Once again we have been reminded of the role of the Metropolitan Policewith the recent BBC documentary and the first report of the Angiolinireview on the murder of Sarah Everard by Met firearms cop Wayne Couzens.Couzens is not an isolated instance of criminal behaviour within theMet. We have firearms officer David Carrick who committed a huge numberof sexual offences, 49 offences including 24 rapes, making him one ofthe UK's most prolific sexual predators. We have Daniel Beegan, part ofthe Specialist Crime Command, arrested on March 31st last year andcharged with sexual assault of a woman in December 2022. We have PerryLathwood of the Road Traffic Policing Command, charged with the beatingof a woman in front of her child, after wrongly being accused of fareevasion; Christopher Brown, trainee detective with the Central NorthBasic Command Unit, charged with groping a female colleague whilst offduty; Ireland Murdock, also in the Central North Unit, sentenced forrape of a woman. Adam Provan, of East Area Command Unit, guilty ofmultiple counts of rapes against two women, one of them a police officerherself, and the other a 16-year old.Giles Kitchener, who told a deliberate lie, a High Court judgeconcluded, after he gave evidence on racist assaults by the TerritorialSupport Group. He then joined the City of London police. He was sackedfor a "joke" about the murder of Sarah Everard and other counts of grossmisconduct including homophobic and misogynistic comments. He circulatedan image of a cop killing a woman on WhatsApp. He was also seen drinkingbeer at a police station before taking charge of a domestic violence case.Sgt. Luke Thomas posted foul messages on a WhatsApp account, abusingChinese people and travellers, Arabs, and disabled people. He spokesympathetically about Nazis and child killers, and stated that anothercop who had got away with rape was "a legend in my eyes." Seven othercops in a safer neighbourhoods team in Bexleyheath were involved inthese abusive comments, including posting offensive videos of disabledpeople.Chief Inspector Richard Watkinson killed himself after being chargedwith conspiracy to distribute or show indecent images of children, threecounts of making indecent photos of a child, voyeurism and two counts of misconduct in public office. Two other former cops were also chargedwith similar offences related to the Watkinson case.Hussain Chehab, a Safer Schools officer, was jailed for five years inMarch over a series of child sex offences. He committed these offencesbefore he joined the Met. Farhan Ghadiali, charged with sexuallyassaulting a child. Liam Boshein, sentenced to 42 weeks for having anextreme pornographic image on his phone. Edward Oniba, of North WestBasic Command Unit, guilty of sexually assaulting a female colleague ina police station gym. Special Constable Sergeant Ben Smith, charged withsexual assaults on two women. An unnamed Met cop, charged withperforming a sexual act on a train, who escaped with a written warning.Another serving Met officer, Benjamin Hannam, was convicted of being amember of a neo-Nazi group.Over the past five years more than 300 officers have been reported forrape and 500 for sexual assault. Only ten of those accused of sexualassault have been convicted. The vast majority - 350 - are still workingfor the police. More than three quarters of the 375 officers and staffreported for domestic abuse in the past two and a half years are stillworking for the police, according to the Bureau of InvestigativeJournalism. The Met was forced to admit that a total of 1,633 cases ofalleged sexual offences or domestic violence involving 1,071 officersand other staff are also being assessed from the last ten years toensure suitable judgements were made.This is just the tip of the iceberg, as it was revealed that an averageof one cop a week across the UK is accused of rape. The Met isriddled with misogyny, racism, homophobia, and thuggery. The police arefeared and detested by many in ethnic communities, with dailyharassment, especially of young black and Asian men. The recent cases ofCouzens and Carrick etc. have now also made many women fearful of thepolice.Sir John Woodcock, a former chief constable, and HM Chief inspector ofconstabulary, admitted back in 1992 that the police were "a mechanismset up to protect the affluent from what the Victorians described as thedangerous classes"; and David Bayley, an academic expert on the police,stated in 1996 that "The police do not prevent crime. This is one of thebest kept secrets of modern life. Experts know it, the police know it,but the public does not know it."On the 40th anniversary of the miners' strike, we remember the brutalityof the police, particularly the Met, brought in to crush resistance inmining communities. We see the increasing repression againstdemonstrations in solidarity with Gaza. We remember the undercover Metcops infiltrated into many political groups and campaigns, who burneddown Debenhams stores, had sexual relations with female activists andeven had children with them under false pretences.Abolish the policeAnarchists were the first to look towards the abolition of the police.More recently, this has been taken up by activists around Black LivesMatter in the USA and here.We are talking about the elimination of an institution that protects therich and the prevailing social order, that manages and controls thegeneral population. Such an institution would not exist in any humaneand just society.As Connor Woodman, writing on the police, notes: "Vast swathes of policework, including the policing of drugs, homelessness, sex work andborders, could either be eliminated without replacement or renderedredundant by proper investment in individuals and communities. As forthose areas of life that might maintain a need for some level ofcoercion and investigation, there are models of non-state, proletarianorganisation that can be looked to for inspiration: the self-defenceforces of Rojava, community militias of 1930s Spain, neighbourhoodpatrols of the Black Panther Party. Ultimately, there may be some vastlyreduced, heavy circumscribed functions of what we imagine - falsely - tobe the current functions of police and prisons in a future society. Wemay want a small unarmed detective unit to investigate murders, and wemight need some limited and temporary confinement for certainindividuals who have been so damaged by society that they are a clearand persistent danger to others. But given that, overwhelmingly,actually-existing policing in capitalist societies exists to enforce anunjust and unequal racial and class order, we should organise for totalabolition and the reorganisation of society as a whole."www.abolitionistfutures.com/intro-to-abolition-2022https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2024/03/06/no-justice-no-peace-abolish-the-police/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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