a crime to be under the influence of illegal drugs (unless doing something like driving) so not sure what they're trying to achieve here. Possession can be a criminal offence but they wouldn't need a swab for that. 

[StefanAVFC]

the absolute state of them 

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, StefanAVFC said:

the absolute state of them 

 

Their problem, is ‘police’ are complicit.

Let’s just take one minor detail, the booze suitcase. If they investigate then how did that suitcase get in to Downing Street?

Did they not notice a suitcase?

Did they not bother checking a late nice suitcase arrival?

Did they know it was filled with booze from Tesco and think that was fine?

 

There will be a hundred other similar scenarios, they’re **** if they investigate it now, because its patently obvious they have known all along and they agreed with the tories that the rules didn’t apply to them.

 

Meanwhile:

 

 

[Mark Albrighton]

 

[snowychap]

17 hours ago, Mark Albrighton said:

 

Absolutely disgraceful from start to finish.

[choffer]

Guess who? Yep, it’s the met again. 
 

 

[StefanAVFC]

 

in the mud

[bickster]

Dick's Out

[Genie]

18 minutes ago, bickster said:

Dick's Out

A few hours after saying she has no intention of stepping down.

I wonder why she decided it was best to leave her post…  

[bickster]

7 minutes ago, Genie said:

A few hours after saying she has no intention of stepping down.

I wonder why she decided it was best to leave her post…  

Probably because Sadiq Khan would have sacked her by next week, he gave her "weeks and days" to get her act together yesterday in a meeting