This England: Holy cosplaying cops!
Two Metropolitan Police officers have gone undercover in unconventional fashion by dressing as Batman and Robin to tackle illegal gambling on Westminster Bridge. They donned the unusual uniforms to target suspects familiar with their usual patrols, the Met said. Inspector Darren Watson (Batman) and sidekick PC Osman (Robin) carried out a 'superhero mission' that led to the conviction of two men. Watson said the unusual tactic had proved 'highly effective'.
BBC News (Amanda Welles)
A game of capture the flag
A box containing a stolen RNLI flag has arrived at Trearddur Bay Lifeboat Station in Holyhead more than 50 years after it disappeared. A 73-year-old man from the Wirral admitted to stealing the flag during a camping trip on Holy Island, Anglesey, in 1969. The man included a £20 donation, a confession letter, and an apology. RNLI press officer Megan Dixon said the crew is 'happy to have their flag returned' and assured the man there were 'no hard feelings'.
Wales Online (Steve Morley)
Custard deemed rhubarb
Locals have admonished council bosses for transforming part of their town into 'custard corner' by painting it yellow. Warwickshire County Council spent £42,000 repainting the public space in Kenilworth to 'renew and refresh' the area. The pedestrian area on Station Road has been criticised by residents who have blamed the council for wasting taxpayers' money on painting a 'gigantic yellow line'.
Times (Philip Conford)
[See also: Inside the Chaotic Map of Doom]
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BBC News
3 hours ago
- BBC News
Met Police funding fears: Warning half of buildings could close
A large section of the ceiling is missing in one of the women's bathrooms at Shoreditch police station. Some of it is now sitting in a crate on the floor."We had a leak from the toilet system on the floor above," explains David Mathieson, the Metropolitan Police's director of real estate development, pointing out how the sewage water has seeped into the carpet next to the lockers."The systems are just so old, we keep patch repairing them, but they need to be ripped out and replaced."He's showing us around the station to illustrate the problems, after Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley warned the Met faces having to close buildings and lose 1,700 officers and staff due to a £260m budget shortfall. 'Austerity scar tissue' In a report presented to the London Policing Board last month, Sir Mark said that, unless the Met received more money in the government's Spending Review on Wednesday, London could experience "sustained increases" in knife crime, violence against women and girls, and warned this meant the government's key pledges to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls in a decade, and to boost neighbourhood policing, were also at Mark added that the Met would be forced to close up to half of its buildings over the next decade "due to them being no longer habitable or legally compliant".In November, the commissioner warned the Met faced "eye-watering cuts" to services and a £450m funding gap, although he's since acknowledged that extra funding from the Home Office and City Hall means its final settlement is "nearly £100m better" than last week, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that police forces across the country were carrying the "scar tissue of years of austerity cuts" and said they needed more money to meet government ambitions on policing. The government has promised thousands of neighbourhood police officers and nearly 400 police community support officers will be recruited for forces in England and Wales over the next 12 months, as part of the target to hit 13,000 by London has asked repeatedly for an interview with Sir Mark ahead of the Spending Review and has approached the Home Office for comment."You'd normally refurbish a building every 25 years," Mr Mathieson tells me. "Our budget is now once every 125 years."The Met says it's already shrunk from 620 buildings in 2010 down to 260, in order to find money for front-line police station closed to the public in 2017, when London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan said government cuts meant he had no choice but to make although the shutters are down, the building is still operational, as a base for the Hackney Safer Neighbourhood team and as a training facility for officers learning to use Tasers. Mr Mathieson takes us on a grim tour, pointing out how the sewage leak has gone right through the building, into the instructors' lockers on the lower floors - now replaced by a red bucket - the missing ceiling panels along the corridor, and the single boiler providing heat and hot water."We should