‘The rotten apples argument has served the police well for as long as I can remember, because everyone knows that any large group of people contains a few individuals who abuse their position and bring shame on the vast majority of their hard-working colleagues. But most forget that the point of the barrel of apples metaphor is that the rot spreads to all the apples.
There has never been a more graphic proof of this than in the Plebgate case, when police officers of varying rank lied to destroy a democratically elected politician’s career to increase political leverage in a time of cuts. We must now consider that the rot has spread, that the police service in England and Wales is so infected by a culture of dishonesty, expediency and outright corruption that radical reform is now the only option.’
Read more: Police corruption is now so rife that radical reform is the only answer
If the police are allowed to lie and cheat, we are heading for anarchy
‘When the allegations against Andrew Mitchell were first made, my sympathies were entirely with the police. I have frequently witnessed shatteringly rude or overbearing conduct by senior politicians towards minor functionaries. This kind of behaviour, which amounts to abuse of power, is completely detestable.There seemed little reason to disbelieve police claims that Mr Mitchell had behaved in the way that they described. There was certainly no reason why a Cabinet minister should be exempt from the consequences. When David Cameron finally sacked him, my only criticism was that the Prime Minister had been rather too slow to take action.
It is now clear that I (along with many others) owe Mr Mitchell an apology. After the finding from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) that three police officers lied about their dealings with him, it can be said with confidence that Mr Mitchell has been (at least in this regard) the victim of a police conspiracy.’
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How can we trust the police after the Plebgate clanger?
‘Today’s episode takes us back to Mr Mitchell’s Midlands constituency, and concerns the statements made by three police officers who met with him there. Mr Mitchell repeated to those officers that the central allegation against him was false. The officers (all Federation “reps”, short for “representative”, not “reputation”; we’ll come back to this) exited from that interview and gave a – how one tires of having to be careful with one’s language, because legally one is forbidden to state, baldly, what every man alive knows to be the truth of this tawdry affair – they gave a quite different version of events.
Yesterday Deborah Glass, deputy chair of the IPCC, said she disagreed with the decision by the three constabularies, which employ those “reps”, not to discipline the three officers for their – again, how shall we put this – for their behaviour, let us say.’
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