‘Trust And Confidence In Police Is At Rock Bottom’ | Police Under Fire After Epping Protests

The Chief Constable of Essex Police has denied that officers drove counter-protesters to a demonstration outside a hotel housing asylum seekers after claims made by Nigel Farage.

The Reform UK leader called for the resignation of Chief Constable Ben-Julian Harrington in a post on X.

Former Met Police detective Mike Neville joins Talk’s Peter Cardwell to discuss this further.

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Well, Greg gave me a call there literally about 10 minutes ago to talk about the fact that he was wondering why on earth are these people at the Eping protest at the Bell Hotel. Why were the counterprotesters allowed to wear masks? Well, we’ve had uh first of all, we have Mike Neville Handley in studio with us who’s a former Metropolitan Police detective. Hi Mike, good to see you. Good evening. Um we have been uh we contacted Jody, our producer, contacted Essex Police asking the exact question. Why were a number of these people allowed to proceed whilst wearing masks? And Essex police have told us the restrictions around face coverings have only been in place today and at Sunday’s protest. Sunday was the 20th. No such restrictions happened last Thursday the 17th and before that. At the Thursday the 17th protest, both protesters and counterprotesters, some elements of them wore face coverings, not one specific group only. They’re allowed to do so as is their right if there’s no specific legal order against face coverings. So Mike, could it have been the case that there were protesters who were escorted to this protest um from the Antifa stop um the the auntie side essentially who were wearing face coverings and the police did nothing to stop them. That could hypothetically be the case. It it is the case because I’ve seen the videos where they’re getting in mini buses or they’ve been walked uh to and from by escorted by police. The law is quite clear. What happens is an inspector has to say sign a written order saying for the next 24 hours in this particular place people are if they’re wearing a face covering order to remove it. If they don’t remove it they can be arrested. The question is why didn’t they put those orders in place? That’s a simple thing to do. A simple a simple thing to do. And also what sort of rank of officer inspector inspector inspector. So not that high rank. I was I was I was a DCI so I I could have done that. But what gets me here is what does it look like to the public that the police are escorting people who are fully masked up. You I mean surely if you’re a if you’re a senior police officer surely if you’re going to escort people and you’re going to say right you and I probably don’t agree with this decision. I I certainly don’t and I I expect you don’t either. But if you make a decision say right we’re going to facilitate peaceful protest. We’re going to bring we’re going to escort people there so they can so they can protest peacefully. If someone’s wearing a mask, surely the first thing you do is say, “Right, we’re going to make it illegal to wear a mask because we don’t want you wearing a mask.” Because if you wear a mask, I mean, peaceful protesters, in my experience, and I’ve been to a heck of a lot of protests as a reporter. I know you’ve been to many, many more as a police officer, don’t wear masks. Well, is that and not only that, but this protest itself is really about moms and dads and families, grandparents saying, “We really don’t want these asylum seekers who we don’t know anything about in a school where our daughters, granddaughters attend.” So, you’ve almost got a family atmosphere up to a point. You’ve got some idiots who will always join in. So, why would you allow or bus in people who are uh thugs really? They they’re very politically motivated wearing these masks. That’s intimidation in my view. It wouldn’t have taken anything to to to put that order in place. But what what the thing is it’s the optics when me, you, people at home, the viewers and listeners here see on the TV the police escorting people who are fully masked up who are actually giving lifts to people. What does this look like? It just looks so bad. I mean, trust and confidence in the police is at rock bottom. This nation used to have the best police force in the world. It was the envy of the world that people trusted the police. They saw them as decent and friendly, firm but fair. And now they see this. It’s just appalling in my view. Uh there’s uh further protest that is planned this evening. Mike, obviously we hope that’s totally peaceful, but given the atmosphere that is around that, how should the police protest that to make sure that people can have their say? Well, what they should do is make sure the two groups are absolutely way apart. The the first duty of the police is to ensure the king’s peace to make sure there’s no trouble. The idea that the police the the Essex police the assistant chief conible man called Hooper said that it was their duty to facilitate lawful assembly or some old flannel. I’ve never heard this. What you do if you got particularly if you got one group which consists of moms, dads and grandparents and then you got another group which is obviously hard left with their socialist workers. I mean not they’re not giving any clues are they socialist worker and all this you would keep them far apart. The idea that you would march them in and the point is as well that I mean police should know about this. They should know actually you know they have lots of we’re told this chief constible has a lot of experience of public order. I have zero experience of policing public order. I have a reasonable amount of experience of reporting public order. Uh lots of riots in Northern Ireland over a long period of time. Um what what I expect and what I have seen on a number of occasions is you have right here are the one side of the protest. We’re going to keep them like a street away from the other people. We’re going to allow these people to protest, but we’re going to keep them far apart. We’re not going to bring them together. We’re not going to facilitate something that could escalate into something, especially when people are wearing masks as well. I mean, it’s so basic. Uh, but I think what we’ve got to get into here, you’ve got to get into the establishment’s mindset. And it’s like the Kestama mindset. In their minds, the baddies are the people protesting about the the hotel. They are the far-right thugs. They are the troublemaker in their heads. The people who come in with socialist worker signs, okay, anti-racist they claim to be and