Category Archives: Police

Pilot of domestic abuse experts helping in 999 call rooms begins in England

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Jess Phillips says ‘Raneem’s law’ scheme will support ‘force-wide cultural change’ as initial phase is rolled out

Domestic abuse specialists embedded in control rooms receiving 999 emergency calls will help “create force-wide cultural change”, said Jess Phillips as the first phase of “Raneem’s law” was rolled out across England.

The new law is named in memory of Raneem Oudeh, who was killed alongside her mother, Khaola Saleem, in Solihull by Oudeh’s ex-husband, whom she had reported to the police at least seven times, as well as making four 999 calls on the night she was murdered.

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E-scooters blamed for big jump in children caught in UK driving without insurance

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Hundreds of teenagers have been given an IN10 police endorsement since 2020, says road safety charity


Electric scooters have been blamed for a surge in the number of children being penalised for driving without insurance.

Since the start of 2020 almost 800 children aged between 13 and 16 have been given an IN10 endorsement – the code used by the police for “using a vehicle uninsured against third party risks” – according to data obtained by a road safety charity.

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Court rules against Metropolitan police crackdown on officers

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Force faces having to reinstate officers and staff removed under scheme launched in wake of Sarah Everard case

The Metropolitan police have lost a high court case over whether they can oust officers and staff deemed unsuitable through enhanced vetting procedures.

Scotland Yard had used the scheme, which effectively dismisses officers by removing their vetting clearance, to get rid of scores of staff, some of whom had faced allegations of sexual assault.

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Essex police officer sacked after admitting ‘tragedy chanting’ at Anfield

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Misconduct hearing found Tyler Coppin had breached standards of professional behaviour over offence

An Essex police officer has been sacked after admitting “tragedy chanting” at Liverpool fans during a Premier League match last year.

Essex police instigated misconduct proceedings against Sgt Tyler Coppin after he pleaded guilty to the public order offence during the Liverpool game against Chelsea at Anfield last October.

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Deletion of ‘gang matrix’ database will destroy evidence against police, say campaigners

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Data to be permanently deleted on 13 February after ‘matrix’ was found to be unlawful

Campaigners say deletion of an unlawful database known as the “matrix” will destroy vital evidence of discriminatory policing and prevent miscarriages of justice being exposed.

The gangs violence matrix (GVM) operated by the Metropolitan police, which linked individuals to alleged gang membership, is being permanently deleted on 13 February after it was found to be unlawful in 2022.

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Up to 10,000 people will have to be rehoused if Heathrow third runway goes ahead, John McDonnell says – UK politics live

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MP for Hayes and Harlington, whose constituency includes Heathrow, says homes will either be unliveable or need to be demolished

Q: Are doctors able to recognise depression? And can they decide if that affects someone’s capacity to make a decision about their health?

Whitty says doctors can identify depression. But he says it is harder for them to assess if that is affecting capacity.

That’s where help from colleagues from psychiatry, mental health more widely, is going to be useful. But that should be good medical practice, in my view, under all circumstances.

Certainly what I wouldn’t want is to be in a situation where the existence of the fact that someone who has a terminal diagnosis has some degree of low mood in itself just rules them out from any kind of medical intervention, this or any other. That shouldn’t be the case.

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Kevin Clarke’s family denounce police discipline system after officers cleared

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Two Met officers denied hearing Clarke say ‘I can’t breathe’ before he died under restraint in 2018

The family of a black man who died after being restrained by police officers who denied having heard him say “I can’t breathe” have condemned the police discipline system after two officers were cleared of gross misconduct.

Kevin Clarke, 35, died while in police custody in 2018, with the restraint having lasted more than 30 minutes.

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PMQs live: Starmer to face Badenoch after announcing plan to end teenage access to knives online in wake of Southport attack

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PM to face Tory leader following decision to announce tougher checks for people buying knives online

A new online train ticket retailer backed by the UK government is to be created, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced, with the aim of simplifying the process of buying tickets from different rail operators. Joanna Partridge has the story.

PMQs is almost with us.

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Law experts demand inquiry into Met policing of pro-Palestine protest

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Forty academics write to home secretary over weekend’s ‘dangerous assault’ on the right to protest

More than 40 legal scholars have signed a letter calling for an independent inquiry into the Met’s policing of a pro-Palestine protest in London on Saturday, describing it as “a disproportionate, unwarranted and dangerous assault on the right to assembly and protest”.

The force said it arrested 77 people at the demonstration, having banned protesters from gathering outside the BBC’s London headquarters, citing its proximity to a synagogue and the fact it was taking place on the Sabbath. The ban led to the protest being changed to a static rally, but the Met claimed people broke through police lines in a coordinated effort to breach the conditions.

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Southport killer will be treated as a terrorist in jail, Yvette Cooper tells MPs – as it happened

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Home secretary also says inquiry into the attack will cover wider threat posed by youth violence

Starmer says nothing will be off the table in the inquiry.

There are also questions about the accountability of the Whitehall and Westminster system – a system that is far too often driven by circling the institutional wagons, that does not react until justice is either hard won by campaigners, or until appalling tragedies like this [take place].

Time and again we see this pattern, and people are right to be angry about it. I’m angry about it.

There are also bigger questions, questions such as how we protect our children from the tidal wave of violence freely available online.

