Root out the bad apples in the police

Sergeant Mark Andrews was jailed last week for an unprovoked attack on a 59-year-old lady. He was sent down for six months after he had been found guilty of actual bodily harm.

Now another man has come forward to claim that he, too, was assaulted by Andrews.

What I find surprising is that Andrews was not immediately sacked on conviction. Further two of his colleagues lied on oath when giving evidence for him. They were PC Mark McIntyre and Acting Sergeant Kate Smith. They alleged that the 59-year-old lady had been violent but Deputy District Judge Peter Greenfield said on sentencing Andrews, "You called two officers whose evidence I didn’t accept... I was so concerned about the evidence these officers gave me, I asked my comments to be brought to the attention of the Chief Officer of Wiltshire."

A police spokesman said, "Two officers will be receiving words of advice from a senior officer on how to present their evidence."

"Words of advice"? Isn't that more often called attempting to pervert the course of justice?

Stop calling murderers "Mister"

Psychopath Raoul Moat continues to evade the police hunt for him. It appears that the SAS are now involved.

One thing bothers me: can the senior police figures stop referring to him in their press conferences as "Mister" Moat. It is not exactly as if he is going to take umbrage - he is annoyed with the police enough as it is...

All crimes are equal - despite what the police think

A trainee young policeman has been beaten up in Liverpool.

Detective Chief Inspector Tim Keelan is leading the investigation.

He said, ‘People who commit crimes can expect the full attention of the police and we will not rest until the offenders are brought to justice. We have stepped up high visibility patrols in the area to reassure the public and we would urge the community to help us with our enquiries and find those responsible.’

Except that is not quite the full story. James Parkes, 22,the trainee cop in question is gay and what DCI Keelan actually said was, ‘We are treating the assault as a homophobic hate crime and this incident shows there are still some people who have not learnt that crimes of this type are completely unacceptable. People who commit hate crimes can expect the full attention of the police and we will not rest until the offenders are brought to justice.’

I sincerely hope the police catch the attackers quickly and that they get banged up for a long time. However, why is this attack being treated with more seriousness than if a heterosexual trainee copper had been beaten up? Surely all crimes should ‘expect the full attention of the police’ and they should keep at it until ‘the offenders are brought to justice’. Surely all crimes especially those of violence are ‘completely unacceptable’ not just when the victim is gay.

The police should put all their efforts into solving every crime not just the politically expedient ones.

In the meantime, I wish Pc Parkes a speedy recovery.

Cough up, Met

Met policeman Tarique Ghaffur has settled his claim for racism and discrimination against the force - for money, of course.

The Met was not prepared to say how much had been paid to Ghaffur.

Why?

Don't the public have a right to know how much of taxpayers' money was given to Ghaffur?

Tolerance works both ways

A Christian policeman has been sacked after claiming that gay sex was "sinful".

Pc Graham Cogman, twice commended by his force for his loyalty and diligence, received literature promoting gay events so he emailed his colleagues with details of Christianity. His bosses said that he was not showing enough "respect and tolerance" to fellow officers and forbade him from using the office computer.

Speaking about his treatment earlier this year, Mr Cogman said: "The blatant support for homosexual rights in Norfolk police makes being a Christian officer extremely difficult.

"I have to make a stand when things become so blatantly biased against me just because I hold a faith."

What about respect and tolerance for Mr Cogman's beliefs? Why are his views less worthy than other people's? Would the police had been so quick to sack him had he been a Muslim? Why does it always only ever go one way?

The police are moral arbiters - that's what we pay them for

A mother was walking her teenage daughter to school when they saw two semi-naked men having sex. Marie Cragg, 44, called the police who told her to use a different path.

This follows on from last month when Deputy Chief Constable Mike Cunningham said people caught having sex in public should only be arrested as a last resort. He added that it was not the job of police to "take the role of moral arbiter" and claimed punishing those involved rarely solved the problem and could cause "humiliation, breakdown of relationships and the outing of men".

It is exactly the role of the police to be moral arbiters because morals are what underlay the fabric of society. And the problem is that they abrogating their responsibilities which is making society worse.

