Category Archives: Police

Counter-terror chief says policing alone cannot beat extremism

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Exclusive: Neil Basu calls for sociologists and criminologists to help tackle terrorism in UK

Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer has said the police and security services are no longer enough to win the fight against violent extremism, and the UK must instead improve community cohesion, social mobility and education.

In his first major interview since taking up his post last year, the Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Neil Basu told the Guardian that up to 80% of those who wanted to attack the UK were British-born or raised, which strongly indicated domestic social issues were among the root causes.

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Donald Trump’s UK state visit cost Met police £3.5m

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Over 6,300 officers deployed for June trip, at time of mounting pressure on police resources

Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK cost the Metropolitan police nearly £3.5m, figures have revealed, at a time of rising pressure on police resources.

Tens of thousands of protesters demonstrated against the US president in the capital before he attended a D-day commemoration service in Portsmouth.

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US students accused of stabbing Rome police officer appear in court

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Mario Cerciello Rega died after being repeatedly stabbed early on Friday in a crime that has shaken Italy

Two American students have appeared in court in Rome accused of stabbing a plain-clothes police officer to death on a street near their hotel.

Gabriel Christian Natale Hjorth, 18, and Finnegan Lee Elder, 19, from San Francisco, appeared in court in connection with the death of Carabinieri paramilitary police officer Mario Cerciello Rega, 35. The dead man, and a fellow officer, were in plain clothes when they confronted the two Americans in the wake of a drug deal gone wrong, the court heard.

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Brexit: key strands of British policing ‘in jeopardy’ because of no-deal risk

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NCA harvesting EU crime databases in attempt to mitigate loss of access to data, leaked report suggests

Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) is harvesting information from EU databases, including 54,000 files covering criminals, terrorists and missing persons, in an attempt to mitigate the heightened risks of a no-deal Brexit, according to a leaked document.

The report, seen by the Guardian, suggests EU alerts have been transferred to the Police National Computer (PNC) to give UK forces access after 31 October but that key strands of British policing remain “in jeopardy” because of the growing danger of a no-deal exit since Theresa May’s resigned as prime minister.

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Donald Trump in new attack on Sadiq Khan with Katie Hopkins retweet

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US president refers to message about Met police twitter account, calling London mayor ‘incompetent’

Donald Trump has retweeted the British far-right commentator Katie Hopkins and launched another attack on Sadiq Khan.

Referring to a message from Hopkins that the Met’s Twitter account had been targeted by hackers on Friday night, in which she said officers had “lost control of London streets” and “lost control of their Twitter account too”, Trump tweeted: “With the incompetent mayor of London, you will never have safe streets!”

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Scotland Yard’s Twitter account breached in series of bizarre posts

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‘Unauthorised access’ led to series of messages being posted and emailed to subscribers

Scotland Yard’s principal Twitter account, which is followed by more than 1.2 million people and is used to provide important alerts in times of crisis, tweeted a series of bizarre messages on Friday night after becoming “subject to unauthorised access”.

Many of the dozen errant tweets, some of which referred to the British rapper Digga D, were also repeated in press releases emailed out to journalists from the force’s official email address. Officers said they were “assessing to establish what criminal offences have been committed” over the security breach.

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Residents attack lack of organisation after crash at Stevenage car meet

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‘We’re not boy racers,’ says organiser after 17 injured, two seriously, after spectators were hit

Local people and witnesses to a crash at a car meet in Stevenage that left 17 people injured have said the event was not organised or policed properly.

For 17 years, drivers of modified cars have gathered in the Hertfordshire town to parade their vehicles for fellow enthusiasts. Thursday’s event, which was raising money for a charity supporting bereaved parents, turned to disaster when some of the spectators watching from the side of the road were hit following the crash between a Nissan 350Z and a Toyota GT86.

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Police letting down older victims of crime, say inspectors

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Report says police have only superficial understanding of crimes against older people

Older victims of crime are being let down by the police and the wider criminal justice system, according to the first inspection report on the age group.

The police have only a “superficial understanding” of the crimes committed against older people, the report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services and Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate says.

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Public health duty on violent crime in England needs more cash, UK bodies warn

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Individual liability removed but duty requires police, councils and NHS to work together to tackle violence

A new legal duty on public health bodies in England to tackle serious violence, including knife crime, must be backed by cash if it is to be effective, organisations have warned.

The public health duty, requiring bodies to share data, intelligence and knowledge, will be announced by the government this week, following the conclusion of an eight-week consultation.

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Suspected leaker of Kim Darroch cables identified – report

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GCHQ called in to help counter-terrorism police examine email and phone records

The suspect behind the leak of confidential memos from Britain’s Washington ambassador has been identified, the Sunday Times newspaper has reported.

British officials have launched an inquiry to find the person responsible for the leak of emails published by the Mail on Sunday. Counter-terrorism police have launched a criminal investigation.