Because you can’t tell me that the material this individual viewed before committing these murders should be accessible on mainstream social media platforms, but with just a few clicks, people can watch video after horrific video – videos that, in some cases, are never taken down,

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Axel Rudakubana was referred to counter-extremism scheme three times

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Exclusive: Teenager who has admitted murdering three young girls in Southport was first referred to Prevent in 2019

The teenager who murdered three young girls at a dance class in Southport was referred three times to Prevent, the government’s scheme to stop terrorist violence, the Guardian has learned.

One of the referrals followed concerns about Axel Rudakubana’s potential interest in the killing of children in a school massacre, it is understood.

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Police fear ‘rightwing driven’ reaction to grooming gangs will harm victims

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Senior officers say fraction of child abuse cases relate to gangs and funding could be diverted from current cases

Senior police officers fear that government pressure to reinvestigate closed historic cases of gang grooming could make it harder to catch those targeting children today.

The government on Thursday announced more reviews of past cases and also that victims, whose cases did not end in prosecutions, will be given a new right of appeal to have their investigations reopened.

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Tory police cuts are only part of the ongoing crisis affecting victims of crime

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Austerity affected courts, prisons and public services while rates of poverty surged, creating the conditions for more crime

The period in which clear-up rates for the most serious crimes collapsed coincided with big cuts to police budgets, and the subsequent fall in police officer numbers of about 20,000.

The last Conservative government, responsible for the cuts after 2010 in the name of austerity, spent its time denying they would have any damaging effect on crime fighting in England and Wales. Then, in its final years, it started to reverse the cuts, and pretended “wokery” among law enforcement had diverted officers’ attention.

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Lorry hits and kills policewoman working at North Yorkshire crash scene

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Constable Rosie Prior and a motorist were fatally struck by HGV that also hit a teenage boy, who was left with serious injuries, say police

A North Yorkshire policewoman has died after she was struck by a lorry while helping at the scene of another crash on the side of a highway.

Constable Rosie Prior was standing on the verge of the A19 at Bagby, near the village of Thirsk, on Saturday morning when she and two others were struck by an approaching heavy goods vehicle (HGV) just before 9am, authorities said.

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Mark Rylance joins criticism of police ban on pro-Palestine march in London

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Protesters planned to gather outside BBC HQ, which is near a synagogue, on the Jewish holy day

Mark Rylance, the star of the BBC’s Wolf Hall, has joined the singer Charlotte Church and actor Juliet Stevenson to condemn a decision by the police to ban a pro-Palestine protest outside the corporation’s Broadcasting House headquarters.

Protesters were planning to gather in Portland Place in central London on Saturday 18 January before marching to Whitehall. A ban was imposed on Thursday by the Met, with officers citing the risk of “serious disruption” to a nearby synagogue on the Jewish holy day, as congregants attend Shabbat services.

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Met bans pro-Palestine march from gathering outside BBC headquarters

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Scotland Yard imposes Public Order Act owing to proximity of Broadcasting House to a nearby synagogue

Scotland Yard has banned a pro-Palestine march from gathering outside the BBC’s London headquarters next week, owing to its proximity to a synagogue.

Protesters were planning to gather outside Broadcasting House in Portland Place on Saturday before marching to Whitehall. On Thursday evening, police said they had imposed the Public Order Act to prevent the rally from gathering in the area as it risked causing “serious disruption” to a nearby synagogue on the Jewish holy day, as congregants attend Shabbat services.

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Head of Met’s Black Police Association accused of sending offensive messages in group chat

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Charles Ehikioya was in chat where racist, misogynistic, homophobic and pornographic messages were shared, hearing told

The Metropolitan police’s Black Police Association head was part of a group chat where “racist” jokes about east Asian people and a video mocking Katie Price’s disabled son, Harvey, were shared, a misconduct hearing was told.

Insp Charles Ehikioya is accused of being in a chat with former officer Carlo Francisco where racist, misogynistic, homophobic and pornographic messages were sent.

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Curb extremism now or face new terrorist threats, Labour warned

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Experts say measures announced so far are not enough to turn the tide

Labour must reverse years of ­political failure on extremism to stop it ­fuelling more disorder, violence and terrorism in Britain, leading figures have said.

Neil Basu, the former head of counter-terrorism policing, and Dame Sara Khan, previously the government’s counter-extremism tsar, warned that proposals unveiled last month would not be enough to address a toxic pool of hatred, conspiracy theories and “dangerous rhetoric” from high-­profile figures including Elon Musk.

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Police forces report sharp rise in religious hate crimes across UK

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Data shows spikes in antisemitic and Islamophobic offences after outbreak of Middle East conflict and Southport attack

Some of the UK’s largest police forces have reported increases in religious hate crimes in the past 18 months, figures reveal, with the number of incidents rising after the start of the Hamas-Israel conflict in autumn 2023 and again after the Southport attacks in England this summer.

Forces including Greater Manchester, West Midlands and the Metropolitan police recorded sharp increases in antisemitic offences in the weeks after the outbreak of the conflict in the Middle East in October last year.

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Met police pays out after arrest of teenager wrongly linked to protest

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Exclusive: Force reaches out-of-court settlement with Xanthe Wells, who was accused of being at pro-Palestine demonstration

Scotland Yard has paid £5,000 in an out-of-court settlement after allegedly unlawfully imprisoning a 17-year-old who was wrongly accused of being at a pro-Palestine protest where a building was spray-painted.

The case is said by civil liberties campaigners to be compelling evidence of a heavy-handed approach by the Met to the policing of demonstrations over the last year.

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