A Portashrine for Commissioner Coward

CHIEF police officers have been rallying to the defence of Craig Mackey, the acting Met boss who fled the scene of the Westminster terror attack while one of his brave officers was being stabbed to death before his eyes.

My judgment on Friday that in another lifetime a bottle of single malt and a loaded service revolver would have been a more appropriate escape route may have been considered harsh in some quarters, but struck a chord with most proper coppers.

Since then I’ve been racking my brains to remember when I last wrote about Mackey. It was back in April, when travellers set up a shrine in South London to one of their own, Henry Vincent, a violent career criminal killed while he was committing an armed burglary. Vincent, who was carrying a screwdriver, died from stab wounds after a scuffle with the homeowner, Richard OsbornBrooks, who was defending his wife, who suffers from dementia.

The reaction of the police was to arrest Mr Osborn-Brooks for murder. Deputy Commissioner Mackey described Vincent’s death as a ‘tragedy’ and threatened to arrest any local resident caught tearing down the grotesque floral tributes left at the scene by Vincent’s friends and family.

I asked: ‘Here’s a question for Deputy Commissioner Mackey. Should the family of the Westminster Bridge terrorist Khalid Masood . . . be allowed to erect a floral tribute to him underneath Big Ben? And if any MP, or relative of one of Masood’s victims, attempted to tear down that memorial, would Mackey threaten them with arrest?’

He never answered the question. Perhaps we now know why.