Who were those masked men?

The death of barrister Mark Saunders is a tragedy. It is the first time the police have killed anyone since Jean Charles de Menezes was shot on the Tube in July 2005.

Saunders was shooting at passers-by and exchanged gunfire with the police so the outcome was never in doubt.

One thing puzzles me though. The policemen from CO19 are idenitifiable - from their crash helmets and guns but who are the disturbing figures in the balaclavas in the picture?

CCTV doesn't work - even the police agree now

For some time I have been saying that CCTV is next to useless in the fight against crime and has allowed the police to abjure their responsibilities.

Now, a senior policeman agrees with me. Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville, the head of the Metropolitan Police Force's Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office, said that the system was an "utter fiasco" - with only 3 per cent of London's street robberies being solved using cameras.

He said, "Billions of pounds has been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court. It's been an utter fiasco: only 3 per cent of crimes were solved by CCTV."

Hmm, here's a radical idea - why not police patrols back on the streets?

Mind how you go... in Islamabad

Scotland Yard detectives have arrived in Pakistan to help with the investigation into the death of Benazir Bhutto.

Why? Are there not enough crimes to solve in the UK?

Brunstrom is talking balls...

On Wednesday, I suggested (again) that it was time for Richard Brunstrom, the idiot who runs North Wales police force, to resign after his comments that ecstasy was safer than aspirin.

Brunstrom has used his blog to defend his comments. He writes: “As a fact then, and one which deserves to be more widely known, UK government figures from the Office of National Statistics show that between 1993 and 2006, ecstasy was ‘mentioned’ on death certificates in England and Wales 456 times (and mentioned on its own, without other drugs being present, less than half that number of times – 234) , whereas aspirin was mentioned on 504 occasions (on 285 occasions in the absence of other drugs). So in the last 14 years, as a fact, aspirin has been formally associated by the government with the death of more people than has ecstasy. That’s why I said on the radio that ecstasy’s safer than aspirin. The picture is not that simple of course, not least because the word ‘mentioned’ does not mean that ecstasy actually caused the death, merely that a person died who had taken it.”

As Brunstrom admits the picture is not that simple. Put another way: 504 people “died” as a result of aspirin out of perhaps 20 million people who took it (0.00252 per cent); 456 “died” from ecstasy out of perhaps a million that took it (0.0456). Now which is the safer drug?

In addition, his biography (which boasts of his A grade A level in Welsh as if that has anything to do with policing) on the site claims that “under Richard Brunstrom, North Wales Police has become one of the best performing forces in England and Wales”. Hmm, under Brunstrom his officers issued 4,200 speeding tickets but – in stark contrast – solved only 41 out of 693 vehicle crimes in a single month. In the same period it was revealed that his force had solved a mere six per cent of burglaries in their area.

Time for Brunstrom to go...

So the Mad Mullah of the Traffic Taliban has done it again.

Last month, Richard Brunstrom broke into his own headquarters.

Last week, he gave an interview to the BBC saying that he believed all drugs would be decriminalised within ten years and that Ecstasy was safer than aspirin.

Nurse!!!

Only in Wales...

A Welsh stationery firm has been sacked after it produced a calendar that accidentally omitted St David's Day.

The calendar appeared on a leaflet about leisure services in Ceredigion and includes other international festivals.

A council spokesman said: "Ceredigion County Council has thoroughly looked into this matter and apologises for any distress caused."

Distress caused? Are these council idiots so removed from reality that they believe "distress" will be caused by leaving a date off a calendar in a country that until recently sent almost every man down a mine?

Meanwhile, in other news in the principality Richard Brunstrom, chief constable of North Wales, has tested the security of his police headquarters in Colwyn Bay, Conwy, currently being refurbished at a cost of £3.4m, by breaking in.

Is there anything this buffoon will not do for publicity?

