The Met

Reading about the controversial Damian Green arrest I was intrigued by this remark:

Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti said: 'The fundamental duty of the Metropolitan Police is to protect Londoners from harm, not the Government from political embarrassment.'

Well I’d say if that is the Met’s fundamental duty it’s signally failing. The greatest form of violence, injury and anti-social behaviour in London occurs on the roads, and the Met is ostentatiously indifferent to it. It’s institutionally car supremacist and contemptuous of, and hostile to, cycling and walking. Proof of this can be seen in everything from its virulent obsession with persecuting Critical Mass to its refusal to enforce Advanced Stop Lines for cyclists. And its massive reduction in traffic police numbers.