Security minister Damian Hinds claimed “nobody feels more shocked” or let down by the recent allegations against the police than the police force itself.
Speaking to LBC’s Nick Ferrari on Monday, Hinds was addressing the news that almost 2,000 police officers have been accused of sexual misconduct, including rape, over the last four years – only 8% of allegations led to dismissal.
This revelation followed the sentencing of Sarah Everard’s killer who was a serving police officer who kidnapped her through a false arrest.
LBC’s Nick Ferrari put it to Hinds that this was a “shocking figure”.
Hinds replied: “Yes of course it is a shocking figure, and it’s important that there’s process to go through in those cases and an accusation must be followed by looking into it properly.”
Ferrari pointed out: “Sadly a week [does not] seems to go by without some set of headlines of troubling nature about our police force.
“Do we need a royal commission into our policing?”
Hinds replied: “It is very important to stop and take tribute to the brave men and women who are police, who put themselves in danger day after day for the rest of us.
“Nobody feels more shocked, more let down, than some of the things we’ve heard – particularly the awful killing of Sarah Everard – nobody feels more let down than police officers.
“We owe it to them to get to the bottom of these matters.
“That’s why the home secretary is instituting the inquiry.”
However Ferrari maintained that it was a “worthless” inquiry if it’s not “statutory”, meaning regulated by law.
Ferrari then said the Met has previously “not cooperated” in inquiries into previous misconduct allegations, and therefore it needs to be “statutory” to be effective.
Hinds replied and just agreed that it was important “to make sure all the lessons are learnt” from the Everard case.
He also made similar claims about how the police were coping after Everard’s death when speaking to Times Radio.
He said: “Everybody was shaken by this terrible case.
“It’s really, really important to take a moment once again to pay tribute to all the men and women in our policing service who feel more let down than anybody of this terrible sequence of events.
“They put themselves in danger day after day in protection of the rest of us and they deserve our support.
“It is actually more important for them than even anyone else that this inquiry gets to the bottom of things.”
Safe to say, his words did not go down well with many listeners.