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UK’s Top Police Force No Longer Trusted by the General Public – Report

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Britain’s top police force no longer has the trust of the general public and needs major reform, a review of the organisation has found.

An investigation into the state of the London Metropolitan Police (Met) has found that the force no longer has the support and trust of the general public.

It comes shortly after one member of the force was convicted as a serial rapist and sexual abuser, being said to have frequently used his position inside the force as a way to abuse women.

According to the review published on Tuesday, the Met police force is no longer providing the services it is meant to, with a combination of financial cuts and complacency resulting in a serious deterioration in frontline law enforcement.

“London no longer has a functioning neighbourhood policing service,” the report explained, adding that women and children in particular have been poorly served by the force, and left in danger as a result.

The police are in “denial” about the problems they face and have institutional roadblocks to improvement including “hubris” — believing only they really understand what it takes to police London, and therefore refusing to take external criticism or help — and “optimism” manifesting itself as glossing over issues. Protecting the reputation of the force is seen as more important than actually having a good police force, Casey says.

As well as these failures, the report also zeroes in on accusations of systematic racism, sexism, and homophobia. The fact that black officers are considerably more likely to face disciplinary procedures than white officers, and that black Londoners are more likely to have an interaction with the police than white, are both identified as evidence of racism within the force.

Nevertheless, while black Londoners are more likely to have a negative view of the force than their white neighbours, the report found this trust gap was rapidly closing as trust in the police to do a good job was falling among white Londoners.

Overall, the report reckons that overall confidence in the force has now dropped below the 50 per cent mark, with it ultimately expressing doubt as to whether the Met can still operate a model of “policing by consent”.

The report said: “The model of policing by consent, pioneered in London and admired and copied around the world, requires the Met to both earn and maintain public trust in everything it does. However, there is declining public confidence and trust in the institution.”

The fact that public confidence in the Met has collapsed is rather unsurprising considering a recent slew of inexcusable scandals coupled with rising violent crime. The litany of serious sexual crimes committed by members of the force has brought it into disrepute with the general public.

Tuesday’s report even goes so far as to describe itself as being ” book-ended” by such rape scandals, with it starting shortly after the rape and murder of Sarah Everard at the hands of Met police constable Wayne Couzens.

Couzens abducted the 33-year-old woman under the auspices of arresting her for breaching COVID restrictions, before raping and murdering her.

The report now comes out only a little more than a month after another office for the force, David Carrick, was sentenced in court for being a serial rapist and sexual abuser, pleading guilty to two dozen rapes in January this year.

Carrick is said to have used his position in the force to gain the trust of women before raping them, with some of his victims being subjected to prolonged instances of sexual assault.

Some victims are even said to have been locked inside a small cupboard for significant lengths of time with no food.

Follow Peter Caddle on Twitter: @Peter_Caddle
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‘It’s All Over for the iPhone’ – Russian Officials Told to Get Rid of American Cellphones

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Reports suggest Russian officials have been told to get rid of their iPhones by the end of March, amid the sanctions war with the West over Ukraine and increasing tensions over competitor states’ using each other’s tech more broadly.

Mobile phones manufactured by Apple will no longer be allowed at the Presidential Administration, according to a report by Russian daily newspaper Kommersant [Businessman] which has also been picked up by the likes of POLITICO and Newsweek.

Sergei Kiriyenko, first deputy chief of staff at the administration, is said to have issued the order at a seminar, with an attendee quoted by Kommersant saying: “It’s all over for the iPhone: Either throw it away or give it to the children. Everyone will have to do it in March.”

Kommersant noted that the Kremlin has been discussing ” a sovereign mobile ecosystem in Russia… based on technologies independent of Western IT giants” since late last year, motivated chiefly by security concerns. Part of the motivation for the move is “information security”, in other words the perceived ease with which the U.S. can snoop on iPhone users remotely.

The anti-iPhone move, which has not been officially confirmed by the Kremlin as of the time of publication, comes as their is increasing tension over the use of competitor states’ technology not just in Russia but in the West as well — though there concerns tend to focus on Russia’s allies in Communist China.

