I try not to return to the same subject week after week. But we are all concerned about the same things right now. One of them being the police.
Statistics show crimes against us and our property are going unsolved and we are being treated disgracefully.
Yvonne Farrell is one such example. She was arrested after she sat on her partner’s car in Stevenage to stop it being towed in August 2018.
When she refused to give her name at the police station, she was taken to a CCTV-monitored cell and stripped.
Yvonne, in her fifties, was left humiliated, sitting naked for three hours.
Quite rightly, she sued for wrongful arrest and won, receiving an apology and £45,000 compensation.
Hertfordshire Police’s professional standards department initially rejected her complaint.
It was only when Yvonne hired solicitor Iain Gould, a specialist in claims against the police, that they backed down.
In a letter, Deputy Chief Constable Michelle Dunn said: “I accept that you should not have been arrested. On this occasion we got it wrong. I apologise unreservedly.”
The case sums up the culture around some sections of our police service. With relatives and friends in the force I’m well aware that at times the job is a thankless task.
It doesn’t help to hammer them because we need them. But they need us too. Our trust in the way that they go about their business is vital.
So we should be concerned about the number of cases coming to light where they get it wrong – a frightening tip of the iceberg.
They come less than a year after Sarah Everard was murdered by serving officer Wayne Couzens, and two officers were jailed for taking photos of murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman.
Last week, a report from the Independent Office for Police Conduct exposed a toxic “boys’ club” culture at Charing Cross police station in London.
It revealed shocking text messages between officers about raping women, killing black children, paedophilia, Muslims, Auschwitz and disabled people.
Then an ex-Met officer came forward with fresh allegations that former colleagues at the same police station had sex with female suspects in the toilets and called black colleagues “monkeys”.
Last month, the Metropolitan Police apologised and paid compensation to an academic for “sexist, derogatory and unacceptable language” used by officers when she was strip-searched.
Nottingham University lecturer Dr Konstancja Duff was held down on the floor and her clothes cut off.
She’d been arrested in May 2013 on suspicion of obstructing and assaulting police after trying to hand a legal advice card to a 15-year-old caught in a stop-and-search sweep in Hackney – allegations she was later cleared of in court.
Again, officers denied they’d done anything wrong for years before CCTV obtained by Duff exposed their lies and vindicated her. But next time, it could be you in her position.
After each outrage police forces around the country issue the obligatory statement of apology and maintain we are only talking about a few bad apples.
The worry from the raft of cases coming to light is that that assessment remains a gross understatement.
