by: David Mitchell | Comment is free
published: 21 October 2012

The police have been going through a rough patch recently. First they were implicated in the phone-hacking scandal – though they managed to escape most of the blame when we collectively came to the surprising conclusion that it was more serious for tabloid journalists to neglect the public interest than officers of the crown.

But while they deflected a lot of that responsibility, their attempts to deflect it over Hillsborough have been catastrophically counterproductive. And as senior officers have been caught dining with Murdochs or maligning the dead, officers on the ground have been getting shot and called plebs. Or not called plebs, depending on who you believe.

Meanwhile the Police Federation’s attempts to extract retribution for the disputed p-word, in the form of Andrew Mitchell’s sacking, have been roundly slagged off by former Labour minister Chris Mullin, who last week described the organisation as “a bully”, “a bunch of headbangers” and “a mighty vested interest that has seen off just about all attempts to reform the least reformed part of the public service”.

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