A new Metropolitan police commissioner just installed. A new home secretary just installed. Angry demonstrators outside Scotland Yard carrying “Abolish the Met” signs in protest against the fatal shooting by an officer of an unarmed young black man, Chris Kaba, in south London. The publication of Broken Yard: The Fall of the Metropolitan Police could hardly be more timely.
Back in 1977, a book called The Fall of Scotland Yard by Barry Cox, John Shirley and Martin Short made significant waves, cataloguing a period when, as its introduction explained, “a score of London detectives went to jail, hundreds more left the force in disgrace… the myth of the London bobby was badly dented.” This was the time when corruption among detectives was so endemic that the commissioner, Sir Robert Mark, famously declared that the measure of a good force was that it “catches more crooks than it employs”.
