By Richard Shrubb

The Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) is investigating 9 current Met Police and one former for a bunch of activities that might simply be called ‘twattish’.

The idea of the Met Police being a bunch of twats is so normal that a recent former Met constable even told me so the other week. For you in the Feed the Birds readership, the idea of the Met being twats is like asking whether dogs actually pee on lampposts.

The IOPC is investigating a recently disbanded Impact unit with the following allegations made:

Bullied and taken part in inappropriate behaviour towards other officers

Been violent towards women and taken advantage of vulnerable people

Used controlled substances, including steroids

Used racist, misogynistic and other discriminatory language

Perverted the course of justice by deleting messages relevant to a criminal investigation

Failed to report wrongdoing

(Quoted from BBC)

The Impact Squad used to be a unit formed to tackle crime in the night time economy of London around Leicester Square and Soho.

The investigation was started when it was found that one policeman (at least, we hope it wasn’t the policewoman being investigated too) had fucked a vulnerable woman on police premises at Charing Cross Police Station, and on digging into phone records things suddenly got a whole lot worse. From that allegation, the whole group was implicated and the behaviours above exposed.

A word from a Dorset cop

I was involved in an investigation into a drunk guy with brain damage using his car in a way that threatened my life here in Dorset the other week. The policeman who came to my house to get a statement is a former Met officer and we had a bit of a laugh. He basically said he’s an old fashioned constable who likes to use intelligent behaviour toward crime – he’s built like a shed but uses his brains. He essentially told me he came back to Dorset as he was sick of the paramilitary, American style of policing used by the Met, where everyone behaves like ‘the biggest gang in town’ and use violence as a first option. He reckoned if the Met Police were armed we’d see civilians dropping like flies in similar numbers to the US.

Why’s this relevant? The idea that a rogue unit running amok, fucking vulnerable women, racially abusing people, and taking drugs as part of their own ‘gang culture’ really isn’t a surprise. The fact that only 10 Met Police officers are being investigated and not 1000 is quite baffling as a result. The only conclusion I can draw here is that a Met Police officer behaving like a twat in a gang isn’t enough to get investigated by the IOPC – you have to be a very big, super stupid twat in order to significantly rise above the other twats and be investigated for it.

Outcomes?

The IOPC’s predecessor the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) was so corrupt and biased against the public that it was disbanded just a couple of years ago. Here’s another insight: I got talking to one of those, who told me he’d moved into the IPCC after being a Department of Work and Pensions benefit fraud investigator – and still found that tasering someone with a self-inflicted neck wound to death was perfectly OK.

I really hope the IOPC finds fault here as its own reputation is on the line. If the vulnerable women who were exploited and the BME and LGBTQ communities aren’t protected by this lot we’re really not going to see much of a better reputation for this organisation than its corrupt, money wasting predecessor.

Richard is a marijuana, water sports and electric vehicles writer based in Dorchester, Dorset. Living in Prince Charles model housing estate, Poundbury, he is an avowed republican, community and Labour Party activist. Visit his website at www.richardshrubb.com for more about what he does.