15 July - Never trust a policeman
I try to see some good in our police force but it is difficult when they have
had a hand in the murder of a family member (†) and spent 28 years covering it up.
The evidence has shown that during the terms of office of every Met. Commissioner there has been
widespread corruption going to the very top. They admit it but they are still
reluctant to fully cooperate with the government backed panel charged with
getting at the truth - or at least that part of it which hasn’t been shredded.
From my knowledge of the case there appears to be only one Met. Commissioner
who may have been straight and almost inevitably Boris Johnson sacked him for
his pains. A straight copper heading the Met? Oh no. That would never do.
Locally we seem to have some good guys. In Thamesmead, Welling and North Heath
they are trying to engage with the public and win their trust but just when you think the cops may not be so
bad after all, along comes a numbskull who puts everything back to square one.
I refer to the idiot in Bournemouth who issued
a £100 fixed penalty fine to a woman driver gridlocked in stationary traffic
who took a bite out of a banana. Would the monkey who did that have done the
same to someone who sneezed and grabbed a handkerchief from a pocket or perhaps
a smoker who dropped his fag end in his lap and was in danger of setting fire to his trousers?
For me, one idiot undid months of PR work on Twitter by PC Molnar and his friends.
The Bournemouth buffoon demonstrated that however much you may admire individual officers it would be
foolhardy to trust any of them.
It’s the same at higher levels.
When Commissioner Hogan-Howe appeared to have
signed a personal letter promising to look into my three year
old complaint about the corruption that was rife in Bexleyheath I felt quite
buoyed up that somebody might care. It didn’t last long because two days later the lady
arrested at Heathrow because a Bexley police worker ran off with her
husband and false allegations were being bandied about, sent me
an identical letter. Obviously they are mass produced.
However Hogan-Howe did do something and I was promised a call to explain.
That letter is more than three weeks old now and what has happened since?
Absolutely nothing. As I said, it would be foolhardy to trust any of them.
† In the interest of total accuracy I must mention that Daniel Morgan was murdered a couple of years before my daughter’s relationship with his brother.