Category Archives: Metropolitan police

Inquiry into Post Office Horizon scandal faces five-year delay without extra funding

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Police officer in charge says budget could reach £19.3m and nearly 100 more investigators are needed

The police criminal inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal faces a five-year delay unless it is handed millions in extra funding and nearly 100 more staff, according to the chief officer in charge.

The Metropolitan police commander Stephen Clayman said he needed to nearly double the number of investigators to 210 to meet a deadline of late next year or early 2028 for submitting files to prosecutors.

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Jewish man in hospital after attack by group of men in Golders Green

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Victim in his 20s was beaten up in north London street having stepped outside to use his phone

A Jewish man is being treated in hospital for injuries to his face and body after being attacked by a number of men in north London.

Police were called in the early hours of Monday morning following reports that a Jewish man had been assaulted by a number of men outside a property on the Grove in Golders Green.

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Met police officers accused of sleeping while on duty protecting royal family

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Unspecified number of officers from royalty and specialist protection team being investigated, force confirms

Police officers accused of being asleep when they were supposed to be protecting the royal family at Windsor Castle have been placed under investigation.

An unspecified number of officers from the Metropolitan police’s royalty and specialist protection team are being investigated after concerns were raised, the force confirmed. The Sun, which first reported the story, said up to 30 officers were involved.

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Brixton drive-by shooting ‘act of indiscriminate violence’, say Met police

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Four people are in hospital, with one 25-year-old man facing life-threatening injuries

A drive-by shooting in Brixton which left four people in hospital on Saturday has been called “an act of indiscriminate violence” by police.

Shots were fired in the early hours on Coldharbour Lane in the south London area, leaving one 25-year-old man in hospital with life-threatening injuries.

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Some pro-Palestinian protests could be banned amid attacks on British Jews

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PM worried about ‘cumulative’ effect of marches, as Met chief says Jewish communities facing biggest threat

Some pro-Palestinian demonstrations could be stopped, the prime minister has warned, as the UK’s most senior police officer said the threat to the Jewish ­community was greater than it had ever been.

Keir Starmer indicated he wanted the language expressed on some protest marches to be subjected to “tougher action” as he sought to allay the fears of British Jews after a series of attacks on their communities in recent weeks.

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Starmer says Polanski ‘is not fit to lead a political party’ after Golders Green police criticism

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Green leader apologises for sharing post that said officers were ‘repeatedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head’ and says he had did so ‘in haste’

Keir Starmer has condemned Zack Polanski as “disgraceful” and unfit to head a political party after the Greens’ leader shared a social media post critical of the way police tackled the suspect in the Golders Green stabbings.

The prime minister said any criticism of the police involved in the arrest was unfair on officers having to make split-second decisions in a moment of potentially grave danger.

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Kensington Gardens reopens after police deem suspicious items non-hazardous

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Officers responded after group claimed to have targeted nearby Israeli embassy with ‘dangerous substances’

Kensington Gardens in London has reopened after the discovery of several suspicious items including two jars containing a powdered substance that was deemed to be non-hazardous, police said.

Officers in protective clothing responded to an incident near the Israeli embassy on Friday after counter-terrorism police investigated a video shared online in which a group claimed to have targeted the embassy with drones carrying “dangerous substances”.

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Harrods’ closure of compensation scheme for survivors of alleged sexual abuse called ‘neither fair nor just’

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Scheme for accusers of store’s former owner Mohamed Al Fayed to close before end of retailer’s internal investigation

Harrods has been accused of being “neither fair nor just” over its decision to close a compensation scheme for survivors of alleged sexual abuse by the luxury department store’s former owner Mohamed Al Fayed.

Kingsley Hayes, partner at KP Law, which is representing nearly 280 survivors, questioned why the scheme was being closed on Tuesday 31 March, before Harrods had completed an internal investigation into what happened and who knew about it.

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Undercover police officer was sacked for assaulting partner, spycops inquiry hears

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Conviction revealed during questioning of Rob Hastings about a second woman whom he deceived into intimate relationship

An undercover officer who deceived a woman into an intimate relationship was later convicted and dismissed from the police for assaulting his long-term partner, the public inquiry into undercover policing has heard.

Rob Hastings, who infiltrated pro-Palestinian and left wing protest groups for three years during his covert deployment, was convicted of assaulting his now ex-partner and mother of his three children in 2014. He was sacked by the Metropolitan police for gross misconduct as a result.

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McSweeney-Mandelson messages still exist despite theft of ex-chief of staff’s phone

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Cabinet Office thought to have a number of exchanges between the friends, which are expected to be released within weeks

The Cabinet Office is understood to hold a number of text and email exchanges between Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney, despite the theft of the former chief of staff’s phone in October last year.