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Kim Darroch: Met rows back on warning journalists could face prosecution

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Force had said that publishing leaked diplomatic cables may breach Official Secrets Act

The Metropolitan police has rowed back from its warning that journalists could face prosecution if they publish any further leaked diplomatic cables such as those that ran in the Mail on Sunday last weekend, precipitating the resignation of the British ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch.

In a statement released on Saturday afternoon, the Met assistant commissioner Neil Basu said the force “respects the rights of the media and has no intention of seeking to prevent editors from publishing stories in the public interest in a liberal democracy. The media hold an important role in scrutinising the actions of the state.”

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Woman, 93, arrested as a dying wish after being ‘good all her life’

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Josie Birds said to have ‘thoroughly enjoyed’ gesture by Greater Manchester police

One of the UK’s largest police forces apparently arrested a 93-year-old woman who had committed no crime because it was her “dying wish”.

In a tweet that received more than a thousand likes, Pam Smith wrote to Greater Manchester police to thank them for the gesture towards her grandmother, Josie Birds.

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Police stop and search is working in London, says anti-violence chief

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Lib Peck insists tactics are succeeding despite Londoners ‘feeling powerless’ over crime

The head of London’s newly formed violence reduction unit has said Londoners feel powerless about levels of street crime but insisted that increased use of stop and search powers had been successful.

Lib Peck, the former leader of Lambeth council who was appointed to the role in January, made the comments while on a two-day fact-finding trip to Glasgow, visiting some of the Scottish unit’s key projects and meeting senior officials.

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Officer who hid fact she knew juror admits police standards breach

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Rebecca Bryant told girlfriend of son ‘don’t tell them who you are’ in text before murder trial

A police officer who hid the fact she knew a juror on a murder trial she was involved in and then lied about it to a senior officer has admitted breaching standards of professional behaviour.

DC Rebecca Bryant sent her son’s girlfriend, Laura Jones, a text on the eve of the murder trial in which she said: “Don’t tell any of them who you are.”

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Emergency services scrap £900k of vehicles after Salisbury attack

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Police and ambulance units replaced 24 cars, vans and 4x4s due to novichok contamination

Emergency services spent hundreds of thousands of pounds scrapping and replacing contaminated vehicles after the Salisbury nerve agent poisonings, it has been revealed.

Police and ambulance services had to destroy 24 cars, vans and 4x4 vehicles following the attack on the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. The pair collapsed after coming into contact with novichok at Skripal’s home in Salisbury on 4 March last year. DS Nick Bailey, 39, was also taken to hospital.

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Facial recognition tech is arsenic in the water of democracy, says Liberty

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Human rights group calls on England and Wales to ban police use of AFR in public spaces

Automated facial recognition poses one of the greatest threats to individual freedom and should be banned from use in public spaces, according to the director of the campaign group Liberty.

Martha Spurrier, a human rights lawyer, said the technology had such fundamental problems that, despite police enthusiasm for the equipment, its use on the streets should not be permitted.

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Edir Da Costa died after bag of drugs became stuck in his airway

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Misadventure verdict on death of Londoner who put 88 wraps of cocaine and heroin in mouth

A young father who was restrained face down and pepper-sprayed by police died by misadventure after a plastic bag containing drugs became stuck in his airway, an inquest jury has found.

Edir Da Costa, 25, died almost a week after the car he was travelling in was pulled over by plain-clothes police officers in June 2017. He had put about 88 wraps containing cocaine and heroin in his mouth at some point before or after getting out of the car.

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Loughinisland journalists told police investigation dropped

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High court judge rebukes police and quashes warrants over unredacted document

Police in England and Northern Ireland have dropped a controversial investigation into journalists who made a documentary about a Troubles atrocity, following a public outcry and a stinging rebuke from judges.

The Durham constabulary and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) announced on Monday night that they were no longer investigating Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey over their work on No Stone Unturned, a film about the murder of six Catholics in Loughinisland, County Down, in 1994.

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Report raises alarm over police detention of vulnerable suspects

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Suspects interviewed without appropriate adult present in over 100,000 cases in England and Wales, charity says

Police officers detained and interviewed vulnerable suspects without an appropriate adult present more than 100,000 times last year in England and Wales, according to a charity report.

The failure by officers to provide assistance, chiefly to those with mental illness, autism or learning disabilities, leaves them at risk of miscarriages of justice, the National Appropriate Adult Network (Naan) has warned.

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UK’s first black police chief asks why there have been no others

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Michael Fuller, who led Kent force, says women have hit top ranks but not black officers

Britain’s first black chief constable has questioned why no one has been given the opportunity to follow his path, despite the talent available.

Michael Fuller was expressing his concerns to an audience at Hay festival, where he also asked why the Football Association had not done more to combat racism against players, and revealed he was approached to join the Masons.

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