We deserve better police than this scandalous bunch of profane and sexist Dick heads
I have just finished watching ITV’s The Blame, which even by modern standards, contains a lot of cursing and swearing.
It’s a twisty whodunnit set in a police station. But the murder of a young skater is not really the point.
The story is actually about the poisonous culture that has been allowed to fester among the detectives who are supposed to be finding the killer.
The coppers’ language is ripe from Episode 1 but in the last two parts it reaches a whole new level of obscenity.
This is centred on a secretive WhatsApp group among the detectives, who post vile women-hating remarks. The c-word is used a lot.
It is so explicit and misogynistic that the show’s producers felt they had to explain this sudden explosion of profanity on prime time telly.
Their on-screen justification said: “The offensive words of the police group chat messages shown in this episode are real messages written by UK police officers.”
In fact, they are taken from messages and texts exchanged by officers at London’s infamous Charing Cross police station, where policemen openly displayed racist, homophobic and misogynistic attitudes, which they laughed off as banter.
The affair, first exposed by the BBC’s Panorama, helped to get Dame Cressida Dick sacked as Met Commissioner.
The culprits were rooted out but one suspects the attitudes remain, fixed like a rogue gene in the DNA of the force.
Not every police officer holds such views, of course. They might not all be Dixon of Dock Green, but there are plenty of perfectly decent coppers out there.
The trouble is, it only takes one Charing Cross scandal to poison the well. Women now are reluctant to come forward in cases of rape, sexual assault or drink “spiking” for fear of encountering the attitudes depicted in The Blame.
They have no trust in the police. They don’t expect to be listened to, or to have their complaints taken seriously. They expect to be fobbed off, or worse, exploited when they are vulnerable.
Some of this dates back to the case of Sarah Everard, 33, who was kidnapped near Clapham Common, South London, by Wayne Couzens, a serving police officer.
He admitted raping and murdering Everard, a marketing executive, and is now serving a whole-life term in prison.
The case was one of those highlighted by Baroness (Louise) Casey, who investigated the Met and found it so riddled with racism, misogyny and homophobia that it needed a “complete overhaul”.
Bullying, poor management and a “boys’ club culture” were among other systemic failings.
The most recent evidence we have of a failing police force followed the death of two officers responding to a car chase near Middlesbrough. Their vehicle was hit by a car travelling on the wrong side of a dual carriageway. The five young men inside it also died.
The tragedy exposed serious organised crime, county lines drug dealing and gang rivalries which the Cleveland force must have known was happening on their manor.
Yet it took the deaths of two of their own before they acted. Now they are breaking down doors in front of TV cameras and hustling handcuffed suspects into paddy wagons.
Where was the tough action when these thugs were sowing misery in their communities with anti-social behaviour, petty crime and more serious felonies?
Chief Constables like to blame lack of money for their failures, and it is true the police often don’t have enough resources to fulfil their duties. But there are other reasons.
Recruitment is difficult. Not enough people want to do the job and some of those who put themselves forward are not of the right calibre.
Sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman were stabbed to death in a park in North-West London in 2020.
PC Jamie Lewis and PC Deniz Jaffer were assigned to guard the crime scene. Instead, they shared pictures of the dead women. Lewis sent a WhatsApp saying: “Unfortunately I’m sat next to two dead birds with stab wounds.”
Who hires morons like these? Where was the due diligence? And why are those who allowed them into the force still in a job?
In a separate case, Met officer David Carrick admitted 49 charges, including 24 of rape, making him one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders. His behaviour raised many red flags but he continued to serve. He is now behind bars for at least 30 years.
Figures out in July show that, while the Home Office promised 20,000 extra police officers, this was more than wiped out by almost 25,000 officers resigning.
The Police Federation gives the reasons as low morale due to pay, high workload and poor work/life balance.
In London, Mayor Sadiq Khan has consistently failed to meet recruitment targets. Ideally, the complement should be 38,000 officers; the reality is 31,250.
Hold a mirror up to the police and you are likely to see a reflection of your own society. Sometimes it’s not pretty.
Those two PCs who disgraced themselves at the crime scene are part of a generation that lives almost vicariously on social media. Sharing pictures of murder victims did not seem wrong to them.
Regularly, we see Chief Constables appear on TV to make ritual apologies for crass mistakes by their officers.
As poor Henry Nowak, 18, lay dying from wounds inflicted by 23-year-old Vickrum Singh Digwa in Southampton, officers scorned his panted attempts to explain that he had been stabbed. Instead, they assumed he was the perpetrator and cuffed him.
We used to have streetwise coppers but society has brainwashed today’s policemen into dangerous assumptions based on racial or cultural stereotypes.
I have heard officers appealing to women in cases of suspected rape or domestic abuse: “Come forward – you will be believed.”
Really? Why? Would it not be good to look at some evidence first? That is where belief, or the lack of it, springs from. That is what every police investigation, every court case, relies on.
Good policemen and women don’t promise immunity from doubt or scepticism. They question victims and witnesses with respect and appropriate empathy, then they see where the evidence takes them.
Incidentally (or perhaps not) pointing up the police manosphere in a polemical thriller written by women does not necessarily make for riveting viewing.
Mind how you go.
*****
Who knew Andy Burnham, our Prime Minister, was such an orator?
He was among friends, of course, when he gave his Labour conference speech in his home city of Liverpool yesterday. But they loved him.
There was the odd awkward pause for laughter or applause that never came, but mostly it was a tour de force, full of grown-up ideas, many of which I agree with.
His ideas on housing and water, in particular, were honest, refreshing and long overdue.
Yes, crack down on greedy, ruthless landlords who take tenants’ benefit money and leave them living in squalor. Yes, build a new stock of council houses for this and future generations.
Yes, force water companies to meet their responsibilities before they suck profits offshore and pay themselves huge bonuses. On pain – yes! – of having their companies taken back into public ownership.
Burnham brought hope in his chummy, unfettered, lectern-free speech, just as his Chancellor, John Healey, brought a welcome dose of fiscal reality on Monday.
But the Prime Minister has three brutal years ahead of him, with little money and no appetite among the people or the financial markets for either higher taxes or more borrowing.
He cannot just ask for Hope Again. He must ask for it again. And again. And again.
Will anybody still be listening in three years?
*****
We’ve all been there; at least, those of us who have worked on weekly papers.
You labour all week to check accuracy, to burnish the prose, to update the facts, then somebody pulls the rug from under you.
Barely had I opened my copy of The Speccie and read my old friend and colleague Tim Shipman’s speculative piece about the likelihood of an early General Election than it was rendered a waste of newsprint.
The Prime Minister himself, Andy Burnham, declared that there would be no General Election any time soon.
Still, at least Tim got his 2,000 words into print (just). The worst possible outcome for me was that the Sunday Express splash was torpedoed on Saturday morning by the Daily Mail.