have two but we didn't have the budget," he tells us, adding that the building will have to close completely if the boiler tells me that four defunct boilers - which he thinks date back to the 1960s when the station was built - have been kept so they can "cannibalise them for parts around the other bits of the estates".The upstairs women's bathroom, which was flooded in March, remains out of order, with parts of the ceiling taken down simply to make the building across the corridor, on the back of the locker-room door, is a poster encouraging officers to "take pride in your workplace". In April, the Met detailed a list of savings it would need to make in order to protect front-line services such as neighbourhood policing and public protection teams, which tackle sex offences and domestic plans include scrapping the Royal Parks Police and Safer Schools officers, along with cuts to forensics and mounted police and potentially taking firearms off the Flying commissioner has said he wants the force to grow in size to 38,000 officers and 19,000 civilian staff, but said the Met was expected to have just 31,248 officers and 10,972 staff by the end of the predicts the force will lose about 1,700 officers, PCSOs and staff, but that additional funding may allow the force to reduce the losses by speeding up recruitment. 'It's really cold in the winter' In the face of protecting front-line services, it might make sense that refurbishing buildings is less of a priority, but Mr Mathieson tells me it's clear that it's having a terrible impact on officer morale. "The quality of the space you live and work in is absolutely intrinsic to your sense of self worth... your sense of being valued," he opens another door, revealing a locker room with peeling paint and stained flooring."Imagine this is your first day as a Met officer, and you're being asked to get changed in here." Insp Ryan Rose, who works on Taser training, agrees, telling me that thousands of students pass through the base and often comment on the poor conditions. We watch as some trainees line up in front of us on the indoor target range, and an instructor tells the group to "listen, react, engage," before they fire."One of the core principles of Taser training is we try and instil professionalism in how you handle the weapon," Insp Rose explains, "and we are doing that in a very non-professional environment."It's really cold in the winter, it's really hot in the summer."He says the students are currently having to go to another part of the building to find working toilets, which is disruptive."It slows down the training... leaks on the range and leaks in the toilets... sometimes we need to shut down training." "The perfect thing to do with this building is to completely gut it and start again," says Mr Mathieson. "It needs a complete, thorough refurbishment, but that will probably cost £30m, and that means we can't spend £30m on any of the 259 other buildings in the rest of the estate."I'm always having to judge where are the biggest, most critical problems and put the funding into those." Technology Secretary Peter Kyle told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that police forces are being given £1 billion extra funding this year, and said other public services were struggling "because of the inheritance that we had as a country and as a government." "We expect the police to start embracing the change they need to do, to do their bit for change as well. We are doing our bit," he said. A spokesperson for the mayor of London said the previous Conservative government had "chronically underfunded the Met"."Sadiq has done everything in his power to support the police and recently announced record £1.16bn investment for the Met to protect neighbourhood policing in our communities, secure 935 front-line police officer posts and significantly reduce the level of cuts the Met had been planning."
Daily Mail
8 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Scotland Yard chief Sir Ian Blair 'realised we had a disaster on our hands' just five minutes after he called the De Menezes shooting investigation 'fantastic'. Our gripping account of one of Britain's most shocking police blunders continues...
At Stockwell Tube station in south London, Metropolitan Police firearms officers were congratulating themselves on a job well done. They believed they'd just shot dead a failed al-Qaeda suicide bomber, Hussain Osman. His body lay slumped in a seat on a stationary Northern Line train at platform two, his denim jeans and jacket covered in blood. Fearing that he was carrying a device, the officers withdrew to the central hub of the Underground station and called in an explosives officer to check and make the scene safe.
