Coronation arrests: ‘Intelligence’. Do the Met Police ever wish they were better informed
On the day of the Coronation the Met Police arrested a number of protesters including several groups it has since, sort of, apologised too.
However it was clearly the source of a Mail on Sunday front page about how plans of protesters to disrupt the Coronation had been foiled. The Met’s media officer used to work for the Mail…
The Met claims it had intelligence on the matter. Clearly there are specialist units involved with countering genuine terrorist attacks that do have a good knowledge. More generally though a force which seems constantly surprised by the numbers of racists, misogynists, racists, rapists and murderers in its ranks doesn’t seem high on intelligence.
According to Sir Mark Rowley who heads the Met there was a ‘criminal network’ of protesters at work on Saturday (Times 10th May) he goes on to repeat the lie that rape alarms, handed out to vulnerable people in Westminster overnight by police approved wardens were going to be used to disrupt horses. In addition he claims there were plans to vandalise monuments and also repeats the lie that people had ‘possible lock on devices’
A Select Committee of MPs took evidence on the matter on 17th May. A senior officer the aptly named Matt Twist claimed the police had ‘intel’ that serious disruption to the Coronation was planned and that there had been no political interference beyond the obvious point that it should go off without interruption.
This could not explain and Twist did not explain why Met Police sponsored people handing out rape alarms overnight were arrested or how they came to arrest not a protester but a Royal superfan.
In short perhaps its time the Met owned up to wishing it was better informed.
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