Tech giant Huawei, in particular, has become a focus of much debate, with even the likes of Britain — traditionally keen to abase itself before Peking (Beijing) in hopes of securing Chinese investment — beginning to baulk at its involvement in key infrastructure such as the 5G network after the Wuhan virus pandemic accelerated the souring of Sino-Western relations.

There are also concerns over Chinese-made surveillance cameras in Britain turning out to have hidden microphones in them, and to be linked to suspected human rights abuses in Xinjiang (East Turkestan).

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States even expressed concern that Chinese telecoms equipment may be capable of intercepting and even disrupting military communications last summer.

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery
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Sweden Sending Police Officers To Ukraine To Investigate Russian War Crimes

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The Swedish government has announced it will be sending a delegation of police to Ukraine to investigate possible war crimes committed by Russian forces during the invasion of Ukraine.

Swedish Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer, a member of the centre-right Moderates, announced that he believed Russia had committed war crimes in the country. The announcement follows the issuing of an arrest warrant for President Putin by an international court on war crimes allegations.

“We are at a point where it is no longer a question of if all the war crimes that Russia is guilty of in Ukraine should be prosecuted, but how it should be done,” Strömmer said, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports.

Along with contributing around £550,000/$675,000 and sending three prosecutors and six investigators to work on looking into Russian war crimes, the Swedish police authority will also be sending officers to a field office in Kyiv.

“The field office is being set up right now and will grow over time. At the initial stage, it is a matter of hiring three investigators from the Swedish side,” Strömmer said.

The allocation of the funding and the deployment of officers comes despite Sweden itself being desperately short of experienced police officers, with the country struggling to face down spiking levels of violent crime.

The Swedish move is in cooperation with the  International Criminal Court (ICC), which put out an arrest warrant last week for Russian President Vladimir Putin after accusing the Russian leader of carrying out war crimes.

ICC president President Judge Piotr Hofmański spoke out about the warrant for Putin and  Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Alekseyevna, which claims that Russia has kidnapped children from Ukraine and moved them to Russia.

“It is forbidden by international law for occupying powers to transfer civilians from the territory they live in to other territories,” ICC president President Judge Piotr Hofmański said Friday.

How the arrests will be executed is unclear as Russia pulled out of the Rome Statute agreement for the ICC in 2016 and Ukraine had never ratified the statute, although the country did sign it. The United States is also not a party to the court and has previously threatened it over potential war crimes investigations over its pursual of the Afghanistan war.

The arrest warrants came just days after Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly announced that regime change in Moscow was the end goal in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“We’re able to see how much we’re isolating the Russian regime right now — because we need to do so economically, politically and diplomatically — and what are the impacts also on society, and how much we’re seeing potential regime change in Russia,” Joly said.

“The goal is definitely to do that, is to weaken Russia’s ability to launch very difficult attacks against Ukraine. We want also to make sure that Putin and his enablers are held to account,” she noted.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.

Barely Hanging On: Macron Narrowly Survives Confidence Vote Despite Ongoing Protests

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The government of French President Emmanuel Macron has narrowly survived two confidence motions in the French parliament after forcing through highly controversial retirement reforms.

The French parliament saw two confidence motions on Monday, with one failing to pass by just nine votes after the government of President Emmanuel Macron forced through pension reforms that raised the retirement age.

The first confidence motion was tabled by the centrist group Liot and managed to clear 278 votes, but fell just short of the 287 votes needed to pass the vote and bring down the government which has a minority in the French parliament, France24 reports. The margin of failure was reportedly much slimmer than anticipated, so while Macron survived this time it may be the case the vote signals to dissident MPs that the government is actually less strong than first thought.

A second confidence motion was also proposed by populist Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) but did not attract as much support as the first and also fell short of the 287 votes needed.

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne spoke prior to the votes on the confidence motions and attempted to defend the government’s position on invoking Article 49.3 of the French constitution, which allows the government to force through legislation despite not having a majority of votes in parliament for it. Prime Minister Borne was met with jeers as she spoke in the chamber.

