Latest news with #Metropolitanpolice
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Immigration agents in New York and protests in London: photos of the day
Family members of Jean Charles de Menezes react as they gather for a vigil outside the Underground station at Stockwell on the 20th anniversary of his death. The Brazilian was killed by the Metropolitan police after being mistakenly identified as someone responsible for a failed copycat attack of the July 7 London bombings in 2005 Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images Steve Lewis, 64, from Tottenham, takes part in a protest outside the Houses of Parliament from his home via an LED screen as he is unable to leave his caring duties. The protest, part of a campaign by Carers Trust and Uncommon Creative Studio, takes place after figures revealed that one in three unpaid carers are rarely able to leave their responsibilities and have no legal right to time off Photograph: Matt Alexander/PA People carry items that symbolise what is being lost or denied to Palestinians as a result of Israel's military campaign in Gaza Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian A cyclist passes a banner showing an image of destruction in Gaza which activists from the Led By Donkeys protest group installed over the Labour party's headquarters Photograph: Isabel Infantes/Reuters At al-Shifa hospital Palestinians mourn over the body of a child who medics said was killed in an Israeli strike Photograph: Khamis Al-Rifi/Reuters Living in a tent in Gaza City, where basic supplies are lacking, 18-month-old Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq's weight dropped from 9kg to 6kg. Malnutrition is widespread in the territory. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images Children hold empty pots as they gather in hopes of receiving food from a charity kitchen Photograph: Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters Palestinians walk among rubble and makeshift shelters as they head to collect aid supplies from trucks which entered central Gaza from Israel Photograph: Khamis Al-Rifi/Reuters Federal immigration agents patrol the corridors of the Jacob K Javits federal building. Several undocumented immigrants were reportedly detained inside the courthouse during immigration proceedings Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images The Salvadoran navy escorts a semi-submersible carrying 1.3 tonnes of cocaine after arresting two Ecuadorians and a Colombian onboard. The vessel was intercepted 600 nautical miles (about 1,100km) south-west of the Jaltepeque estuary, and was carrying a cargo valued at $33m, El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, said Photograph: EL SALVADOR'S PRESIDENCY PRESS OFFICE/AFP/Getty Images Arturo Suarez, who was held for months in an El Salvador prison after the US alleged he was a member of the Tren de Aragua gang, embraces family members after his release Photograph: Leonardo Fernández Viloria/Reuters Emergency services personnel work to put out a fire after a Russian attack Photograph: AP The tropical storm Wipha caused monsoon rains and flooding in the capital, and heavy rains continued even after the storm moved towards Vietnam Photograph: Aaron Favila/AP Police detain an activist protesting against a bill to criminalise the search of 'extremist materials' on the internet, as the legislation was due to be read at The State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament Photograph: AP People look at the remains of a school that was hit by an air force training aircraft, killing at least 20 people Photograph: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters A tractor cuts a fire line as a wildfire burns near the settlement of Beledie Han Photograph: Reuters A coach driver takes a rest inside the luggage compartment on a warm day Photograph: Andy Wong/AP Tourists watch the sunset at the Uyuni salt flat, which has an area of more than 10,000 sq km and is the biggest such landscape in the world Photograph: Esteban Biba/EPA
Time of India
5 days ago
- Time of India
Meet 65-year-old ‘Gangster Granny': UK's drug cartel mastermind Deborah Mason, jailed for 20 years over £80m Cocaine trade
Deborah Mason(left), Roseanne Mason(right) (Source: Metropolitan police) A 65-year-old grandmother masterminded one of UK's most sophisticated drug trafficking operations, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. Deborah Mason, infamously nicknamed the 'Queen Bee' and 'Gangster Granny,' ran a sprawling family-led drugs cartel that trafficked more than a ton of cocaine worth up to £80 million across the country. Mason and seven of her relatives, including her sister and children, operated the high-level narcotics ring over a seven-month period from April to November 2023, reported The Guardian . On Friday, she was sentenced in a London courtroom alongside other key members of the syndicate. The court heard that Mason's gang used a network of couriers to transport massive quantities of imported cocaine. The drugs were distributed from London to several major cities including Bradford, Leicester, Birmingham, Bristol, and Cardiff. The cartel's value of cocaine ranged between £23 million and £35 million, while its street value was estimated at a whopping £80 million. Despite the scale of the operation, prosecutors noted that Mason's relatives were not coerced into joining the syndicate, but were instead "motivated by financial benefit." Mason's 29-year-old daughter, Roseanne Mason, played a crucial role in the cartel's logistics. She was responsible for managing collections of the drug shipments. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like American Investor Warren Buffett Recommends: 5 Books For Turning Your Life Around Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List Undo In a show of how deeply involved the family was, Roseanne even babysat the children of other couriers so they could continue working uninterrupted. She was sentenced to 11 years in prison for her part in the operation. Other members of the gang received lengthy prison terms as well, with sentences ranging from 13 to 15 years based on their individual roles in the criminal enterprise. The Metropolitan Police launched a thorough investigation into the drug ring, employing a range of surveillance tactics, including analysis of extensive call data and physical tracking of suspects. Acting on critical intelligence, most of the gang members were apprehended in May 2024.
