“Quite frankly, I think that the Mayor of London should think himself lucky that the Metropolitan Police Federation’s declaration that they had no confidence in him was so restrained in its language,” opines former Metropolitan police officer Jake ‘Bulldog’ Krimpe, reflecting on the aftermath of Met Commissioner Cressida Dick’s announcement that she would be standing down after Mayor Sadiq Khan had made it clear that he had lost confidence in her leadership. “Back in my day, it would undoubtedly have referred to him as a ‘Paki’ or maybe even a ‘Coon’ – but it just goes to show how far the Met’s culture has come despite what these snowflakes are saying, that they didn’t even call him a ‘Darkie’.” Self-styled ‘old school copper’ Krimpe, a former Detective Chief Inspector with the Flying Squad, (who supposedly acquired his nickname from his interrogation technique of clamping bulldog clips to the genitals of suspects), believes that recent media coverage, highlighting corruption, misogyny and racism within the ranks of the force, have misrepresented the modern Metropolitan Police. “Yes, I know that a serving Met police officer was recently found guilty of raping and murdering a woman, but you have to understand how that represents a huge step forward. In the past the victim would have been smeared as prostitute, terrorist, foreigner or pinko and he’d have got off on grounds of self-defence! Nowadays, you see, we’re taking responsibility for our mistakes.”

He also feels that Commissioner Dick has been treated unfairly by politicians and press alike. “Surely the fact that we had a bird in charge – even though she was a bit of an old boiler – shows that the force can’t possibly be as misogynistic as it used to be,” he argues in his regular law and order column in tabloid The Shite. “She’s dome some fantastic work with regard to equality – just look at how the force handled that feminist vigil for Sarah Everard, the woman murdered by the copper, they gave those bloody women a damn good kicking, just like they would have if they’d been blokes. Like I say, under Dick, all offenders are treated equally!” Critics of the Met, however, disagree, pointing out that the Mayor’s lack of confidence in the Commissioner stemmed from the fact that she was apparently unable or unwilling to formulate a comprehensive plan of action to reform the force and tackle the racist and sexist attitudes seemingly endemic within its ranks. “Senior ranks within the force just don’t seem to grasp what the problems actually are,” contends Dominic Planchard, Crime Correspondent for the Sunday Bystander. “As I understand it, they seem to believe that aren’t being accused of being racist and sexist, so much as being accused of not doing either thing efficiently enough!” Consequently, Planchard claims, the only proposals for reform put forward by the Met’s senior management involved making sexism and racism within the force more efficient.

“Look, I’ve spoken to some of the guys involved in drafting those proposals and as far as I can see, they were bang on the money,” declares Krimpe. “I mean, the whole problem was that officers were just being too obviously racist and sexist toward members of the public, when the force really needed to be internalising the abuse and honing it so as to be subtler and better at it when dealing with the punters.” Indeed, Krimpe argues that the Met had started its reforms in this regard some time ago. “Surely that was why there was a focus on recruiting officers from ethnic minorities,” he says. “So that white officers could get more practice in racial abuse without having to leave the station – having some of these guys on the firm, you can get to know exactly which words and epithets really wind them up the most and which trigger words are most effective for each ethnicity and culture. After all, there’s nothing more embarrassing for an office out on the beat than using the wrong term of racial abuse – it makes them look ignorant and lose respect from the white working class.” He also contends that this policy actually provided officers from ethnic minorities with invaluable training. “It prepared them for the kind of shit they were going to get on the street,” he says. “Getting them used to that sort of abuse would ensure that they wouldn’t go ape shit and beating up white people the first time some scroat called them ‘Sambo’.”

According to Krimpe, much of the alleged historical sexism and misogyny within the Metropolitan Police was similarly the result of techniques used to train female officers. “Again, those girls are going to get all sorts of comments – and worse – out on the streets,” he says. “So it was only logical to try and ‘desensitise’ them to the worst of it within the station. After all, you can’t risk one of them breaking down in tears if she gets her arse slapped by some nonce out in the field, can you?” Nevertheless, Krimpe believes that some of the Met’s reforms might have backfired. “Personally, I blame the increase in male officers abusing their authority to sexually harass civilian women on the policy to deliberately recruit physically unattractive female police officers,” he muses. “It was well intentioned – the idea was to discourage male officers from pursuing relationships with, or harassing, female colleagues. But the problem was that if blokes had to spend all day working with and looking at right munters, then they are bound to start looking outside the force for a bit of the other, aren’t they?”

Not surprisingly, Krimpe’s comments have been widely condemned and his claims roundly rejected. For its part, the Metropolitan Police Federation has distanced itself from Krimpe, saying that he, in no way, represents the views of currently serving officers and denying that any of the ‘reforms’ and ‘training’ he has described have either been suggested by senior officers, let alone put into practice. Dominic Planchard has also pointed out that Krimpe resigned from the Metropolitan police several years ago while facing a disciplinary investigation. “It was alleged that he and several other senior officers had forced a number of young female recruits to run a ‘gauntlet’ of male officers who would variously grasp, grope, pinch and feel up their breasts and behinds as they passed through,” he says. “His defence, strangely enough, was that it was a training exercise designed to ‘toughen up’ the female officers before they went out on the street. The women themselves were severely traumatised with several suffering severe bruising as a result of their ordeal.” The journalist has also cast doubt on the origin of Krimpe’s nickname. “It has nothing to do with him torturing confessions from suspects using office stationary,” he alleges. “But rather it dates back to when he was a Detective Sergeant on the Vice Squad and used to get prostitutes to clamp bulldog clips to his knackers for sexual gratification.”