Broken Yard: The Fall of the Metropolitan Police

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He also quotes at length Jonathan Rees, the strange former partner of the murdered private eye Daniel Morgan, and shines a light on his extraordinary relationship with the Murdoch papers. Whereas the likes of the Krays in the 1960s robbed banks, risky and visible, their equivalents now are doing cyber, and profiting from the drugs trade and trafficking. Harper examines key episodes from the Met’s recent history, with frank contributions from insiders, in a book that should be essential reading for the new commissioner. Are those quoted, and those speaking anonymously, by querying the institution having a dig at it, and the individuals who worked and still work for it?

The book charts Scotland Yard’s fall from a position of unparalleled power to the troubled and discredited organisation we see today, barely trusted by its Westminster masters and struggling to perform its most basic function: the protection of the public. However, it never really went away: using the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the subsequent hopeless half-hearted investigation as a starting point, Harper takes us through 30 years of scandals that have seen the Met discredited, at war with its Whitehall paymasters (interestingly, the force that is described as once being full of Conservative voters now has a police officer saying none will ever vote Tory again) and not able to do its job. He quotes Lucy Panton, the former crime editor of the News of the World, whose police sources were exposed to the Yard by her bosses and who said that she felt she had been “completely hung out to dry” by a company she had loyally served.View image in fullscreen Helen Nkama, the mother of Chris Kaba, who was killed by firearms officers in south London, leads a protest in front of New Scotland Yard, September 2022.

Harper reveals an institution that is riddled with corruption, racism, sexism, officers scuppering each other’s work as they compete for promotions, and basic incompetence. You can equally make the case that the Met has always stumbled dysfunctionally from one scandal to the next, and that morale among officers has always been at an all-time low. But the book is also constructive and never loses sight of the importance of the role the police have in any well-functioning democracy. They include the cuts in the number police of officers – 20,000 in 10 years, and hundreds of detective posts currently unfilled. The shock in reading journalist Tom Harper’s Broken Yard, a new critique of 30 years of Met policing, is in realising just how wide­spread and rotten it is.Sir Richard Henriques, the retired high court judge who witheringly reviewed the failures of Operation Midland, is quoted as suggesting that there are “far too many ranks” in the Met, no fewer than five above the rank of chief superintendent. Harper’s explanation of the phone-hacking scandal offers more than the well-worn narrative about sleazy, immoral journalists paying off greedy cops.

They include criminals working as officers, ranging from the corrupt to the psycho­pathic, to sweeping cuts that make the job virtually impossible, huge rises in “new” cyber crime that require new skills and resources, and the drug laws that give criminals easy access to huge incomes, which in turn fuels other criminal activity. His central message is this: the Metropolitan Police has morphed into an organization whose main purpose is to defend the Metropolitan Police.That Mackey stayed in his vehicle led to visceral anger from rank and file cops, as stoked up (or reported on, take your pick) in the mainstream media. Until this changes – and until a caveman canteen culture is addressed – the crisis within our police force looks never ending.

YEARS ago a detailed critique of the Metro­politan Police would have been shocking because the force – though in fact far from perfect – enjoyed a reputation of being effective and mostly incorruptible.He has held senior roles at a number of national newspapers, including The Independent and the Sunday Times. He also speaks to detectives who are willing to question why Couzens got away with suspect behaviour for so long – and they ask why the investigation into Couzens’ crimes has been shelved now he is behind bars. Of Wayne Couzens, Harper recounts the Met’s embarrassment when it emerged that “an armed officer tasked with protecting politicians, dignitaries and VIPs should never have passed the Met’s supposedly tough vetting procedures. by Iain Donnelly (TJF, by the way, stands for “the job’s fucked”), while Jackie Malton’s The Real Prime Suspect paints a grim picture of what it was like to be a female officer in the not-so-far-distant past.