MarginalTaxEnjoyer

City Hall, which must approve contracts of this size, withheld approval, saying the Met Police had seriously engaged with only one potential supplier, Palantir Khan's spokesperson said Londoners only wanted to see public money being paid to companies that "share the values of our city"

NEW Fears over spread of Palantir’s influence after ‘Big Brother’ Met police project extended The staff surveillance pilot was due to expire last month. The Nerve has established that it was in fact extended to today, May 15, with no indication what happens next. 🔗⤵️

FYI: collapsible batons are much cheaper than guns, don’t need licensure and are a lot less of an escalation simply to draw but are scary enough to deter and extend your reach by >1’ if not. I got my Smith & Wesson for $50. Break their legs and run! (Check legality in your area.)

Once again a sad and timely reminder that the organisation is now more detrimental to your mental health than the jobs you attend. Investigations have to happen but the wilful ignorance on the harm endured & that people within contribute to is life-threatening and ending.

Gladdens my soul to see proper custodian helmets on the bobbies (The King arrives in the background)

Still waiting on a Response From them About Jacks Vetting Process

Couple days Ago I called out the Greens candidate Jack Gower because I was 95% Sure The Greens Jack Gower was the Same 17yr Jack Gower was was convicted in 2020 for violently attacked a teenage girl with a Hammer from behind Here’s the proof Always Trust your Gut Feeling 👀

Japan has police boxes everywhere. They're called koban. Tiny ones on street corners, run by a few officers in shifts. About 14,000 across the country if you count the rural ones too. You go there for stuff like asking directions, turning in a wallet you found, or reporting something. Honestly, a lot of people just stop by to say hi. The officers walk around the neighborhood. They know who lives where. Kids wave at them on the way to school. Singapore copied the whole system in 1983. Their crime rates dropped. Brazil and parts of the US have done the same. Japan didn't make policing better. They made it friendlier. 🇯🇵

Genuinely baffled by the announced closure of 17 of the Met's few remaining Police Station front counters. Following the devastating closures of the 2010s the distribution of front counters was designed in such a way that each of the 32 boroughs would have a 24hr front counter. This isn't much at all when you consider that in 2010 there were 142 Police Stations (and numerous other buildings ranging from traffic garages to office buildings and more besides). Even that number was considerably less than the historic figure. The entire history of policing in London has been based on the beat system whereby you have local officers deploying from highly concentrated local Police Stations, all of which were accessible to the public. You still see similar in places such as New York (with the precinct system). Now, there's only equivalent to a single station open to the public in each borough, and not for much longer. Today, most ERPTs (response teams - the people who respond to 999 calls), neighbourhoods teams and other frontline units are centralised in one location on each borough (sometimes not even a Police Station but a 'patrol base', which can be a nondescript warehouse on an industrial estate). There is typically a single custody suite on each borough, too. Closing the few remaining front counters is an insane decision. Eventually, no doubt, these buildings will be sold off for short-lived financial gain. Many buildings within the Met estate are heritage assets (often Georgian or Victorian) which should never be lost, but some tragically already have and we will never get them back. I've even dined in one which is now a pizza restaurant! There will be unscrupulous developers salivating at the prospect of turning historic Met buildings into flats. ‘The cost of everything and the value of nothing’. One of the most egregious elements of all this is that many of the now lost Police Stations had front counters which were open thanks to the efforts of volunteers - there was no staffing cost, yet they were still closed (and in many cases those volunteers were abruptly discarded of). Other assets have been decimated, too. Hendon Police College is now a fraction of the size it was, with much of the former site occupied by blocks of flats. No doubt that will eventually be sold off (because training Police Officers with civilian instructors on university campuses is going so well). In some boroughs there are still some buildings which are operational but closed to the public, and if you walked past and didn't know what you were looking at, you wouldn't even realise. For example, in Tower Hamlets, only Bethnal Green Police Station HT still has a front counter (now earmarked for closure). However, Bow Road HW is open (just not to the public), Wapping is open (home to the Marine Policing Unit), Limehouse HH is open (converted to a firearms base along with Leman Street HL), and Grove Hall Police Garage is open. There's also MetCC Bow. Meanwhile, Isle of Dogs HI has been sold off - I imagine some of the others will follow, even though they could be maintained on a closed basis (or, dare I say, opened to the public again in future). This is just one borough. There are also local issues which this plan ignores. For example, Tottenham Police Station YR was selected to be Haringey's sole front counter. Wood Green Police Station YE would have made more sense owing to its central location in the borough (and at the time it had just been refurbished - including a brand new front office which has never been used), but Tottenham was chosen due to the historic tensions in the area. It was (wisely) thought that it was essential to maintain a physical presence in the area. Now, Tottenham nick is among those to be closed. I could say so much more about this. It goes beyond politics but both the Conservatives and Labour at GLA/Mayoral (Johnson and Khan) and central government level are responsible. This is an absolutely insane plan. 🚔

'I can't see what Scotland gains now from continuing to be part of this mess' George Monbiot speaks to The National Podcast about Scottish independence