Thomas QuinnJust when you thought there would be no more scandals coming out of the police. It is now being reported that there are three new claims of corruption from the Metropolitan police; over child abuse claims. These new complaints will be handled by the police watchdogs meaning that there will be some legitimacy to this extension of the inquiry.
With these latest allegations being brought forward we are left to wonder if there is even a single person in the Metropolitan police who wasn’t in some way corrupt. One of the charges that have been levied against the Metropolitan police is that, under the orders of a senior Met Officer, an investigation in London was dropped entirely instead of being pursued. What is more disturbing is that in the case that was dropped the abuses were against children and were being allegedly committed by MPs, judges, actors and clergy, among others.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission, IPCC, is already managing 14 referrals of alleged Met corruption, which were announced on March 16th. The Met are claiming that those 14 charges had been voluntarily referred after their own internal investigations turned up these cases; the investigation had begun as early as 2012.
That investigation, known as Operation Fairbank, is looking into the historic child sex abuse claims; those that involved politicians and other public figures, such as the Jimmy Saville case revealed last year. All the allegations referred to the IPCC date from the 1970s to the 2000s. A truly enormous undertaking considering the level of atrocities which seem to have been committed against these children.
The police watchdogs will also now be brought in to manage an investigation into an allegation that the Greater Manchester Police failed to adequately investigate an incident involving former Liberal MP Cyril Smith. A former Greater Manchester Police officer has said, on the record, that he was threatened with the Official Secrets Act after finding Smith, who died in 2010 before his alleged crimes became public, with two teenage boys in Stockport in 1988.
The three new referrals are:
- An allegation that a child abuse investigation in central London gathered evidence against MPs, judges, media entertainers, police, actors, clergy and others. The file was submitted to start proceedings against those identified and, it is alleged, two months later an officer was called in by a senior Met officer and told to drop the case
- Two allegations about police actions during a child abuse investigation in the 1980s. Further details of these have not been given
The Met have stated that they will not be commenting on the new referrals at this or any other time. The IPCC however have stated that they have received six referrals from the Met relating to “similar matters”.
The 14 allegations already under investigation include a claim that an investigation into young men being targeted at flats in south-west London was prevented from going any further because “officers were too near prominent people”. The allegations also include claims that no action was taken after a document from the Houses of Parliament was found at a known paedophile’s address, linking “highly-prominent individuals”, including MPs and senior police officers, to a large scale paedophile ring.
Hopefully this investigation can be conducted in a proper manner and we will be able to trust our police force again, but can we ever truly trust some of our politicians or leaders again? Claims such as these are so damaging that it is may be impossible to recover even from the allegations let alone if any of these people were actually involved. I truly hope that this investigation can be over quickly so we can truly know where we all stand with our leaders and “prominent” people. I have a suspicion though that this will forever alter our perceptions of some people and irrevocably destroy our trust in this system that has harmed so many young people.