Mascot wasn’t but @Flobs was, and he was replying to Flobs.
But even a full operational overhaul is risky. Lose too many senior cops and you end up promoting young cops too soon and it creates a massive vacum.
It is risky, but at this point, if it’s an institutional culture issue, then what can be done? I’m aware that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, which is why I was envisioning more of a reorganisation, with everyone in the police required to reapply for their jobs.
The question I do have is what expertise would be lost that would result in the vacuum that you describe.
Are they not? The specifics of how it plays out might be different, but isnt it fundamentally an issue of people in power thinking the rules do not have to apply to them and using that power to insulate them repercussions of flagrantly breaking the rules?
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I was referring to the bit on defunding the police, I should have been clearer.
Unless I’m mistaken, there’s not that massive amount of misspending that the police departments in the US has, and on the contrary, policing here has suffered because of the funding cuts that have led to, among other things, withdrawal of neighbourhood patrols (disclaimer: I’m relatively new to the UK, so I may be wrong about this).
Where there are similarities (again on the topic of defunding the police), it’s mainly to do with the lack of spending on social services resulting in increased crime to begin with.
That was political!
Possibly - it’s debatable.
There is plenty of compelling evidence that weighting money towards preventing crime in the first place is far more effective than policing it after the fact.
With the Met, I think it needs disbanding and rebuilding from the ground up. It’s beyond repair.
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For me ‘Defund the police’ is a call for an institutional reorganisation.
You can argue what you like the fact is the whole Met is rife with real nasty disfuctional bastards. The whole lot need replacing and all in one go otherwise it will just stay the same. Leaving it the same would be worst than anything you could argue!!!
I don’t think that is really possible and I suspect that there are plenty of decent officers in there trying to do a job around the “dysfunctional bastards”.
That’s not to go down the whole “few rotten apples” analogy. It’s the barrel that’s rotten. I suspect that they know who the real culprits are. If they are unable to remove them then setting up a new organisation would be the logical step.
PSNI would be the obvious precident but I don’t know if that has made a significant difference. My impression is that they are better regarded than the RUC but is that mainly down to the improved situation in NI as a whole?
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One of the problems is that once a toxic culture takes root, it’s very hard to shift. A big problem with the Met is that problem officers have ended up in positions of seniority.
Good cops are often bullied or marginalised out of the force. In a toxic culture you don’t get far if you can’t at least show you’ll turn a blind eye.
Christ, we’re Liverpool fans here. We don’t need to go that far to understand what happens when a police force starts considering themselves above the law. The problems at hillsborough weren’t junior officers lacking guidance, it was rotting and corrupt senior officers telling them what to do. It was the young coppers who were far more likely to break ranks a whistleblow on the corruption.
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The police have a crime watch anonymous tip line for Joe Public…
They should open another one to highlight misbehaviour amongst themselves… Good Cop exposes Bad Cop
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Yes, as a solution it may not be well aligned with what is happening in the UK, but fundamentally it is a call to a adjustment of the role police play in communities and for there being more accountability in cases when that role is violated. The solution may not be an issue of funding per se, but there is an obvious throughline that makes the US movement aligned with issues people in other countries have with policing.
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Thirty years ago , after the murder of Stephen Lawrence , we were promised a ‘root and branch’ re-organisation of the Met. It didn’t happen then and it won’t happen now.
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This is really odd. A senior of Asian descent shooting up a dance hall full of other older Asians with no apparent motive… A few days later, another older Asian man shoots 7 of his co-workers?
so much for Gung Hay Fat Choy…
Haiti , the only country in the world where the police take to the streets … to riot. 
Ignoring the number of cops involved in Jan 6
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that country has been through so much, but has destroyed itself.
The seeds of their destruction were planted a long time ago. And both France and the US have a lot to answer for.
If you fancy a deep dive into an almost unbelievable story , NYT did a great piece last year ;
Aye, Haiti’s independence was bad news for slavers and imperial powers. A newly independent Haiti was made into a warning to others on the consequences of pursuing freedom and self rule and they’ve never recovered.
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a few devastating earthquakes and hurricanes haven’t done that island any good either.
Didn’t Sean Penn spend some time there? I feel like he’s been doing a lot of missionary-style work. Apparently he’s done a whole piece on Ukraine as well.
Yeah , they really do seem to be cursed. You just have to compare Haiti with neighbouring Dominican Republic to see what might have been. One is a lush tropical paradise and the other is virtually a barren wasteland … on the same island !
Penn is a good egg. I think his Ukranian film got its first screening last week.