In recent months the Metropolitan Police has been rocked by allegations of collusion in the phone hacking conspiracy and revelations of the extraordinary level of hospitality enjoyed by the former Met commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson. Even as it cleared Stephenson and three other senior police officers of misconduct, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) was moved to comment that ‘the public will make its own judgements about whether any senior public official should accept hospitality to this extent from anyone.’
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Political police
The fact that the modern British police constitutes a political force is becoming increasingly self-evident. Through a variety of channels, including direct lobbying of politicians and the involvement of the Association of Chief Police Officers in key policy committees, the police have long been in the business of influencing government policy. They also do a great deal of networking with local government, private industry and, of course, the media.
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Deaths in custody
According to figures published by the respected pressure group Inquest, there have been 409 deaths in custody since 2000. Inquest has identified numerous deaths that raise issues about standards of care, such as deaths due to self-injury, alleged drunkenness or drug intoxication, or poor medical care, as well as deaths that raise issues of excessive use of force by police officers.
These figures do not include the three deaths that occurred after police restraint at the end of August. Philip Hulmes, aged 53, and Dale Burns, 27, both died after police discharged taser guns. Dale Burns was reportedly shocked three times by a taser. Jacob Michael, aged 25, died after police restrained him using pepper spray. Witnesses to his arrest have described how the police punched and kicked him while he was on the floor, restrained and in handcuffs. Eleven police officers were involved in the arrest. Inquest reacted to these latest deaths by stating that ‘it is imperative that the police are reminded that they cannot act with impunity’.
There have also been 32 fatal shootings by police in the past ten years. The latest was Mark Duggan, whose death at the hands of the police sparked the riots in August (see page 24). The failure of the police to provide prompt and accurate information to the Duggan family has exacerbated problems. In addition, the IPCC has had to apologise for ‘inadvertently misleading the press’, by implying in a telephone conversation to a media contact shortly after the incident that it was Mark Duggan who had opened fire first. As it turned out, the only bullets fired had been fired by the police.
For all the deaths, including the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes as he got on a tube train at Stockwell, there has not been one single successful prosecution of any police officer. The IPCC has claimed that this has been in part due to a reluctance of juries to convict police officers, but campaigners point to an evident lack of will on the part of the police, the IPCC and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to conduct robust investigations and prosecutions.