The whereabouts of McSweeney’s messages with Mandelson has been under intense scrutiny since it was reported his work device was stolen last year shortly after Mandelson was sacked as US ambassador.

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Two men charged over alleged spying on Jewish community in London for Iran

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Metropolitan police say men were arrested and detained as part of an investigation into alleged surveillance of locations

Two men have been charged with spying for Iran over alleged surveillance of the Jewish community in London, police said.

Nematollah Shahsavani, 40, a dual Iranian and British national, and Alireza Farasati, 22, an Iranian national, have both been charged with engaging in contact likely to assist a foreign intelligence service between 9 July and 15 August last year.

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Met accused of insulting black people with shake-up of anti-racism strategy

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Academic Shereen Daniels says plan by Mark Rowley to absorb police’s race policies into broader anti-discrimination programme is backward step

The Metropolitan police has been accused of insulting black people and mocking the pain it has caused them after revealing it wants to absorb its anti-racism strategy into a broader anti-discrimination scheme.

The Met said the scheme, also including gender and sexual orientation, will increase its chance of success in better serving groups it has failed in the past.

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Black people up to 48 times more likely to be stopped and searched in richest areas of London

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Research found extreme disproportion in use of police power in districts such as Richmond-upon-Thames

Black people are up to 48 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by police in some of London’s best-off areas, a new report has found.

The study found that the reasons given by officers for subjecting black people to the controversial power were more likely to be vague, with examples including that a black person gave a “furtive glance”.

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Met interviews women supected of facilitating Mohamed Al Fayed’s alleged sexual abuse

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Three women in their 40s, 50s and 60s interviewed under caution in relation to alleged abuse by late Harrods owner

Three women have been interviewed under caution on suspicion of facilitating one of Britain’s worst sexual abuse scandals, involving the former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed and his alleged attacks over four decades.

Scotland Yard said 154 women may have been raped or sexually assaulted by Fayed, or been subject to human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

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Met deploys drones and ebikes to help catch adolescent phone thieves

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London police say criminal gangs are using Snapchat to offer cash rewards of up to £380 for stolen iPhones

Gangs are recruiting children to go out to steal smartphones before they head to school, using Snapchat to offer rewards of up to £380 for the latest Apple iPhones, police have revealed.

The Metropolitan police said they were deploying new resources including drones and Surron ebikes to chase suspects as they step up their fight against phone snatching.

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Quarter of police forces missing basic policies on sexual offences, says Sarah Everard report

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Official report says forces in England and Wales yet to implement recommendations for investigations

A quarter of police forces in England and Wales are yet to implement “basic policies for investigating sexual offences”, an official report has found, with women still being failed despite promises of change after the murder of Sarah Everard four years ago.

The report by Dame Elish Angiolini follows an inquiry set up after Everard was murdered by a serving police officer, Wayne Couzens, in March 2021. She was abducted off a London street while walking home.

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Two Met officers running spycops unit were ‘incredibly racist’, inquiry told

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Undercover unit monitored Stephen Lawrence’s family, as well as thousands of mainly leftwing political activists

Two senior officers who supervised an undercover Scotland Yard unit spying on political campaigns were “horribly and incredibly” racist, a whistleblower has told a public inquiry.

Peter Francis, a former member of the unit, testified that one regularly used the “N-word”, while the other used a repertoire of explicit racist slurs.

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Spycops inquiry: Doreen Lawrence says she does not believe ex-home secretary

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Stephen Lawrence’s mother tells inquiry she did not believe Michael Howard when he told her he did not know police had spied on her family

The mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence has told a public inquiry that she does not believe claims by the former home secretary Michael Howard that he did not know undercover police officers had spied on her family.

Doreen Lawrence told the spycops inquiry on Thursday that Lord Howard, a former leader of the Conservative party, invited her to a meeting shortly after the inquiry was set up in 2014.

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Police ‘urgently’ looking for prisoner freed by mistake in London

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Algerian man, 24, ‘released in error’ from HMP Wandsworth two days after stronger checks for jails were brought in

Police have launched an urgent manhunt for a second foreign prisoner freed mistakenly, two days after the justice secretary, David Lammy, brought in stronger checks for jails.

The 24-year-old Algerian was wrongly released from Wandsworth prison in south London last Wednesday, with the Metropolitan police informed only this week.

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Epping sex offender back in custody after release from prison in error

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Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, whose case triggered summer protests in Essex, detained again and faces deportation

A former asylum seeker and convicted sex offender who was released from prison in error is back in custody and faces deportation.

Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, an Ethiopian national, was jailed for 12 months in September for sexually assaulting a woman and a 14-year-old girl and was made the subject of a five-year sexual harm prevention order.

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