Category Archives: Police

Prince Harry ‘does not feel safe in UK’, lawyers tell high court

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Legal hearing challenges Home Office decision to prevent duke from paying for police protection when visiting

Prince Harry “does not feel safe” when he is visiting the UK, a place that “is, and always will be, his home”, his legal team have told the high court.

His desire to return to see family and friends was emphasised on the first day of a legal hearing related to his claim over the Home Office’s decision not to allow him to pay for police protection for himself and his family while in the UK.

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Met police admit tweet critical of Sadiq Khan was unacceptable

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London mayor denies claim he gave Cressida Dick ultimatum over Charing Cross officers

Scotland Yard has been forced to admit it was “unacceptable” for one of its official Twitter accounts to apparently criticise the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, leading him to accuse the force of amplifying misleading information.

Khan tackled the suggestion – made in a now-deleted tweet by the verified “Metropolitan Police taskforce” – that he did not understand the rules for disciplining officers.

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Half of Londoners unhappy with Met at end of Cressida Dick’s term, polls show

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Confidence in force fell sharply during past five years, with 68% saying Met did a good job in 2017

Public confidence in the Metropolitan police has fallen sharply in the five years Cressida Dick has been leading Britain’s biggest force, figures published on Wednesday show.

Only 51% of those in London said they believed the Met did a good job in their local area, down 17 points compared with the last survey before Dick became Met commissioner in April 2017.

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‘Illegal’ extradition of Bahraini dissident from Serbia calls Interpol’s role into question

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Abuse of the policing body’s ‘red notice’ system is blamed as an activist is forced to return to life in prison in the Gulf state

Marko Štambuk arrived at Belgrade district prison on a Monday morning in late January, only to be told his client was no longer inside. “Immediately I knew something had happened,” he said.

Štambuk, a lawyer, had spent the previous Friday frantically obtaining an injunction from the European court of human rights (ECHR) demanding Serbian authorities halt the extradition of his client, Ahmed Jaafar Mohamed Ali, a Bahraini dissident. This banned the Serbian authorities from extraditing Ali until late February, and warned them that doing so would constitute a rare breach of the European convention on human rights.

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Senior Met officer acknowledges racism problem in UK’s largest force

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Bas Javid says racism is an issue ‘but what I won’t do is describe all of the organisation as a racist organisation’

A senior Metropolitan police officer has said racism is a problem in the country’s largest force.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Bas Javid, the brother of the health secretary, Sajid Javid, acknowledged “people who have racist views and are racist” were among the force’s staff.

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‘I almost cried’: woman arrested at Everard vigil expresses relief after Met chief quits

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Patsy Stevenson says Cressida Dick presided over a force where misogyny and racism had thrived

A student whose photograph went viral after her arrest at a vigil following the murder of Sarah Everard said she “almost cried” when she heard Dame Cressida Dick had resigned as Metropolitan police commissioner.

Patsy Stevenson was pinned to the ground at the vigil on 13 March at Clapham Common, south London, for Everard, who had been kidnapped while walking home before being raped and murdered by the serving Met officer Wayne Couzens.

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Met investigates death threats against Keir Starmer in wake of Johnson’s Savile slur

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Telegram posts show far-right groups ‘emboldened’ by physical attack on Labour leader

The Metropolitan Police is investigating death threats against Keir Starmer made in the wake of Boris Johnson’s accusation that he “failed to prosecute” Jimmy Savile.

A cache of evidence documenting the threats was sent to Scotland Yard on Friday afternoon, including a number of apparently identifiable users on the messaging app Telegram who called for the Labour party leader to be hanged or “executed”.

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Sadiq Khan pledges to end toxic culture at Met police and signals showdown with Priti Patel

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The London mayor vows to oppose anyone who fails to understand deep problems at beleagured force, in wake of Cressida Dick resignation

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, today sets the stage for a dramatic showdown with the home secretary, Priti Patel, over who should be the next Metropolitan police commissioner as he vows to oppose anyone who does not understand the deep “cultural problems” within the beleaguered force.

Writing in the Observer, three days after his intervention forced Cressida Dick to abruptly resign, Khan says recent revelations of officers bragging about violence towards women and exchanging racist and Islamophobic messages rekindled personal memories of the “bad old days of the Met” during his own childhood.

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Durham police help save woman 3,000 miles away in Canada

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Suspect arrested 30 minutes after woman in Durham, Ontario, mistakenly contacts English force

Control room staff helped save a woman in danger more than 3,000 miles away after she contacted the wrong Durham police force.

Durham constabulary was contacted on Wednesday afternoon on its online live chat facility by a distressed woman who reported an intruder trying to get into her home in Durham, Canada.

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Cressida Dick could not solve the Met’s problems. She could barely admit they existed

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There was precedent for a commissioner determined to root out misbehaviour. Failure to follow it cost her the top job

When Robert Mark was appointed commissioner of the Metropolitan police in the 1970s he wryly suggested his ambition was to ensure the service arrested more criminals than it employed.

In the five years of his leadership (1972 to 1977) Mark’s success can be measured by the 50 criminal officers he put before a court, and the nearly 500 others who were swept out of the organisation as a result of his ruthless uncovering of the entrenched and institutionalised corruption which had protected them for too long.

