Category Archives: Metropolitan police

Met police investigate possible vetting errors over 300 recruits

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Exclusive: Force examining whether hundreds of recruits had substandard or no checks before being allowed to join

Scotland Yard is urgently making checks on whether it bungled the vetting of hundreds of officers after concerns they may have used inadequate measures when hiring them to see if they posed a criminal risk.

About 300 new recruits may have had substandard or no vetting to see if they had criminal convictions, cautions or criminal associations and whether their integrity was at risk because of debt.

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UK to explore extraditing Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brückner

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Met chief Mark Rowley says many questions remain and detectives are liaising with German and Portuguese police

Mark Rowley has said the British police investigation into Madeleine McCann will explore extraditing the German national Christian Brückner to the UK to stand trial over the three-year-old’s disappearance.

Brückner was released from a German prison on Wednesday after serving a seven-year jail term for the rape of an elderly woman in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2005, two years before Madeleine disappeared while on holiday with her family in the same town.

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Police search for 11 violent disorder suspects after ‘unite the kingdom’ march

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Met ask public for help identifying those who aimed ‘kicks and punches’ at officers among other offences

Police are looking for 11 people suspected to have committed violent disorder offences after the large far-right-led march through London on Saturday, and said they had already charged eight people with offences.

The “unite the kingdom” march was led by the far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson and attracted more than 110,000 people, police said, in excess of what they or the organisers expected.

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Prime Madeleine McCann suspect refuses Met interview before German prison release

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Scotland Yard made formal request to interview Christian Brückner, due for release from seven-year rape sentence

The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has refused to be interviewed by the Metropolitan police before his pending release from prison in Germany, the force has said.

The Met confirmed it had submitted a formal international request to question Christian Brückner, the 49-year-old German national who has long been under investigation in connection with Madeleine’s disappearance, but the suspect declined.

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Nine Met police suspended amid inquiry into claims of excessive force

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Watchdog says there are also allegations of discriminatory and misogynistic comments, centring on Charing Cross police station

Nine Scotland Yard officers have been suspended after an investigation was launched into claims of excessive use of force and the making of discriminatory and misogynistic comments.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said the allegations centre on Charing Cross police station in central London, the source of a previous scandal for the Metropolitan police.

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Notting Hill carnival came ‘very close’ to not happening, says chair in funding appeal

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Ian Comfort calls for government to recognise cultural importance of event and guarantee its sustainable future

About 2 million people are expected to take to the streets this weekend at the annual Notting Hill carnival for its mix of music, food and Caribbean culture, but for the man who runs it, there is a sense of relief to see it taking place at all.

The chair of Notting Hill Carnival Ltd, Ian Comfort, told the Guardian that the event needed to secure a sustainable future after a year of funding rows, public disagreements with the Met police, and negative press after violence last year.

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Police plan to arrest anyone supporting Palestine Action at London protest

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Source says presence of large crowds would not prevent arrests under terrorism laws

Police are planning to arrest anyone demonstrating in support of Palestine Action this weekend.

The group has been banned under terrorism laws and this weekend a large event protesting against its proscription has been organised by the group Defend Our Juries.

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Met police to more than double use of live facial recognition

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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.

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Children investigated over Russian and Iranian plots against UK, says police chief

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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.

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‘They rewrite the ending’: the knife crime play with its own outreach scheme

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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.”

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Met officers’ strip-search of black girl at school was gross misconduct, panel finds

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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.

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Youth workers in London custody centres stop 90% reoffending, says report

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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.

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Black schoolgirl Child Q strip-searched by Met officers suffered mental harm, hearing told

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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.

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Police were ‘consulted’ over early prison release scheme, says Ministry of Justice

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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.

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Why did 30 Met officers kick the door down at a teenage tea and biscuits meeting in a Quaker house?

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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.

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Prince Harry loses legal challenge over police protection in UK

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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.

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Met police ‘maintain concerns’ about China super-embassy plan

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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

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Family of student murdered in London 10 years ago make fresh appeal for help

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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.

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Ten Britons accused of committing war crimes while fighting for Israel in Gaza

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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.

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Scotland Yard protesters demand justice for drag artist found dead in Soho in 2023

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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.

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