The Guardian
01-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
PC awarded medal for bravery in Iranian embassy siege dies aged 85
A police officer who received a medal for bravery for his heroics during the Iranian embassy siege in London in 1980 has died aged 85. Trevor Lock and 24 of the hostages were freed after a six-day standoff between members of a dissident Iranian group and the SAS at the building in Kensington. He was awarded the George Medal, which recognises outstanding bravery, after it subsequently emerged he had tackled the leader of the gunmen and saved the life of an SAS soldier. Brian Booth, acting deputy national chair of the Police Federation, said on Tuesday: 'PC Lock's extraordinary bravery during the Iranian embassy siege in 1980 exemplifies the highest standards of policing. Despite being taken hostage, he remained resolute, calming fellow captives and resisting his armed captors. 'His courage and cunning while under pressure helped save lives and earned him the George Medal. 'A dedicated officer with the Metropolitan police, PC Lock embodied resilience and selflessness throughout his career. Though he shunned the spotlight, his legacy continues to inspire officers across the nation. 'Our thoughts are with his loved ones. His service and sacrifice will always be remembered.' Lock was a member of the diplomatic protection squad guarding the embassy in west London when it was stormed by six men armed with automatic weapons and grenades on 30 April 1980. The PC was drinking coffee with the embassy concierge, Abbas Fallahi, when he saw a face through the glass panel of the door. He thought it was a student and moved to let him in. The man pulled out a machine pistol which he fired and Lock was hit by flying glass. In 2002, he told the Guardian: 'I remember a curtain of red coming down and immense pain in my eyes and face. I thought I'd been shot.' The gunmen belonged to a dissident Iranian group opposed to Ayatollah Khomeini, the religious leader who came to power in Iran in 1979, and they demanded the release of 91 political prisoners held in Iran as well as an aircraft to take them and the hostages out of the UK. On the sixth day of the standoff, Margaret Thatcher's government ordered the SAS to raid the embassy after the gunmen shot dead the Iranian press attache, Abbas Lavasani, and dumped his body outside the building. More than 30 masked troops abseiled from the roof and entered the embassy, throwing grenades through the windows. About 15 minutes later, the hostages emerged and were escorted by the Met to ambulances in dramatic scenes filmed by television news crews. One hostage was killed and two were wounded in the crossfire. Five of the six gunmen were killed while the survivor was jailed for 28 years.
The Guardian
31-03-2025
- The Guardian
Neil Basu on racism, riots and quitting the Met: ‘When policing is bad, it's the worst'
Neil Basu is enjoying not being a police officer, he says. 'The vast majority of mornings, I wake up and go: 'Thank God I don't have to do that any more.' I sleep. I never used to sleep.' Before he quit two and a half years ago, Basu was assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan police in London and the most senior minority ethnic police officer in Britain. For his final seven years in the job, he had to be on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. 'The only time I relaxed was when I was on a plane, until they brought in wifi,' he says. As officers aren't allowed alcohol while on duty, 'I've got an encyclopedic knowledge of zero-alcohol beers and I'm a rugby player; you can imagine how difficult that was.' There is plenty more Basu doesn't miss about policing. After 30 years in the toughest areas of the job – kidnap, rape, murder, gang violence, counter-terrorism – he has seen things that would keep most of us awake at night. But as a British Asian man rising through the ranks of the Met, he also experienced first-hand the prejudice, politics, cultural malaise and stubborn reluctance to change policing – including the circumstances of his departure. He has a lot to get off his chest – a book's worth, in fact, although he describes his aptly titled memoir, Turmoil: 30 Years of Policing, Politics and Prejudice, less as a score-settling exercise and more as 'a letter from an angry lover'. 'I love policing,' he says. 'I love what it does for society. I love that, when it's done well, police officers are the best people on the planet. It's a shame that when it's done badly, they're the worst.' Basu's career was bookended by the murder of Stephen Lawrence at the beginning and the Casey review at the end and his frustration at how little changed in between is palpable. Lawrence's racially motivated murder, in south-east London in 1993, was so badly handled that it culminated in the 1999 Macpherson report, which reached the damning conclusion that the Met was institutionally racist. Twenty-four years later, prompted by the murder of Sarah Everard by a Met officer, Wayne Couzens, Lady Casey's review of the Met's culture found that it was still institutionally racist, as well as misogynistic and homophobic. Basu 'agrees with every single word' of the Casey review, he says. He was one of the interviewees for it. Having read the initial draft, he urged Casey to tone it down, which she did. What was it like before? 'Utterly horrific,' he says. 