Technology will now be used up to 10 times a week across five days, up from four times a week across two days
Britain’s biggest police force is to more than double its use of live facial recognition to up to 10 deployments a week.
The move by the Metropolitan police comes as it restructures to cover the loss of 1,400 officers and 300 staff amid budget shortages.
Continue reading...Teenagers suspected of being hired by criminals paid to carry out acts on behalf of states, it is understood
Schoolchildren have been arrested by detectives investigating Russian and Iranian plots against Britain, a police chief has said, as he warned hostile state aggression was rising and youngsters were at risk.
Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism unit, said children in their “mid teens” had been investigated. It is understood they were suspected of being hired by criminals paid to carry out acts for Russia and Iran.
Continue reading...Sam Edmunds hopes to help young people with his play The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return
Growing up in Luton in the late 90s and early 00s, the playwright Sam Edmunds witnessed an abundance of knife violence that has stayed with him to this day.
“Me and my friends had knives pulled on us on numerous occasions. We once saw someone being chased with a machete at the back of the field by our school. In drama class, I remember a boy went into his bag to get his notebook out and a massive knife fell out. A boy in my brother’s year was stabbed over 10 times on a night out.”
Continue reading...Disciplinary hearing finds two police officers’ search of Child Q, 15, was disproportionate and humiliating
Two police officers who were involved in the strip-search of a black teenager at her school have been found to have committed gross misconduct.
The search at a school in Hackney, east London, was “disproportionate, inappropriate and unnecessary” and made the girl, known as Child Q, feel degraded and humiliated, a panel concluded at the end of a four-week misconduct hearing.
Continue reading...Scheme aims to exploit ‘teachable moment’, when someone is wavering between criminality and turning their back on violence
A scheme aiming to turn children arrested for violence away from crime has claimed staggering success, with up to nine out of 10 diverted from further offending, according to a report.
Under the scheme, which is funded by London’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), special youth workers are placed in police custody centres across the capital.
Continue reading...Girl’s lawyer tells police misconduct hearing that she felt ‘physically violated’ by incident at her London school
A black schoolgirl suffered mental harm and felt “physically violated” when she was strip-searched at school by police, a misconduct hearing for three officers has been told.
The girl, who was 15 at the time and has been known as Child Q, was strip-searched in December 2020 at her school in Hackney, east London, while menstruating, having been wrongly accused of possessing cannabis.
Continue reading...Mark Rowley, Met commissioner, had said plans for England and Wales were made ‘without any analysis of the impact on policing’
The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has hit back at the UK’s most senior police officer in a row over the impact of allowing thousands of criminals to serve their sentences in the community instead of being sent to jail.
The Ministry of Justice insisted on Wednesday that officials “consulted with police” including the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, over proposed changes to sentencing policies introduced to ease prison overcrowding.
Continue reading...When six young women hired a room to discuss the war in Gaza, the gathering ended with 30 officers storming in to make arrests
When six young women gathered in central London to discuss the climate crisis and the war in Gaza, the setting could not have been more appropriate. The building in which they sat was a Quaker meeting house, the home of a movement whose centuries-long history is rooted in protest and a commitment to social justice. On the table were cups of jasmine tea, ginger biscuits and a selection of vegan cheese straws.
But the events that brought this apparently convivial gathering to an abrupt end have sparked protests of a different kind and raised questions about how justice is administered by the UK’s largest and most embattled police force.
Continue reading...Duke of Sussex’s team had argued he was ‘singled out’ for ‘inferior treatment’ when security was downgraded in 2020
The Duke of Sussex has lost a legal challenge over the level of taxpayer-funded security he is entitled to while in the UK, allowing the government to proceed with a “bespoke”, and cheaper, level of protection for his family.
Three senior judges at the court of appeal rejected Prince Harry’s claim that he had been “singled out” for “inferior treatment” and that his safety and life were “at stake” after a change in security arrangements that occurred when he stepped down as a working royal and moved abroad.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Force, which had dropped objection to plan, says protests of more than 500 people would impede traffic and require extra resources
China’s proposed “super-embassy” in London would require additional police officers to deal with any large protests involving thousands of people, the Metropolitan police have said before a decision by ministers.
