If you want to understand the depth of systematic and rampant corruption in the Metropolitan Police - then start here. A two part programme that eviscerates the myth of - one rotten apple in the barrel for good. The engrossing two part programme is on BBC Four. Bent Coppers: Crossing the Line of Duty.
For white middle class people, back in the 1960's this was impossible to consider. It would totally undermine the Dixon of Dock Green image - instilled by the popular police programme from 1955 to 1976 on the BBC. Corruption is like a malignant tumour eating the good parts of the whole body. One reason they can get away with it for so long in the vow of silence the Omerta - your a dead man walking - if you break the code. In addition there is membership of the Freemasons where most police officers hang out together.
The programme first broadcast in 2021 was back on our screens last night. I know all about systemic corruption in the Metropolitan Police force, because I was a policeman in Soho in the early 1960's - and left because of it. Some years later I was working as a volunteer for Release - the charity dedicated to getting wrongly arrested people - released. It was run by two charismatic young middle class people Caroline Coon and Rufus Harris. Rufus died in 2007.
Release is still going strong at www.release.org.uk and is now part of the legal charity landscape. They wrote a pamphet some years ago - Up Against the Law - and I was a contributor - as the ex-policeman. In the 1960's drugs were part and parcel of every day life, especially in the capital. The Beatles, Rolling Stones and many other young people and rock groups - had had their brushes with the corrupt police. It was therefore part of the counter culture knowledge bank.
Very little has changed and the Met is riddled with - rotten apples and bent policemen. Just think of the Stephen Lawrence case, in 1993 and how corrupt the non investigation was by white police officers in South London?
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