Benjamin Monk, a police officer who used and abused his power to kill the former footballer Dalian Atkinson, is now over a year into an eight-year prison sentence for manslaughter. Yet, for legal reasons, only now – after his fellow arresting officer Mary Ellen Bettley-Smith was cleared of assaulting the former footballer – are we free to comment on the case.
No one who heard about this killing – certainly no one who has, like me and so many others, pulled on a police uniform and endeavoured to serve the public – can ever forget it.