welcome refugees, divers, they are the goodies, you know, and this is the real problem. And if you look at the prime minister for example, he made a big issue in Southport about these far-right thugs coming in from all over the place and causing trouble when the people of Southport should be allowed to get on with their business. Why isn’t he saying the same about Eping? Because the people who are outside protest about the uh hostel, I reckon 99% of those come from like within two or three miles of that hotel. the people who are coming in with their socialist worker signs and the rest of it, they are being shipped in from London and all other places. So why aren’t they making the same point about the far-left shipping in and and causing drama? Oh, we we know why. Uh Greg is back on the line. I’ve asked Judy again. Judy’s busy this evening to get Greg back on the line. Does that Greg, we’ve got that that information there from Essex Police. We’ve heard what Mike has to say. Does that illustrate the point for you a bit? Yeah, it does. and uh and I I thank Mike Neville for his um expertise and uh informed comments. Um, I think what Mike Neville has said illustrates the complete lack the complete lack of control of Essex police. Because from what Mike Neville has said, I understand that a a police officer of sufficient seniority was there on the scene. Oh yeah. And could and could have prohibited m Oh. Oh, absolutely. That could have happened, Greg. But that but that decision wasn’t made. Greg, I’m going to go back to Mike, but listen, thanks for your thanks for your comments there. I appreciate that, and I I hope we cleared that up for you. And Greg was just making the point there. He was saying a perfectly reasonable point about the inspector perhaps signing that off, and we did talk about that. There are a couple of other aspects of this, Mike, and there a couple of other things around today that I just want to talk to you about. One of them is shoplifting and this absolutely dreadful set of statistics in regard to shoplifting. I know you’ve been talking about this today uh to various other journalists as well and the point is that it’s totally out of control in this country and the police just aren’t doing nearly enough to deal with it. Absolutely. So, but the big problem comes from the home office in this in this sense. So, there is a the police are measured on how they use fingerprints and DNA where how they gather them, how they use them, how many people have been caught and sentenced because of fingerprints. With shoplifting, billions of pounds have been spent on on on CCTV and this is the evidence. But the Home Office do not measure the police’s use of CCTV. So all that money is being spent. People are being caught on camera doing all these wicked things and nothing is done about it. And in the police, what gets measured gets done. So in some police forces, the identification rate of people caught on camera is lower than 10%. It’s almost not worth getting the stuff in the first place. But what it says to people, what it says is a tipping point in society where if you go into a shop, everybody around you is stealing. So what I was in Greg’s the other day. I was having a sausage roll in Gregs. I shouldn’t have been having it, but I was um and I was just sitting there eating my sausage roll, drinking my Rena, and this guy comes in and just starts lifting a load of stuff and he he just walks out and the guy guy starts shouting after him saying the employee says, “You can’t take that.” And he just says, “Well, I’m going to.” Just walks out. And and what happens is though is that and then what happens though there’s violence because the these thieves they feel entitled to steal. So the moment they get stopped and somebody challenges them there’s a fight and this and it’s just and this is so organized what you’ll get from a lot of leftwing politicians. Oh the baby milk being stolen. It’s tragic that mothers have got children who are not being uh fed. I spoke to one of the heads of security of the top six supermarkets. A lot of that um baby milk ends up in Vietnam. It’s that organized. Booze is stolen from it’s also a bulking agent for drugs as well. It’s not just about feeding babies. It is really expensive. I’m not I’m not condoning for a second people uh stealing baby formation, but it’s not it’s not formula, but it’s not it’s not just about feeding babies. Yeah. Can I tell you what organizers the best organization I’ve ever known about shoplifting? There was a pub in London, very rubbish pub, but the menu was absolutely lovely. you know, look, but across the road was an M&S, you know, garage. So, you would give your order and there was like the landlord would have six drug addicts in the back. He would feed them the order, would go across the shop, steal the food, and so half an hour later, what’s on your plate? Yeah. Yeah. It just be it is a just a cycle, but the it’s so organized, so it’s international. It’s it’s nationalized. But again, because the police do not have uh a database of all these images of criminals who commit who commit the crime on CCTV, if you travel from Staffordshire to Darisha, if you come down here and they go to Sussex and Ser, it’s very unlikely. If you left your fingerprints on DNA, you would be caught. If you leave your image, you’re probably not good. Very interesting. Um I just want to bring you one more thing before you go, Mike, which is the story we’re talking about a little bit earlier on. mother who is an activist for uh Israel and stands up for Jewish people as well being asked for by prevent officers to explain ourselves. Uh we spoke to her Holly a little bit earlier on. I know you’ve done an awful lot of counterterrorism work as well. What’s going on there? Well, I’m not I’m I’ve got to be honest. I was not a counterterrorism officer. I helped counterterrorism offic but with this it’s ridiculous. The trouble with prevent is he’s focusing all the wrong things. Everybody knows the real threat is the Islamic terrorist threat, but no one in the establishment really wants to admit this. So, they’ve got to they got to invent the fact that the far right is far worse than that or just as equal. And it’s simply not. 90 odd percent 95% of the targets will be Islamist terrorists. And what they try they try and do is try and counterbalance this by doing ridiculous things. And what and the other thing as well though, what does this tell to the Jewish community who are already under threat, feel threatened, don’t want to come to London on certain days? I just think it’s for my Jewish friends. I just think it’s absolutely outrageous. Mike, thank you so much.