12 December (Part 2) - No ifs or buts, the Metropolitan Police Service is institutionally corrupt
I caught Deputy Assistant Commissioner Hewitt of the Metropolitan Police
speaking about their drive against corruption on Radio 4 this morning. He tried
to convince us that the era of Met. corruption was all in the past; there will always
be a few bent coppers at the sharp end, he said, but higher up it has all gone.
I nearly choked on my cornflakes.
Locally I am pursuing a 30 month old complaint (the Craske business) about
Bexley police. There are clear documentary indications of corruption in that
case, indeed a Bexley Detective Sergeant in an off-guard moment told Elwyn
Bryant and me that there was.
Our complaint went to Commissioner Hogan-Howe in June 2012 and was whitewashed
by his Directorate of Professional Standards in a response that I felt was just
as corrupt as Bexley’s failure to investigate. The IPCC agreed with me and
instructed the Met. to do the job again. So far they have done nothing at all.
It’s more corruption pure and simple.
A complaint about Hogan-Howe to
the head of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and
Crime, Ms. Helen Bailey, who earns more money than Boris himself was not even acknowledged.
DAC
Martin Hewitt may think he is getting on top of Met. corruption but he is either
delusional or as dishonest as the rest of their top brass.
In his radio interview Hewitt mentioned the murder of Private Eye Daniel Morgan who in 1987 was about
to drop a file on police corruption into the hands of the media. He was rewarded
with an axe blade through his skull.
Corrupt police officers were behind that murder (the Met. admits it) but various police forces (the
Hampshire force conducted an ‘independent’ inquiry and concluded there was “no evidence whatsoever
of police involvement in the murder”) and several Met. Commissioners leaned over backwards to cover it all up.
The case has in recent years proved to have links to the phone hacking trials, MPs’
alleged peadophilia, Andy Coulson, Editor of The News of the World and through
him the Prime Minister himself. Three
Labour Home Secretaries were more than a little anxious to look the other way.
As long term readers may remember,
Daniel Morgan was related to me and I shall be spending Christmas and Boxing Day with his brother Alastair. I may know
more about what the police are capable of than is safe to know.
Theresa May the current Home Secretary has in some ways been a breathe of fresh
air. She seems to understand that the police are fundamentally corrupt, she more or less
told them so at their last conference.
Mrs. May set up an inquiry panel led by a judge eighteen months ago charged with
examining around 750,000 documents to try to get at the truth of Daniel Morgan’s murder,
and here I must be careful what I say and report only those things that are already
in the public domain, albeit not usually in the main stream press.
The
appointed judge was Stanley Burnton and his police liaison officer was
Cressida Dick who achieved notoriety by masterminding the execution of Jean
Charles de Menzes on a tube train in Stockwell back in 2005 - and later promoted.
Thanks to those two, no papers reached the Daniel Morgan panel and when the
reason was discovered the judge left for personal reasons. Not sure I believe it. The whole of the
establishment appeared to have ganged up to protect a corrupt police force. The
cynical may speculate about high level peadophile rings and murderous
policemen and a mutual protection racket.
As far as one can tell the current Home Secretary is as horrified as she should
be and managed to get a new panel on the road and it has just received its first
small batch of documents - after the current police management has spent the
past eighteen months being obstructive and feeding the shredders.
The only senior policeman, now retired, who Alastair Morgan ever believed to
be honest, suffered all sorts of harassment for actually daring to hunt out the
truth and still is harassed. The highest ranks of the Metropolitan police’s current management simply
cannot be trusted, their principal interest is looking after their own.
A colleague of DAC Martin Hewitt is DAC Fiona Taylor. It is she who is supposedly investigating
the complaint of Misconduct against former Bexley borough commanders Stringer and Olisa.
I last heard from her in February. Fills you full of confidence doesn’t it?
Meanwhile you get blokes like PC Chris Molnar down in Thamesmead doing sterling work
there organising community events such as Carol Singing, Christmas
Parties and food parcels, and still finding time to hunt down druggies in dark
stairwells. It must be soul destroying to know how bent one’s
seniors can be. Probably it is why so many coppers are content to remain constables.
Recent Daniel Morgan news.