'I was crying when I walked away [after reading it]. I thought I'd wasted 30 years of my life.' Basu knew plenty about racism before he joined the Met, of course. His father was an India-born doctor who married a white Welsh nurse. The family's neighbours in the West Midlands wouldn't speak to them, he says: 'They would complain about the smell of curry coming from our house when we didn't even have a kitchen.' His parents didn't tell Basu and his two brothers the worst of their experiences as a mixed-race couple, just as Basu didn't tell them how he was regularly bullied and racially abused at school. He was born Anil Basu, but he anglicised his first name to fit in. He was 'painfully shy' as a child, he says, but he was sporty, playing football, rugby and cricket. 'I grew up in a very macho culture. I was in boys' and men's sports teams all my life and my social life was very male-dominated.' His early career aspirations were similarly masculine: professional footballer ('I wasn't good enough'), soldier (until a car accident affected his fitness). Having studied economics, he became a banker. He was thinking of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street – this was Margaret Thatcher's 1980s – 'but I hated every single minute of it … I realised it was full of greedy, corrupt people doing a useless, valueless job'. He wanted to do something useful, like his parents. He also loved cop shows (and still does): Columbo, The Sweeney, Hill Street Blues, Inspector Morse. 'If you find a police officer telling you they don't watch police shows, I'll show you a liar,' he says. When Basu decided to join the Met in 1992, at 24, 'lots of friends were going: 'What on earth are you doing?'' he says. 'My father carried to his grave the fact that he didn't want me to be a cop; my mother told me that last year.' The mantra in those days was Fifo: 'fit in or fuck off', he explains. He kept his head down and his mouth shut. He tolerated the perennial 'banter' about himself and other Black, brown and female officers ('I strongly believe banter is bullying,' he says). And he did not query the racial biases he saw in policing, even when they were applied to him. When he was off duty and out of uniform driving his old BMW, he would be pulled over routinely and searched by other officers. 'I don't feel like I was victimised, but I watched lots of other people be victimised and I didn't do enough to stop it,' he says. If anything, Basu wonders if he was a beneficiary of 'positive discrimination'. In 1998, he was transferred from Brixton to New Scotland Yard to be part of the response team to the Macpherson report, despite being a relatively junior detective – his brown skin was now an asset, it seemed. 'The Met was trying to look for people of talent and promote them, legitimately, as part of positive action,' he says. 'I happen to think I was quite good at my job as well.' Reforms did happen post-Macpherson: training in race relations and recognising hate crimes, recruiting more minority ethnic staff, improving family and witness liaison. He is proud of his work at Operation Trident, where he became a senior investigating officer in 2003, at just 35. Trident was initially focused on 'Black on Black' gangland homicides, which were rife in London. 'I dealt with a murder where a guy had stood on some other guy's brand new trainers in a nightclub queue and he went and got a gun and blew him away,' he says. The investigation later expanded to take in all gun- and gang-related crime in the capital. It was a new approach to policing, he says. 'The whole purpose of Trident was to get the Black community to help us solve that problem for the Black community. So, for the first time, we're not delivering policing to you; we are doing it with you.' Despite some heavy-handed attempts to implicate grime music, the unit achieved success, removing guns and violent gang criminals from the communities they were harming. 'There's no way we could have done the kind of things we did – kicking people's doors in at two o'clock in the morning on all-Black estates – you don't get to do that and not cause a riot unless somebody is helping you in that community.' But in 2011, five years after Basu had left the unit, Trident officers shot and killed Mark Duggan – a mixed-race man – in north London under contested circumstances (the Met said it had intelligence that Duggan was armed and dangerous; Duggan's defenders have said that a gun found seven metres away from his body was not his). It provoked riots across the country. Trust in policing was back on a downward trajectory, which would continue for the next decade, culminating in the Casey review. Where did it all go wrong? Basu cites two factors. The first is terrorism. After 9/11, in 2001, and the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London, in 2005, the threat of Islamist terrorism overshadowed all other concerns. 