Telegraph
17 hours ago
- Telegraph
Indecent exposure prosecutions fall despite Sarah Everard murder
Thousands of sex offenders accused of indecent exposure are avoiding prosecution despite a crackdown pledge by police after the rape and murder of Sarah Everard. Police are catching and prosecuting fewer offenders for indecent exposure since Ms Everard was killed, despite a big increase in the number of offences being reported to police by victims, a Telegraph investigation has found. The proportion of indecent exposure offences resulting in a charge has halved since 2014/15 from one in five to just one in 10 (10.2 per cent) despite the number of reported crimes increasing by 160 per cent from 6,000 to 16,000 in the same period. A Government-commissioned report found Wayne Couzens, the serving Metropolitan Police officer who murdered Ms Everard, could have been stopped before her death in 2021 if police had carried out a 'more thorough and committed' investigation into reports of his alleged indecent exposure. But since Ms Everard's murder, which shocked the nation and led to Government and police chiefs pledging to do more to protect women and girls from violence, the charge rate has fallen from 12 per cent. In the same period, the number of offences reported has increased by 40 per cent from 11,400 to 16,000. Ministers, police, judges and women's groups all acknowledge that indecent exposure is a precursor crime that can escalate into more serious 'contact' sexual offences including rape if action is not taken. Couzens, now 52 and serving a whole-life term in prison, was reported eight times to police for indecent exposure before he raped and killed Ms Everard. But 'lamentable and repeated failures' to act on the allegations meant he escaped prosecution until after he was jailed for life for her murder, the official report into the scandal found. The Telegraph investigation has found that even when offenders are prosecuted, official data show perpetrators of indecent exposure are getting more lenient sentences. The proportion of offenders convicted of indecent exposure who are jailed for more than six months has fallen from 60.9 per cent in 2019 to 39 per cent in 2024, the Telegraph analysis shows. Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, admitted too many victims were being let down and pledged a 'fundamental review' of how police respond to indecent exposure and voyeurism, which is also seen as a precursor offence. She said: ' Violence against women and girls is a national emergency, and I know the devastating impact exposure and voyeurism can have on victims, who are too often being let down. 'We are working with the police to fundamentally review the way they respond to these offences and have supported the development of new training for officers. As part of our mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, we will be setting out a new strategy in the summer to keep more women safe.' Kieran Mullan, the shadow justice minister, who set up a group with the parents of Ms Everard to campaign for tougher sentencing, said: 'These offences can be deeply traumatic and we also know more and more about how they can be a first step to the most serious crimes. 'That's why prosecuting people is so important, so they are on the radar of the criminal justice system. The Government needs to rapidly understand why this isn't happening to such a concerning extent.' Responding to the Telegraph findings, police chiefs admitted they had to improve their response to the crime. Asst Chief Const Tom Harding, the director of operational standards at the College of Policing, said sexual exposure was a 'serious and distressing crime that can have a profound impact on victims'. He said: 'While we are seeing increased reporting of these offences, reflecting growing public awareness and confidence in coming forward, we recognise the need to improve the quality and consistency of investigations and outcomes.' Mr Harding said the College of Policing has launched national training for police on 'non-contact' sexual offences, as recommended in an official report by Lady Elish Angiolini. So far, 40,000 officers have completed it. He said: 'We are committed to ensuring that all victims of non-contact sexual offences are supported and offenders are brought to justice. This work is part of a broader effort across policing to tackle violence against women and girls and rebuild public trust and confidence.' The Telegraph analysis shows that police do not proceed with indecent exposure investigations in 46 per cent of cases because they claim there are 'evidential difficulties', often because the victim does not support a prosecution. This can be driven by victims' anxieties over appearing in court where they have to confront their perpetrator and relive the experience, as well as humiliation associated with the crime. However, Zoe Billingham, a former HM inspector of police, said this was no excuse for police not to proceed with an evidence-led prosecution without the support of the victim by using CCTV, phone data and other witnesses to place and identify the perpetrator at the scene of the crime. She said: 'That's been the traditional excuse for not pursuing a whole range of crimes, not least domestic abuse, but if there is other evidence – CCTV, other witness evidence, they can do an evidence-led prosecution that doesn't require the victims to provide evidence or make a statement. 'Only 10 per cent resulting in a charge when people have taken the time and trouble to report these crimes is really poor and indicative of the culture change that is needed in ensuring that all frontline officers recognise the importance of these crimes.'
