Lee

Yet again, @metpoliceuk have failed to call out the poor behaviour of the instigators of this incident, that led to the resented stop and search in question. We should not be apologising *at all* to anyone involved in this matter, except the police officers who have had their lives turned upside down and forced to defend their reputations (for the last 4 years) for doing nothing more than the job they are expected by society to do. By not calling out the poor behaviour by Santos and Williams - presumably for the sake of concern over 'community tensions', sends the wrong message and further undermines our brave officers out there at the sharp end of the thin blue line. Let's not forget that former Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said at the time "any officer worth their salt would have stopped that car". news.met.police.uk/news/outc…

We continue to support the two officers dismissed after yesterday’s extremely disappointing GM panel findings and we have been in detailed discussions with the officers’ legal team today concerning appealing the two adverse decisions. Before I commented on this matter I wanted to have read the panel’s Summary of Findings, which I did this afternoon. The vast majority of allegations against all officers were found to be unproven and were rejected. Allegations pertaining to honesty & integrity were found proven against two of the officers in relation to the smelling of cannabis. The stop and search was lawful and the search carried out under s1 PACE and not s23 MDA - so there was little to no advantage to provide an additional search ground in respect of the use of drugs - a point conceded by the panel. No complaints or allegations pertaining to race discrimination were upheld against any of the officers concerned. The IOPC’s statement 👇 below is therefore highly misleading and supports the view that they are a politically influenced and partisan organisation. Couple of interesting points on the panel’s conclusions… 1. They discounted the possibility that any of the officers could have been mistaken about identifying the odour as cannabis. 2. They accepted that there had or may have been a smell of cannabis, but that this came from a source which was not from the complainants or their vehicle; examples provided by the panel being a passer-by, a vehicle or nearby building. 3. Having conceded point 2, they still found that the two officers were untruthful in stating that they smelt cannabis. 4. Allegations that two of the other officers did not smell cannabis were found not proven. The officers’ Fed Rep has done, and continues to do a fantastic job in supporting these officers. We will continue to support him and the two dismissed officers until all possible avenues of appeal have been exhausted.