With New Mayor Sadiq Khan still smiling, with the wind in his hair, the legacy of eight years of Troy misrule have laid some political landmines, that he will need to defuse and neutralise. He has many areas of responsibilities however my strong advice would be, to get a grip off the Metropolitan Police Service.
This video represent the kind of policing incident that can lead to widespread anger and unrest. Here we see an elderly black man subject to heavy-handed, disproportionate, roughhouse policing, that in these present troubled times, has all the potential to spark civil disorder.
Lambeth Police Services have now completely withdrawn from any type of meaningful community engagement that served them borough so well in the past. This is a huge and catastrophic error.
This principle of policing by consent in London has be been virtually eroded in London. The abolition of the Metropolitan Police Authority and the local Police Consultative Groups means we no longer have the 'release pressure valve' forums, where policing and community tensions can be aired in a public forum, providing unique opportunities for discussion and the expression ventilating public anger and concern around racist policing.
The landscape of police accountability in London has been completely decimated and the new mayor will need to focus all his attention on restoring trust and confidence in the Metropolitan Police Service and London's black and ethnic minority communities.
I have written to Superintendent Wood of Brixton Police Station calling, for a public meeting in Lambeth in order to have the police explain why they felt it necessary to use such unnecessary and disproportionate force against an elderly pensioner.
The local community is clearly very angry and outraged that an elderly black man can be treated in this way. If his is how Lambeth police treat pensioners, God help young black people in their interactions with officers such as these.
Relations between London's black community and the Metropolitan police are now so inflamed that incidence such as these, can easily provide, the spark that ignites an entire city.
The Mayor has many pressing matters on his desk of that I have no doubt. My advice is he would do well to ensure that the festering sore of our oppressive relationship with a Met Police now, after eight years has become further infected by a resurgent bout of institutional racism. This is in turn, has now seen London"s black and Muslim communities relationships with the Met Police has now become septic and without urgent attention, will become toxic very quickly. This issue must become one of his most urgent priorities.
If not, the matter will be brought to his door in a swirl of acrid smoke and flashing blue lights foregrounded by city marred by devastation and destruction.
