Serious Crimes

There was a news article that I read recently on the BBC that really provoked my ire. Click on the button below to read it for yourself if you too would like to get a bit angry. The article covers the fact that the Metropolitan Police Service have moved officers from serious crime and terrorism to investigate alleged crimes that have been committed by members of the… Metropolitan Police Service. And to begin, here’s the usual caveat – there are many excellent and upstanding members of the Police Service. I know ex-officers/civilian personnel and current officers. They are good people that want to uphold the law and ensure their communities are safe.

Back to the article. So essentially what they’re saying is the vetting process is shit? Because surely some of the 1,131 serving officers being reinvestigated would have been found out at the vetting process had it been up to a decent standard? Or are they saying that some police officers can’t actually recognise crimes? Because there seems to be a hell of a lot of crime happening within the police service, maybe they would have witnessed some of it and you know, told someone? Or just simply arrested their offending colleagues? Or and here’s the biggest or of them all for me; are parts of the police service actually an organised crime syndicate? Because some of the accusations involve a lot of collusion between serving officers. Officers witnessing offences and yet never coming forward.

As an aside. I don’t know from experience because I’ve never been in a position where my job is to put myself in harm’s way, however I think we can all understand a little about the sense of camaraderie that must be built to be a member of the police service. The bond you must form so you know that the person standing next to you has your back. It is a family and family protect their own. So why is it when a police officer allegedly commits a crime, the family closes ranks around those who have potentially committed the crime? If a member of my family had committed a heinous crime, then I’d be on my way to ostracising them. Why doesn’t this family close ranks around those who have been wronged?

Here’s what made me most angry. Terrorism and organised crime is really bad shit that needs policing. However I feel the crimes that may have been committed by serving police officers are on the same level and it seems like the article is somehow demoting these alleged internalised offences. These are the people who are meant to be upholding the law, ensuring that everyone else feels safe. The thin blue line that is a bulwark against wrongdoing. But when officers openly joke and give nicknames to fellow officers who they know are predatory, who is there to protect us? Imagine thinking you can give a fellow officer the moniker ‘bastard’ because of the way in which he treats women and think that it’s ok to not say something. It saddens me that the trust in the police service has been so eroded that nowadays you may feel like you can’t go to the police for help because of the way in which others have been exploited and mistreated. And this undermining of police officers is perpetuating a huge disservice on those officers who are there to help.