Sandra Laville, a former Guardian crime correspondent, is now its environment correspondent

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Dame Cressida Dick forced out of scandal-hit Met police

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Chief to leave role two years early after London’s mayor accused her of failing to deal with misogyny and racism in the force

Cressida Dick has been forced out as head of the Metropolitan police after London’s mayor accused her of failing to deal with a culture of misogyny and racism within Britain’s biggest force.

Dick’s dramatic resignation was announced just hours after she told a radio phone in that she would stay in post and had a plan to rid the Met of its toxic culture. But when City Hall let her aides know the plan was inadequate, the commissioner decided to boycott a showdown meeting set for 4.30pm and quit instead.

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British women and children detained in Syria failed by UK government, inquiry finds

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Parliamentary report finds ‘compelling evidence’ of trafficking and highlights missed opportunities to protect vulnerable people later stripped of citizenship

There is “compelling evidence” that British women and children currently detained in camps in north-east Syria were trafficked to the country against their will, according to a new parliamentary report.

After a six-month inquiry by the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on trafficked Britons in Syria, the report published on Thursday highlights how systemic failures by UK public bodies enabled Islamic State (IS) trafficking of vulnerable women and children as young as 12.

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Sadiq Khan warns Cressida Dick has days or weeks to act on Met failings

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Mayor of London ‘disgusted’ by recent scandals and suggests he is prepared to try to oust commissioner

The mayor of London has signalled he is prepared to try and oust the Metropolitan police commissioner in days or weeks over a series of scandals.

Sadiq Khan said he was “disgusted and angry” by recent failings and that he thought Cressida Dick lacked a plan to boost confidence in the police force which had been “knocked and shattered”.

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Woman takes legal action after Met officer who called her ‘hot’ keeps job

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Kristina O’Connor says detective who was investigating after men tried to steal her phone asked her out

A woman is taking legal action against the Metropolitan police after a detective who told her she was “amazingly hot” while investigating her attack kept his job.

Kristina O’Connor, now 33, said she was sent inappropriate messages by DCI James Mason after he responded to her report of an attempted robbery in October 2011.

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‘We want the truth’: families of ethnic Pamiris killed in Tajikistan call for justice as tensions rise

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Urgent protection for minority groups facing increased repression needed in crisis connected to escalating clashes across central Asian ex-Soviet region, say human rights groups

Parents of men killed by Tajikistan forces have called on the international community to step in and urgently protect ethnic groups being targeted by the Tajik regime.

In a rare interview, families from the Pamiri ethnic minority have demanded that soldiers who killed their sons be brought to justice and urged the UN to prevent a new phase of conflict in Tajikistan, a landlocked country in central Asia.

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‘It gives me joy’: the LGBT Colombians embracing visibility in town with a legacy of abuse

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In El Carmen de Bolívar, LGBTQ+ people want the history of their brutal persecution by police and paramilitaries to be told, but the sense of safety is fragile and many still face prejudice

  • Photography by Sam Ritholtz

In a mountain town near the north coast of Colombia, three drag queens strike poses in the blazing sun. Wearing extravagant Caribbean carnival costumes, they place each high heeled step carefully to avoid puddles. Neighbours come out to take photos and cheer.

This impromptu show has unique significance in the streets of El Carmen de Bolívar, representing the remarkable resurgence of a community once brutally victimised by homophobic armed groups.

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Met police misogyny: the rot runs even deeper than thought

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Charing Cross station case shows old problems were allowed to fester on social media thanks to culture of fear

Case by case, the idea that the police’s problems with women is the result of a few bad apples rather than a misogynistic culture gets harder to maintain.

The revelations about the hate-filled messages among officers sent via WhatsApp and Facebook at Charing Cross station in central London are exceptionally sickening in their nature.

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Boris Johnson to try to regain control with Brexit bill and policy blitz

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PM hopes to move on from parties scandal with plans to make it easier to scrap EU laws and tackle cost of living crisis

Boris Johnson will attempt to seize back control of the government agenda this week with a policy blitz, a Brexit bill and flying visit to Ukraine, as Westminster remains in the grip of paralysis over the Sue Gray and police inquiries into No 10 parties.

Amid frustration in No 10 at the uncertainty surrounding the report on rule-breaking parties in Downing Street, sources said Johnson was determined to deflect public outrage with a schedule of high-profile announcements and photo opportunities that he also hopes will show MPs he remains focused.

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Sue Gray report: redacted version is imminent, say government sources

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Move follows anger after Met police asked civil servant to hold back details in her ‘partygate’ report

A heavily redacted report into Downing Street parties by the senior civil servant Sue Gray will be published imminently, the Guardian understands, after Scotland Yard provoked fury and confusion by revealing it had demanded key details of the worst offending be removed.

MPs labelled the Metropolitan police a broken organisation after the force admitted it had asked Gray to make “minimal reference” in her inquiry report to matters its officers were now investigating. The Met, battered by criticism, insisted it needed to protect the integrity of its investigation.

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Sue Gray report facing further delay after Met police intervention

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Force says it has asked for report to make minimal reference to Downing Street events it is investigating

The publication of the Sue Gray report could be delayed significantly after Scotland Yard revealed it had asked for references to matters it is now investigating to be removed.

Key parts of the long-awaited report on allegations of parties in No 10 that may have broken Covid rules could be pared back after the move.

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