Awale Olad says there is something rotten in the Met Police

THE Met Police has “something rotten at the centre”, the Town Hall was told last night, amid a warning that black men do not feel safe in Camden.

Labour councillor Awale Olad remains angry that a full explanation for a raid on a man’s house in Kentish Town in January has not been provided.

The New Journal reported how  teacher Omar Abdo opened his door in Castle Road to a squad of officers in riot gear and carrying heavy weapons. He was dragged out of his home in handcuffs, but nothing untoward was found and he was told he was free to go.

Asked at an all-member meeting in the council chamber whether he would be pursuing the issue, he said: “There’s something rotten at the centre of the Metropolitan Police, especially when I’ve got a lot of black people in the borough who do come up to me quite often who tell me that they fear the police.

“They fear that they will be killed by the police more than they fear anything or anybody else. And that says a lot about the way black people in particular in the borough are policed.”

Despite the scale of the operation, the Met’s communications wing, known as the Press Bureau, initially said  there was no record of anything happening. Later, local officers said they had not been warned that a warrant was due to be executed on their patch and they themselves were seeking more information.

Armed police arrive in Kentish Town

Mr Abdo said after the police left: “All I could see was a lot of guns in my face and all I could think was that my life was over. “I really thought I was going to get a bag thrown over my head and I was going to get taken away. It felt like the army was coming in and no one would know where I had gone.”

Cllr Olad is the chair of the cross-party Culture and Environment Scrutiny Committee and can summons Camden Police’s top brass to answer questions from his panel.

But he told last night’s meeting that this did not mean he was always given answers, referencing the operation in Kentish Town.

“I must say I’ve been working with the police for a very long time and I can’t say enough how much of a great job most of them do in tackling crime, keeping us safe, and just generally being good police officers. But you can’t really apply that to the Metropolitan Police,” he said.

“I’m very much committed to keeping this a priority for the committee going forward: to look a lot more into how the police go about their business in the borough. You would have seen, if you look back at the committee meeting last time, that the superintendent completely refused to answer any questions. The follow up emails I received from him completely refused to take any responsibility.”

The case has raised questions over how far police are going to explain their actions to the public. Without information or scrutiny, police would be able to do what they liked without ever having to justify their choices and behaviour. Weekly interviews with the local press were ended several years ago and now most incidents are filtered through the central Met publicity team, which decides whether there will be any comment made or not.

Cllr Olad told the meeting: “There’s no accountability and there’s no responsibility within the Metropolitan Police – and that’s a real risk. That’s a real risk to everyone in the borough, but clearly a bigger risk to black men in the borough, and we need to try and tackle that.”

SEE ALSO CAMDEN POLICE STILL IN DARK OVER BOTCHED ARMED RAID ON TEACHER’S HOME

Mr Abdo has returned from China where he was teaching English in a school for three years. He has recently finished an IT course and said he was looking at getting into “data engineering”.

He said that he had been wrongly stopped by firearms officers in Kentish Town five years ago and that he “used to get stopped a bit when I was a kid”, adding: “Who doesn’t growing up in Camden?”

After several queries, a Met spokesman said: “On Friday, January 6, officers executed a warrant under the Firearms Act at a residential address in Castle Road. Entry was conducted by specialist firearms officers. No police firearms or taser were discharged. The address was searched and nothing found. No arrests were made.”

No apology to Mr Abdo has been included in any statement so far.