'Anybody who started speaking about equality while you were facing that as the big trauma in policing was seen as a bit nuts,' he says. Suspicions of brown-skinned people were effectively re-legitimised – in politics, in the media and in policing. Then, in 2010, came the coalition government's austerity programme. The Met had to make £769m of savings between March 2011 and March 2015, which translated to cutting more than 3,000 jobs. As the 2020s approached, Basu's relationship with the Met was deteriorating. He was now assistant commissioner and head of counter-terrorism, but, having stayed silent for so long, he felt the need to speak up about the culture wars around him: Islamophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, the backlash to Black Lives Matter. As he puts it in his book, 'it was time to stop fitting in, but now I had no intention of fucking off'. The Guardian might well have cost him his job, he jokes. In 2019, a month after Boris Johnson became prime minister, Basu gave an interview about Brexit's impact on counter-terrorism. Almost as an aside, he commented that Johnson would not be recruited into policing today, on account of his past comments calling Black people 'picaninnies' and comparing women in burqas to letterboxes. 'I felt really strongly that this was a chance, finally, to say something important about race and racism in society, and particularly about police and racism.' He continued to speak up. In June 2020, Basu wrote a column in this paper expressing solidarity with protests in the US and the UK over the police killing of George Floyd, arguing that 'we need to listen to our communities, and our people, and focus on what we in the UK can do better'. By contrast, the Sewell report, the Johnson government's response to the Floyd protests, released in March 2021, claimed that 'we no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities' – a conclusion that was disputed and condemned by many, Basu included. That month, Sarah Everard was raped and murdered by Wayne Couzens. Shortly after, David Carrick was exposed as a serial rapist. Both were serving Met officers. Basu never met either man, he says, but 'it doesn't make you feel any better that they were in your police force and in one of your commands'. As Basu became more outspoken, his position became less tenable. 'I was creating a bed of nails for myself, which was going to hurt me,' he says. When Cressida Dick, whom he considers an ally, stood down as Met commissioner in 2022, Basu was tipped to succeed her, but he had made enemies. He doubts Johnson bore a personal grudge, 'but I think the people around him would have said: 'How can you let that man get away with things like that?'' One MP reportedly considered him 'too woke' for the top job. At the same time, the Met was being blamed for failing to prevent recent terrorist incidents in the capital, such as the fatal 2017 attacks at Westminster Bridge and London Bridge. Basu felt as if he was being singled out. 'My own bosses were talking to me in a way that they'd never talked to me before,' he says. He felt he was being gaslit. 'I was told I was being tired and irritable, like 'Maybe you need a break' … It felt like I was being edged out of my job.' Basu never wanted to be commissioner, he says, but he acknowledges: 'It's really hard to know whether that's true or whether that is a good way of avoiding ever having to face that question.' Despite the change of government, he doubts it could happen now, even if he wanted it. He has become too politicised, he says, added to which his memoir has surely burned what bridges remained. 'The only reason I'd do it is to be the first ethnic minority commissioner of the Metropolitan police. But I don't believe that would change policing any more than having the first female, openly gay commissioner [Dick] changed policing, or Barack Obama changed the United States … It's a nice story for a day and then it's five years of my life that me and my family will never get back.' He only realised how much the job had taken its toll after he left the force. He has been married twice and feels guilt over how little time he has spent with his three sons, who are now in their 20s. Being commissioner would take away even more. 'I served 10 commissioners, including two acting commissioners. The only one I saw get away with their reputation and their health intact was John Stevens [commissioner from 2000 to 2005, now Lord Stevens]. That is not a good advert for that job.' He occasionally misses 'being in the room where it happens', especially when he watches a good crime drama on television. 'My wife hates it, because I'll go through the entire thing correcting all of the procedural flaws.' Despite the bitterness, regrets and reverses, Basu is proud of the progress policing, and Britain, have made in matters of race. 'It might have been too slow for a lot of people, but it was going in the right direction. I was confident my children would have a different experience to me. I was confident that I'd had a better experience than my parents.' When it comes down to it, he says: 'I'd rather be living here as a mixed-race person than in any other single country I can think of.' Turmoil: 30 Years of Policing, Politics and Prejudice by Neil Basu is published on 10 April by Aurum (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Guardian
14-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Alison Halford obituary