It's not just Blair - the whole police is run by insensitive cretins

Richard Brunstrom is the chief constable of North Wales Police. He is also the copper who handed his force suntan lotion (even though north Wales has one of the highest levels of rainfall in the UK); dressed up as a druid; believes hard drugs should be legalised (he said that heroin was not "very, very, very dangerous"); thinks speeding motorists are as anti-social as muggers (in 2003 he called for the number of cameras to be trebled); spent £4,000 of taxpayers' money in 2001 investigating "anti-Welsh" comments by The Weakest Link host Anne Robinson and, surprise surprise, is a keen supporter of the European Union (he once said, "I don't think I have ever felt English. I'm a passionate European and I'm passionately in support of devolution in Wales").

Brunstrom has an obsession with speeding. He used pictures of a decapitated motorcyclist at a road safety summit to put his point across without even having the basic courtesy to ask the permission of the family of the dead man. The picture showed the man's head on a grass verge, encased in a helmet with the visor raised and his eyes still open. His widow and children had not been told the full details of how he died to spare their feelings. To make matters worse, Brunstrom sent an email to head of press, Bethan Jones Parry: "We must have better slides than the suicide. Not enough. Not gruesome enough. Motorcyclist is outstandingly good."

Why is this insensitive buffoon still in his job? Where is the tact? Where is the intelligence?

Brunstrom, like Ian Blair, is an utter disgrace to the Queen's uniform and should resign in shame but he won't because people like him have no shame.

UPDATE: After criticism from his local police authority Brunstrom said he would show the pictures again if "safeguards" were in place. He has also criticised the media for running the story.

He said: "I clearly placed too much trust in the behaviour and integrity of journalists. I allowed others to exploit a position that I did not anticipate.

"The error of judgment I was referring to was misplaced trust. I have been called naive, that may be apparent. This was intended to be a celebratory meeting."

A celebratory meeting? A celebratory meeting that was showing pictures of a dead man?

Brunstrom must go.

Blair is on the way out...

The incompetent head of the Metropolitan Police Force is in trouble again.

Sir Ian Blair's deputy and the man who hopes to succeed him, Paul Stephenson, has been forced to write a letter of support for his beleaguered boss after Blair wrote him a letter accusing him of disloyalty.

Stephenson had agreed to forgo his annual bonus forcing his boss to give up his own £25,000 payout.

Now London's mayor Ken Livingstone has come out in support of Ian Blair. He said: "Politicians are skulking around in plots against the Commissioner, and by extension the Met as a whole, while crime in London is falling and police numbers are at record levels."

Hmmm, wasn't Blair supposed to be New Labour's favourite policeman? Now he has the odious Livingstone on his side. I give him till Christmas...

Ian Blair - In the name of God, go!

One Blair has gone - now it's high time for a second to leave his job.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission report into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes says that Metropolitan Police Force commissioner Sir Ian Blair was "almost totally uninformed" about what happened at Stockwell tube station.

This is simply unbelievable - either Blair knew what happened and lied about it - for which he should resign - or he didn't know in which case he is incompetent and should be sacked.

The report lays the blame squarely on Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman. It says that he "misled" senior officers by failing to tell them the dead man was not one of four wanted suicide bombers.

If Blair did not know, he should have done. He should have asked questions of his senior men; he should have made it his business to find out before making any public statements.

The buck stops at the top and the top, for now, is Sir Ian Blair.

Show some backbone, man, and do the honourable thing. Your time as head of the Met is as already tarnished as that of the man whose surname you shared was at No 10.

In the name of God - go!

Put Plod on the pavement

The Sunday Telegraph reports that three out of four people do not know a single policeman in their neighbourhood.

This is despite the fact that there are more employed police now than ever before.

There are now also more specialist directives in the police, many concerned with "diversity" and "the community".

There are a few simple measures to get the public back on side of the police.

Get police back on the beat. Let the public see them. Get out of the panda cars and use their legs. I would be interested to see how many rapes, robberies and other serious crimes were committed on the day after the Tube bombings when the streets were flooded with police.

Stop dressing police as some kind of paramilitary force - get back to the old-fashioned uniform. Is it really necessary for the police to wear fluorescent jackets or have "Metropolitan Police" (or whatever) embroidered on their sweaters. What else could they be?

Stop persecuting motorists. Despite buffoons like Richard Brunstrom, the "car-driving community" is not a force for evil.