The pension reform, which raises the French retirement age from 62 to 64, is now largely seen as being passed into law following the failures of the confidence motions, but both the populist-right National Rally and the far-left NUPES group will look to take the matter to the Constitutional Council.

“We are coming to the end of the democratic process of this essential reform for our country. It is with humility and seriousness that I assumed my responsibility and that of my Government. For our pay-as-you-go pension system. For our social model,” Prime Minister Borne said following the votes.

Monday’s votes also come after days of protesting and rioting in the wake of the pension reforms as well as workers’ strikes.

Last week saw hundreds of people arrested in Paris on Thursday when President Macron’s government announced it would be using Article 49.3 to force through the pension reform as rioters set fires and clashed with police.

Protests and riots continued over the weekend, with 81 people arrested in Paris on Saturday night despite the government ordering a ban on protests in the French capital.

Striking garbage workers in Paris have also impacted the city, as an estimated 10,000 tonnes of garbage piling up on the city’s streets. Animal toxicologist and specialist in rats and invasive species Romain Lasseur warned the city could face a rat invasion as a result of the garbage.

“They will walk in the garbage cans, reproduce there, and leave their urine and droppings. There is a worrying health risk, for garbage collectors and the population in general, especially with leptospirosis,” Lasseur said.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.

China’s Xi Jinping Arrives in Moscow for State Visit, Putin Talks

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Chinese Communist Party supremo and national leader Xi Jinping landed in Moscow on an Air China Boeing 747 on Monday afternoon, state media says, kicking off a state visit amid Ukraine war tension.

Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow Monday afternoon local time, commencing a long-discussed potential state visit to Russia by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) frontman amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, and even a presently-unenforceable arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin issued by the International Criminal Court.

The CCP leader arrived in Moscow aboard an Air China Boeing 747 and will be in the country for two days. As the Kremlin’s wire news service TASS reports, a Hongqi-made Chinese limousine was waiting for the arrival of President Xi at the airport, from where he was taken to have talks with President Putin.

The Kremlin says the talks are due to last until tomorrow, with a state spokesman saying the visit was less about pomp and pageantry, and more about talk. TASS reports the spokesman as saying: “there will be no additional protocol stuff, the main thing is negotiations, negotiations and negotiations.” Whatever is discussed, the visit is a demonstration by the Russian state that despite the Western sanctions regime, the country still has powerful allies on the world stage.

As reported ahead of the visit, Russia’s prosecution of the war in Ukraine will be a key matter of discussion, with industrial giant China even trying to portray itself as a possible broker of peace. What this peace would look like is an open question, especially given the degree to which China’s economy is being buoyed by massive imports of cheap Russian energy. Russia has benefitted from the income these sales have generated.

Preparing for this week’s summit between Xi and Putin, the Kremlin said: “I’m sure that our leader and the Chinese leader will exchange their assessments of the situation. We shall see what ideas will emerge after that. The Chinese foreign ministry said Xi would make “an objective and fair position on the Ukraine crisis and play a constructive role in promoting talks for peace.”

Ukraine itself, invaded by Russia in progressive waves over the past nine years and particularly since 2022, has rejected peace talks, with negotiation and compromise inevitably meaning a permanent loss of territory in return for a cesation of hostilities. Earlier this year, Ukraine’s Zelensky said he was not interested in talks with Russia, and Ukraine spokesmen have made clear “justice” is now a priority, with “Our tanks will be on Red Square” discussed.

China’s President Xi Jinping waves as he disembarks off his aircraft upon arrival at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on March 20, 2023. – Chinese leader arrived in Moscow on Monday saying his first state visit to Russia since the Ukraine conflict broke out would give “new momentum” to bilateral ties. (Photo by Anatoliy ZHDANOV / Kommersant Photo / AFP) / Russia OUT (Photo by ANATOLIY ZHDANOV/Kommersant Photo/AFP via Getty Images)