The Bent Blue Line

Apparently Britons have never been safer in their own homes.  At least, that's the opinion of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.  He's undoubtedly right - the real threat is now out  on the street, where you run the risk of being beaten up, fitted up, entrapped and murdered by the police.  When they aren't too busy taking bribes from newspapers, that is.  Obviously, I'm being grossly unfair, tarring all police officers with the same brush.  It's usually the Metropolitan police involved in these things, except when South Yorkshire force are trying to cover up their own failings by lying through their teeth about the Hillsborough disaster.  As far as the Met are concerned, the most disturbing thing is how institutionalised corruption has become - and when I say 'corruption', I don't mean that literally, in the sense of officers taking bribes, I mean it in the wider sense of moral corruption.

Lying seems to have become their default mode: whenever Met officers are involved in some high profile, potentially damaging, incident, their immediate response is to into cover-up mode.  hen members of the public are killed by officers, the Met's first move is to try and defame the victim, so as to try and justify their actions and ensure public sympathies lie with the police.  Just look at the way they reacted to their shooting of that Brazilian electrician in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings.  The press were leaked all sorts of false stories that he was an illegal immigrant (only his work permit had expired), that he had behaved suspiciously by jumping the barrier at the tube station, (he didn't, he went through normally, using a ticket), and so on.  It was the same the newspaper vendor who died after being beaten by that policeman at the G20 demonstrations - I think we all know where the stories about his alleged alcoholism came from.  Bloody disgraceful. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all coppers are bent bastards.  However, the fact is that some of the largest forces seem to have forgotten that they are there to serve the community and should be part of that community, not some closed institution pursuing its own interests or, worse, the interests of politician or wealthy press barons.  In that respect, I think I preferred the old-fashioned corruption, where the Obscene Publications Squad would take backhanders from well-connected pornographers to raid the shops of rivals, seize their stock, then sell it to another pornographer on the quiet. At least you knew where you were with that sort of graft.