The Met Police insists officers must be held to ‘the highest level of honesty and integrity’ – after two constables were dismissed without notice for their stop and search of black athletes Bianca Williams and Ricardo dos Santos in 2020. Speaking after a misconduct hearing in London, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Ward said there can be no place in the Met for officers who do not uphold these values. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 Policing can only succeed if we are of the highest levels of integrity and honesty.
00:05 That's what we've done to our officers, that's what we expect from them when they're out
00:07 and that's what the public need from them.
00:08 That's what Londoners would want to see.
00:11 So we're really clear that if people aren't able to demonstrate honesty and integrity
00:15 there is no place for them when they're met and we will take whatever steps are necessary
00:18 to remove them.
00:20 But the overwhelming majority of our officers are out there doing an incredibly good job
00:24 in incredibly difficult conditions and that's what we want to continue to focus on.
00:28 We do recognise though that stop and search does cause considerable concerns for members
00:32 of our community, particularly the black community.
00:35 So we're continually trying to work out how do we get it better, how do we learn from
00:38 incidents like this and others and how do we give people the confidence that the Met
00:42 and our use of our powers and our use of stop and search is there to keep Londoners safe.