Flush out the evil Met cops… but let’s strive to keep the good ones, too
A FRIEND’s daughter had always wanted to be a police officer and, two years ago, proudly donned her uniform for the first time.
Last week, disillusioned and devastated, she handed in her notice.
When our capital’s Met police force is losing promising young people like this, you know the issues run deep.
The question is — can it be turned around?
Reading today’s blistering report by Baroness Louise Casey of Blackstock, it’s hard to see how the Met can recover without breaking it in to pieces and starting again.
She says the murder of Sarah Everard by serving police officer Wayne Couzens should have had the impact of a “plane falling out of the sky” but, instead, it was brushed aside with ineffectual initiatives and jaw-droppingly crass advice to officers to delete incriminating WhatsApp messages.
Little wonder that public confidence in the police is in the toilet.
You can read the rest of the devastatingly critical findings in news reports but, suffice to say, the headlines are that the Met stands accused of harbouring racism, misogyny, homophobia and criminality within its ranks and the current commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has his work cut out to try and reform it.
Reacting to headline points mentioned, he insisted: “I am not going to use a label myself that is both ambiguous and politicised,” but agreed the force had “systemic failings, management failings and cultural failings”.
Indeed, it was the latter issues that forced my friend’s daughter to abandon the career she’d dreamed of pursuing since she was a little girl.
As a newcomer to the ranks, she felt she was thrown in to the deep, and brutally dark, end of frontline policing with little or no support to do the job effectively.
And it seems she’s not alone among the plenty of excellent, well-meaning officers who take their job seriously, but feel let down by how the Met is run.
Someone writing anonymously, but seemingly in the know, claimed yesterday that there’s little money or staff to investigate crime, there’s one desk for every four investigators and no case management system.
They said forensic evidence freezers overflow because it’s too expensive to send off all the samples, phone evidence takes far too long because a lack of investment in the kit needed to download it means having to trawl through it manually, and a lack of cars at their disposal often means officers have to travel by bus to visit victims of crime.
Government ministers come before victims
In other words, it’s a Luddite s**t show trying, and frequently failing, to tackle crime in a high-tech world.
But perhaps most damningly of all, they said officers are overwhelmed with cases and frequently work unpaid in their own time, while those working in “specialist protection” of senior government officials get lots of overtime due to staff shortages.
They conclude: “Ministers come before victims in the eyes of government.
“There are good people trying to do their best with no support from government or management.”
And even when they successfully nail someone for a crime, time and again the “justice” system fails to deliver and they’re back on the streets to blight other people’s lives. How dispiriting must that be?
So, while yesterday’s coverage rightly focused primarily on the Met’s failure to weed out evil officers like Sarah Everard’s murderer Wayne Couzens and multiple rapist David Carrick, going forward the emphasis should be on keeping the thousands of decent officers, too.
And that will mean an expensive and radical overhaul that must be wholeheartedly supported by a Government that must take its fair share of the blame for the current crisis.
With so many neighbourhoods blighted by crime, any improvement will be a vote winner.
AT WAR UNDER DUVET
AMERICAN philosopher Eric Hoffer once said: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
And so it has come to pass that the rise in “intimacy co-ordinators” borne out of the great #MeToo cause has now moved in to the business phase with the launch of the first master’s degree in the subject.
The two-year course at London’s Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts will cost £15,295 for the first year, with the second-year fees reduced as students will spend much of their time on work placements.
Let’s hope it’s not with experienced actors Toni Colette, Sir Ian McKellen and Sean Bean, who have all recently expressed their, ahem, desire to work without the help of someone telling them where to put their various appendages.
“I can imagine situations where people find it difficult to be intimate – but why can’t the director do that?” says Sir Ian.
Yet many younger actors, who perhaps feel they don’t have the clout to object if they feel uncomfortable, have sung the praises of intimacy co-ordinators. So it sounds like they’re here to stay.
But what happens when one actor wants one and the other doesn’t?
It gives a whole new meaning to duvet wars.
ONE TO MYSTIC MOORE
IN February, with a year still left on my passport, I felt compelled to apply for a new one and beat the summer rush.
As I wrote here, it was efficiently dispatched to me within a couple of weeks.
Now there’s a five-week passport workers strike in the offing, prompting a panicked rush to renew passports and putting “tens of thousands” of summer holidays at risk.
Just call me Mystic Moore.
Extra loos and comfy shoes for older singles
THE irrepressible Davina McCall has long been campaigning to present what’s been described as “Love Island For Oldies” and now she’s succeeded.
She’s been confirmed as the host of ITV’s new show The Romance Retreat, which will see mid-lifers looking for love while all sharing the same house.
“People who have lived a life, been through experiences, bad, moving, hard, tough lives. They’ve got luggage, but they deserve love,” says Davina, 55.
Can’t wait. But one imagines there will have to be a few vital tweaks to the original Love Island format.
Extra loos for those middle-of-the-night wee-wees, no partying past 9pm, no early alarm call needed, tummy control swimwear, comfy shoes and no parental visits (flight insurance would be too expensive).
As for the “challenges”, they’ll need something more age-appropriate than back-straining water flumes and bucking broncos.
How about meeting any potential step-children? That should separate the wheat from the chaff.
GEORGIA WILL AID OTHERS
FORMER Love Island star Georgia Harrison continues to do the rounds of TV studios to highlight the need for greater legal protection against revenge porn.
Good for her. Sunlight is the best disinfectant and, by courageously going public, she will undoubtedly help others facing the same horrendous experience.
Georgia, from Doncaster, was having sex with then boyfriend Stephen Bear in his garden without realising it was being caught on his CCTV.
Reality star Bear promised to delete it, but instead uploaded it to subscription site OnlyFans so he could make money from people viewing it.
Georgia says it was a betrayal that turned her from being happy-go-lucky into someone crippled by anxiety.
Bear, 33, is starting a 21-month prison sentence and let’s hope he uses it to reflect on his atrocious behaviour and emerges a better man.
Meanwhile, one can only marvel at his latest girlfriend Jessica Smith, who shared a video of him claiming not to have received a fair trial and has vowed to stand by him.
A blindly loyal triumph of hope over experience.
WHY SO QUIET, HARRY?
THE mangled wreckage of a black Mercedes has been spotted on the set of the sixth and final series of Netflix drama The Crown, which will cover Princess Diana’s death.
No doubt Prince Harry – who has been very vocal about protecting his mother’s memory from exploitation – will have something to say about this dramatic rehashing of such a tragic event in his life.
But so far? Nada.
Call me an old cynic, but could this silence be in any way related to the squillion-dollar deal that he and Meghan have with the streaming giant?