Stop banging on about diversity and "serving the community". It really does not impress anyone.

It's not rocket science...

Bring back the poll tax

Following the abolition of the rates, we had the community charge or poll tax. That helped to bring down Margaret Thatcher. In 1991 John Major introduced the council tax and the bills have been rising steadily and sometimes not so steadily each year.

In London my bill contains precepts for the local council, the police and the London Assembly. As I have pointed out before the London Assembly was sold as costing the average Band D payer about 3p a week or £1.50 a year. It currently costs me more than £300 a year for what I believe is an unnecessary layer of government.

The poll tax was described as unfair because the duke in his castle pays the same as the widow in her hovel.

At first glance this may indeed seem unfair. But the council tax pays for the local council and the services it provides. If the duke pays double what the widow pays, does that mean that his bins are emptied twice as often? If he is burgled, do the police double their efforts to catch the criminals? If his castle catches fire, does the fire brigade turn up twice as quickly? If his children go to a local school (unlikely I know) do they get a better education? If he is ill, does the doctor come out or does he get seen in half the time at the local hospital? (Again, unlikely I know because he would have private education for his children and private health care for his family.) What do you think?

It could even be argued that those who have private health care or send their children to private schools should receive a reduction in their council tax because they are not "using" all the services.

The reason council tax bills are so high is because they have to pay for all the unnecessary staff hired by councils.

If local councils spent their, sorry our, money on schools, hospitals, the police, and keeping the streets clean, bins emptied and paid councillors an allowance (as they used to), council tax bills could be slashed.

Is Ian Blair fit for purpose?

One some times has to wonder about the fitness of Sir Ian Blair to be commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Force.

On the Jean Charles de Menezes tragedy, he stated that he was unaware that an innocent man had been murdered until the next day. Why? With ultimate responsibility for the force, he should have known.

Blair either did know in which case he is a liar, or he really didn't know and he is incompetent.

Now we learn that he attended a dinner at which a fellow guest was Lord Levy, currently under investigation in the cash for honours row by the Metropolitan Police Force. Blair knew that Michael Levy was going to be present (he asked not to be seated near the peer or his wife), so what on earth prompted him to attend?

Stop the witch hunts

This really has gone too far. Racism has become the new witchcraft. You don't actually have to be a paid-up member of the BNP or National Front to be smeared with the tag "Racist!" There is also no real defence - how does one prove that one is not something?

Patrick Mercer, by all accounts a supporter of black soldiers, has been sacked by David Cameron for alleged racist remarks he made about ethnic troops. The fact that what he said may have been true is deemed to be irrelevant.

Hertfordshire police spent time and money investigating racism on a television show. Three stupid girls were alleged to have bullied another woman. One of the so-called aggressors has been left suicidal by the accusations. The "victim" herself claimed that she did not think she was racially bullied.

Now the Crown Prosecution Service has decided that what occurred was "clearly offensive" but "not criminal".

I do not live in Hertfordshire but if I did I would want to know how much money was wasted on this stupid "investigation". Irrespective of my colour, I would want to know how many burglaries went uninvestigated? How many mugging victims were offered "counselling" rather than the police spending time tracking down the perpetrators? How many cars were stolen or broken into?

The police must stop taking part in the government's plan for social engineering and get back to doing what they are paid for: stopping crime, and investigating and apprehending criminals.

Dislike of someone different from you (however irrational) is NOT a crime. It is an OPINION.

We don't want mini cops

Today, Muslim troublemaker Abu Izzadeen has been arrested on suspicion of encouraging terrorism.

Izzadeen, whose real name is Trevor, came to public notice when he barracked the home secretary last year in east London.

The footage has been shown continuously on the TV news channels and what is immediately apparent is the ridiculous decision to abandon the minimum heights for coppers.

While Trevor rants on, a miniature cop is occasionally seen in the background, looking, it has to be said, as if he wished he were somewhere else. Anywhere else.

I know the reasoning behind the abolition of the height restriction was to encourage more ethnic minorities to join up (for which read Asian), but what is the point of mini cops if they can't protect the public because they are about 4foot tall?