Something has gone horrifically wrong with our police

WHEn i was growing up in liverpool in the 1960s, i was scared of the police. Back then, they were the true enforcers of law and order.

it was not uncommon to see a young boy — wide- eyed fear etched on his face — being frogmarched home by a policeman, the back of his jumper in the officer’s grip, his feet barely touching the ground.

the copper would hammer on the boy’s front door and loudly inform his mother that he had been caught fighting, or some such; a confrontation that would send the rest of us skittering indoors with the speed of cockroaches exposed to daylight.

the sight of these caped crusaders, walking in pairs along our streets, truncheons swinging by their sides, was both menacing and comforting.

Panda cars would pass by the bottom of our road more often than buses and, whenever i headed into town for a night out as a teenager, i left the house with my mother’s words ringing: ‘if you are ever in trouble, find the nearest policeman.’

if i gave the same advice to my daughter now, she’d think i had lost my mind.

For while young people these days are also scared of the police, it’s for entirely different and disturbing reasons.

the murder of Sarah Everard in 2021 seriously rocked the trust young londoners had in the metropolitan Police.

Sarah was violated and strangled by off- duty police officer Wayne Couzens, who was so notorious among his colleagues he was nicknamed ‘the rapist’.

in another appalling incident, two met officers were jailed after taking photographs of the bodies of sisters nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, who were stabbed to death in a london park in June 2020.

the officers went on to share

WELL done to Education Secretary Gillian Keegan for pushing through the new guidance on mobile phones in classrooms. I look forward to seeing it rolled out, fast: a generation depends on it.

the images in two WhatsApp groups, in which they referred to the victims as ‘dead birds’.

Any notion this incident shone a light on the perverse actions of only a rogue few was banished by the exclusive story on the front page of yesterday’s mail.

it revealed that ‘graphic’ details of the injuries suffered by the three victims of the nottingham stabbings last year — Grace O’malley- Kumar, Barnaby Webber and ian Coates — were not only shared on a police WhatsApp group but also forwarded to other officers. One of the investigators, PC matthew Gell, even sent distasteful messages to his wife and friends.

What kind of insensitive, brutal monster could behave like this? the revelations, in a police gross misconduct hearing, have inevitably inflicted fresh pain on the grieving families of the victims.

NO MATTER how much time passes, Grace and Barney’s parents and ian’s sons will struggle to end each day or wake each morning without thinking of their loved one’s tragic fate.

As with so much that is wrong in our society, messaging services such as WhatsApp and social media platforms like X have created an ugly culture of voyeurism.

these cases came to light only because they involved highprofile murders. But how many other police officers are sharing horribly inappropriate material on WhatsApp groups that we don’t hear about? Contrast the actions of those police officers with the words spoken by Grace’s mother about her murdered daughter, who — like her parents before her — was training to be a doctor.

‘Have no hate in your hearts,’ said Dr Sinead O’malley, as she told us how beautiful Grace was, inside and out.

yet how can we not despise those men in uniform who all too often behave as though they are above the law?

Something has gone horrifically wrong with the way police officers are recruited. Brutes are permitted to join their ranks. there needs to be a root-andbranch review of the Hr practices that allow men like these to be hired, while chief constables must acknowledge the scale of the problem and put measures in place to ensure it never happens again.

Our uniformed police are the visible pillars of a safe, caring and civilised society.

if they have lost their moral compass, something needs to change — and fast.

When we can’t trust the custodians of law and order, we find ourselves in a very dangerous place.