A Met Police officer who used cameras to spy on a 14 year old girl won’t be jailed. In July, Lee Hargrave was handed a suspended 13 month sentence. The sentence was later re-examined for being too lenient, but the appeal judges decided the sentence was correct.
Hargrave will remain on the sex offenders register for ten years. He resigned from the Met in 2024. Hargrave was found to have installed a camera in the girl’s bedroom and was eventually convicted for voyeurism and making indecent images of a child.
Systemic abuse
The Met has been repeatedly rocked with allegations of cases or sexual abuse, misogyny and racism. The signal case of the last ten years was that of Sarah Everard.
Everard was abducted and murdered in 2021 by an off-duty cop who used his police powers to ‘arrest’ her. Diplomatic protection officer Wayne Couzens was jailed for the murder. It was later found other officers had shared misogynist messages during in investigation.
During the search for Everard, police violently suppressed a peaceful vigil held on Clapham Common. And it was subsequently revealed that police had long ignored internal allegations about Couzens, including that he had exposed himself three times.
Endemic racism
The Met’s problem’s extend beyond a systemic hatred of women. On 2 October a BBC Panorama documentary showed how racism and far-right ideas thrived in the force.
The evidence of misogyny and racism challenges the Met’s promise to have tackled what it calls “toxic behaviours” after the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer.
Panorama’s secret filming shows officers making sexualised comments to colleagues and sharing racist views about immigrants and Muslims.
Hidden culture?
But, as the Canary argued earlier this month, the BBC haven’t gone far enough in their critique of the Met’s ‘hidden’ culture of bigotry and prejudice.
As our own Alex/Rose Cocker asked at the time:
How many times do we have to write this same fucking article? It’s not one bad apple. It’s not one bad barrel. Its root and branch, tree and orchard. The Met is bigoted because that is there core of its mission.
If the BBC can’t see that by now, it has closed its eyes and blocked its ears on purpose.
By Joe Glenton
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