The report by Sir Richard Henriques into Operation Midland argued that the Metropolitan police was institutionally incompetent, stupid and credulous. If the devastating report by the independent panel into the 1987 murder of Daniel Morgan is to be believed, the force is also institutionally corrupt.
The institutional corruption consisted of dishonestly ‘concealing or denying failings, for the sake of the organisation’s public image.’ And the ‘failings’ which the Met tried to conceal or deny appear to have sometimes consisted of actual, old-fashioned corruption by individual police officers. The stench rises overpoweringly from every one of the report’s three volumes.
From the very first vital minutes after the private investigator Daniel Morgan was discovered axed to death in a dark corner of a Sydenham car park, successive police investigations were so bungled and so incompetent as to beggar belief.
The crime scene was not properly secured. Suspects and witnesses were drinking buddies with police officers who then took their statements.
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