Tuesday 15 October 2013

When will Police heads roll?

"Plebgate" - the name seems to relegate the story to those amusing, "and finally..." anecdotes at the end of the news.

The Metropolitan Police and the Police Federation are certainly hoping the story will go away.

And yet, this is perhaps one of the most shocking stories about the Police in recent years - and after a run of appalling scandals showing Police corruption, criminality, lying and/or cover-ups at many levels, that is saying something.

This seems to have been a conspiracy by Police officers to topple a Cabinet Minister, followed by lying, lying and lying again to cover it up.

The Police's own enquiries have veered between stitch-up and farce, and the CPS seems frozen in indecision. Both cite the "complexity" of the case as a reason for the year (and counting) of time they have taken so far. Yet Michael Crick of Channel 4 News seems to have solved it many months ago.

So let's not mince words: Inspector Ken Mackaill of the Police Federation lied to the cameras  after his meeting with Andrew Mitchell a year ago. He lied to oust a Cabinet Minister from his job. He lied because he could - he knew he would be believed, because he is a Police Inspector.

Yet now we know - because the meeting was taped - that Inspector Mackaill was lying when he spoke about the "facts" recorded by the Police log, and we know - because the original event was recorded on CCTV - that the Police log itself contained untruths. And we know that emails were sent to the authorities, purporting to come from witnesses, that were in fact written by a Police officer who was not even present at the time. The same fateful words were inserted into that lying testimony as were in the discredited Police log.

When will the CPS decide? When will the whole truth come out officially?

When will Police heads roll?


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