Despite having dropped its official objection to the proposals, the Met “maintains concerns” that large protests of more than 500 people outside the embassy would impede traffic and “require additional police resource”, said the deputy assistant commissioner Jon Savell
Continue reading...Ola Raji’s sisters ask public for support in finding killers of 21-year-old, who was shot and stabbed in Peckham
The family of a 21-year-old student who was shot and stabbed while cycling home after watching a football match 10 years ago has renewed an appeal for the public’s help to find those responsible.
Ola Raji had spent the evening at a friend’s house watching a Champions League match between Bayern Munich and Porto before he was killed in Peckham, south London on the night of Tuesday 21 April 2015.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Met to be handed dossier of evidence alleging crimes including killings of civilians and aid workers
A war crimes complaint against 10 Britons who served with the Israeli military in Gaza is to be submitted to the Met police by one of the UK’s leading human rights lawyers.
Michael Mansfield KC is one of a group of lawyers who will on Monday hand in a 240-page dossier to Scotland Yard’s war crimes unit alleging targeted killing of civilians and aid workers, including by sniper fire, and indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, including hospitals.
Continue reading...Friends and fans of Heklina denounce Met’s investigation of unsolved death in her London flat
Nearly two years after the American drag artist Heklina was found dead in London, her friends and fans gathered outside Scotland Yard’s headquarters to protest against the force’s handling of the case.
Heklina, whose real name was Steven Grygelko, was found at a flat in Soho, central London, on 3 April 2023, by a friend and fellow drag performer, Peaches Christ, real name Joshua Grannell.
Continue reading...Alexander Sloley was a 16-year-old college student when he went missing from Islington
Police seeking information about a 33-year-old man who disappeared 17 years ago have offered a £10,000 reward.
Alexander Sloley was 16 and studying accountancy at college when he disappeared from Islington, north London, in August 2008. His family and friends have not heard from him since, despite issuing an efit of what he might look like in his late 20s when the police investigation was reopened in 2019.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Most only take a week’s leave, and paternity pay for back-office staff in Met is nearly three times higher
Police officers have described being ostracised for taking paternity leave, as it is revealed that back-office staff in the Metropolitan police are entitled to proportionately nearly three times as much paternity pay as frontline fathers.
A freedom of information request has revealed that most serving police officers in England and Wales only take one week of paternity leave, with some describing being on “blue lights” duty and carrying Tasers a week after the birth of their babies.
Continue reading...Sex Education actor criticises IOPC for refusing to consider race in investigation of officers who pepper-sprayed him
The Hairspray and Sex Education actor Reece Richards has condemned the police watchdog for refusing to consider race in its investigation of Met officers who arrested and pepper-sprayed him.
The 34-year-old was walking home in west London last September after performing in Hairspray when a car crashed into a lamp-post nearby. Two white men fled the scene. When Metropolitan police officers arrived seconds later, Richards pointed out the suspects’ directions. He said that, instead of pursuing them, an officer began shouting at him to get the ground and pointed a pepper spray at him.
Continue reading...New emails reveal ‘panic’ inside the Home Office at the case of Ali Kololo, who was wrongly imprisoned for the 2011 murder of British tourist David Tebbutt
A Kenyan man who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death over an attack on British tourists is suing the Metropolitan police over its role in the case.
Ali Kololo was imprisoned for more than a decade in what his lawyers called “appalling conditions” before being released when his conviction was quashed in 2023.
Continue reading...Victim died at the scene after being struck by a vehicle that failed to stop in Edgware
Two men have been arrested after a fatal collision involving a car that was driving away from police.
The Metropolitan police said the vehicle hit a pedestrian at about 2.10pm on Tuesday in Edgware, north-west London.
Continue reading...Jury convicts Katrin Ivanova, Vanya Gaberova and Tihomir Ivanchev over alleged plots around Europe
Three Bulgarian nationals accused of spying for Russia have been found guilty of espionage charges in a trial that heard how they were involved in a string of plots around Europe directed by a fugitive based in Moscow.
After more than 32 hours of deliberations, a jury at the Old Bailey reached unanimous verdicts on Katrin Ivanova, 33, a lab technician, Vanya Gaberova, 30, a beautician, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, a painter and decorator, all of whom were living in London before their arrest.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Andy George says misconduct inquiry over tweet about Chris Kaba case officer ‘stifles free speech’
The leader of Britain’s black and Asian police officers has been placed under investigation over a tweet.
Ch Insp Andy George, the president of the National Black Police Association, said the decision to place him under a misconduct investigation “sends a chilling message” and “stifles free speech”.
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