LITTLEJOHN

MET COMMISSIONER Cressida Dick has condemned the rogue ex-cops attempting to destroy the career of Conservative Damian Green. She said in no uncertain terms that former Scotland Yard assistant commissioner Bob Quick and a retired detective called Neil Lewis were ‘ wrong’ to reveal publicly that pornographic images had been found on Green’s computer.

Dick also confirmed that the Yard was investigating whether either of these ex-police officers has broken the law.

Quick led the outrageous 2008 raid on Green’s home and Commons office after a complaint from the Home Office, being run back then by Labour’s ‘Jackboots’ Jacqui Smith. Green’s alleged ‘crime’ was to have leaked some official figures exposing Labour’s shambolic immigration policy, and a memo which showed that an illegal immigrant was working as a cleaner in the Commons.

All he did was something just about every minister and MP does every single day of the week. Westminster leaks like a sieve. Always has, always will.

Yet Green was treated like a dangerous criminal, held for nine hours, fingerprinted and forced to give his DNA, accused of the catch-all offence of conspiring to commit misconduct in public office. The case against him was eventually dropped. But the heavy-handed police action was designed to intimidate Green and any other MP or civil servant who might feel inclined to leak any material which could embarrass the government of the day.

It’s easy to forget how Britain was transformed into a virtual one-party state during the Tony Blair/Gordon Brown years — aided and abetted by the highly political former Met Commissioner Ian Blair, who effectively turned the police into the paramilitary wing of New Labour.

QUICK fancied his chances of succeeding Ian Blair, but his reputation was tarnished by the Green affair and a photo of him strolling into Downing Street with ‘ top secret’ anti-terrorism documents on display — a blunder which torpedoed his career. He resigned in 2009.

The well-founded suspicion is that Quick decided to get even with Green by revealing that a computer seized in the raid contained graphic, but not illegal, pornography. His claim was backed up by Lewis, now retired, who kept his notebook from the case.

According to Cressida Dick, the behaviour of the former officers is a serious breach of the police’s duty of confidentiality.

They have also been criticised by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Tom Winsor, but it’s not clear whether any further action can be taken against them.

Green, Theresa May’s deputy, denies the porn allegations, which are being investigated by the Cabinet Office. A report is expected later this week. The story took another twist yesterday when Eleanor Laing, deputy speaker of the Commons, said that pornographic images had mysteriously found their way on to her official computer ‘every day’ before 2010.

Sounds plausible. It’s not difficult to infect computers with viruses and malware by remote control over the internet. Just look at some of the junk which turns up in your inbox every five minutes.

Even if the Cabinet Office report finds Green did download the images himself, he’s done nothing illegal. But that’s almost beside the point.

There’s a much bigger picture here. Revealing confidential information obtained in the course of a police inquiry is a despicable breach of privacy and trust.

But the real scandal is the fact that the police should never have had access to Green’s computer in the first place. The raids on both his home and Commons office were disgraceful and, some would argue, unlawful.

It should be no business of the police to investigate MPs accused of leaking information which might embarrass the government — especially when that information is in the public interest. What is worse, however, is the mob-handed methods which have become standard operating procedure for the police over the past decade.

A sinister policy of ‘arrest first and look for evidence later’ was institutionalised by another Met Commissioner, the appalling Bernard Hyphen-Howe, who used strong-arm tactics to humiliate and persecute a procession of innocent journalists, celebrities and public figures, accused of everything from phone hacking to child abuse.

How many times have we seen scores of coppers ransacking the homes of people falsely accused of crimes, then emerging with dozens of black bin liners full of so-called ‘evidence’? The intention is always to intimidate and present an impression of guilt. They wouldn’t send all those coppers if he wasn’t guilty, would they, Doris?

The police use the flimsiest of pretexts — often on the word of a fantasist — to mount full- scale fishing expeditions, looking for something, anything, they can pin on their unsuspecting targets.

Journalist friends of mine who were caught up in the assorted police investigations into phone hacking and alleged bribery of public officials were horrified at the way their homes were violated by detectives and forensic teams.

In the case of one newspaper executive, the police search teams confiscated love letters, private diaries, medical records and bank statements. They even sifted through his daughters’ knicker drawers. Looking for what, exactly?

The first things the police seize are all the computers in the house, even those belonging to the wives and children of the men being investigated.

I’m not going to name again any of the celebrities wrongly accused of ‘historic’ sex crimes in the post-Savile madness. They’ve been through enough already.

But, at the weekend, I bumped into one well-known personality and his wife, who had their lives turned upside down by the Met’s Nonce Squad. Fourteen — yes,

fourteen — coppers arrived to arrest him and collect ‘evidence’.

They even took away his wife’s laptop. She still gets upset when she thinks about it. All this in connection with something alleged to have happened in a TV studio in 1963 — which even a cursory initial inquiry would have proved could not possibly have taken place.

Yet it took an eternity before he was completely exonerated.

TIME and again the drill’s the same. If senior politicians and the former head of the Army aren’t safe from the Scotland Yard Stasi, then what chance have the rest of us got?

At the time, we didn’t realise the arrest of Damian Green would herald the start of a new era of over- the- top police fishing expeditions. Nor could we have imagined that a man who once headed the anti- terror squad would dish dirt collected during a police investigation nine years ago in a blatant attempt to bring down the Deputy Prime Minister.

The bond of trust between the police and public is precious, but fragile. It shouldn’t be jeopardised by a couple of bitter ex-cops and the routine abuse of search powers by the heavy mob.

Dick of Dock Green has made an impressive start, reversing the reign of terror and paranoia which existed under Hyphen-Howe.

She has roundly condemned the rogue ex- cops trying to destroy Damian Green and, I’m sure, won’t hesitate to press for further action to be taken against them if it transpires they have broken the law.

Let’s hope she can also restore a sense of proportion and perspective when it comes to the hysteria over ‘ historic’ sex crimes, and manages to rein in those officers who think any kind of complaint gives them the absolute right to ransack homes, confiscate computers and terrify women and children in pursuit of ‘evidence’.