Alison Halford, who has died aged 84, became Britain's highest-ranking female police officer when, in 1983, she was appointed assistant chief constable of Merseyside. In her frank and celebrated memoir, No Way Up the Greasy Pole (1993), she described in detail the battles that women officers encountered in the decades before Cressida Dick became commissioner of the Metropolitan police in 2017. During her time in the service, Halford fought and won a sex discrimination case against Merseyside police, and obtained a ruling from the European court of human rights that led to a change in the law. After leaving the police, she went into politics, initially with the Labour party in Wales before switching to the Conservatives. Halford was a young woman training to be a dental hygienist in London in the early 1960s when a chance invitation to make up the numbers at a Metropolitan police concert changed the course of her life. Aged 22, she applied to join the Met. Her career got off to a lively start and she soon became a detective constable in the CID. Accepted on to a 'fast track' promotion course, she reached the rank of inspector by the age of 27, and became the first woman to take operational charge of a police station – Tottenham Court Road in central London. In the first 21 years of her career she had 18 different roles, rising to the rank of chief superintendent and working both within Scotland Yard and at the Hendon police training college. She also became a key figure in the setting up of rape crisis centres, and played a major role in changing the way that children and female victims of abuse were interviewed by police, with women officers coming to the fore in practices that were adopted by other forces across the country. She applied for the Merseyside job despite the fact that few women were considered for such senior roles in those days. In her new post she became the most senior policewoman in the country. Already a high-profile voice for women in the service, in 1987 she ruffled feathers with an article in Police Review magazine in which she suggested that 'there appears to be a strong but covert resentment or mistrust of the competence of a woman who can get to the heart of a problem, shows creativity and innovation, and manages to acquire a reputation for getting things done'. Her Greasy Pole memoir also made waves, as few female officers had gone into print in such detail. It was not until 2022, when Jackie Malton's memoir, The Real Prime Suspect, was published, that some of the extraordinary sexism that women officers had to deal with routinely was fully exposed, and Halford's book had a major effect both within the service and on would-be female officers. Malton herself found Halford 'hugely inspirational … Halford was a strong character in an era of policing where the glass ceiling for women hadn't been broken. She was direct and said it how it was.' The experiences Halford shared were, according to another colleague, an early precursor of what was to come in the misogyny exposed by Louise Casey in her review into police culture and conduct published in 2023. Over the next decade Halford was repeatedly passed over for promotion within Merseyside and was also turned down by other forces in her attempts to find senior roles elsewhere. Her battles with the service went public in 1991 when she brought a sex discrimination case against the police and the Home Office. The police responded by bringing charges of misconduct against her; she was accused of failing to maintain contact with her office, and of stripping to her underwear during a life-saving demonstration at the backyard pool of the Tranmere Rovers chairman Peter Johnson. Halford always claimed that this incident, leaked in lubricious detail to the tabloid press, had been grossly exaggerated. A settlement was finally reached the following year, and Halford received a lump sum of £142,600 including her pension entitlement, a £10,000 ex gratia payment and an annual pension of £35,836. She welcomed 'the end of a two-year nightmare'. Born in Norwich, Alison was the daughter of William Halford, an accountant, and his wife, Yvonne (nee Bastien). After leaving Notre Dame convent grammar school in Norwich, she spent three years in the Women's Royal Air Force and then moved to London to study dental hygiene, but instead joined the police. In 1984 she was awarded the police long service and good conduct medal. Taking early retirement on health grounds in 1992 as she suffered from arthritis, Halford moved to north Wales. In 1995 she was elected as a Labour member of Flintshire county council, then, from 1999 to 2003, as member for Delyn in the Welsh assembly (now the Senedd Cymru). In 2006 she switched to the Conservatives, becoming an adviser on home affairs. In 1997 she won a phone-tapping case against her former colleagues, the then home secretary and the government in the European court of human rights, in relation to her sex discrimination case. This led in part to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000). Her interactions with Merseyside police continued unexpectedly into her retirement, when she became involved in the case of Eddie Gilfoyle, from Wirral, who was convicted in 1993 of murdering his pregnant wife, Paula, and spent 18 years in jail, but has always protested his innocence and has had his case twice referred for appeal. Halford expressed her reservations about the police's handling of the case, visiting Gilfoyle in jail and becoming convinced of his innocence. His legal team have described her as 'an ally' in the battle to clear his name. In 2016 she called for the police to be 'held to account' over Gilfoyle's conviction. As well as No Way Up the Greasy Pole, she published Leeks from the Back Benches (2007), on the early years of the Welsh parliament, and wrote the foreword to Coming Out of the Blue (1993), by Marc E Burke, about the experiences of gay and lesbian police officers. Alison Halford, police officer and politician, born 8 May 1940; died 22 February 2025
