Having drafted a blog earlier about the stopping of David Miranda the partner of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald who was stopped a few days ago under UK terror laws, it came to me whilst in the shower that … retaliation is sweet, well, for some.
When the establishment like the Government and the Metropolitan Police Service are challenged, although the public and courts may agree with the people whom take the action, these big institutions don’t forget and have long memories.
After I raised discrimination within the Met Police, it then leaked about me to The Sun newspaper to try and discredit me and stop my complaints getting to court. In between having succeeded at the first Employment Tribunal in 2012 and the latter Employment Appeal Tribunal this year, the Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe dismissed me for Gross Misconduct.
Yes, gross.
The person who raised the wrongdoing within Scotland Yard, and did the right and proper thing by asking the courts to decide what was acceptable and what was not with regards to racism, homophobia and leaking.
Most people who know how the UK Police Service works, will know that it is almost impossible to sack an officer. He or she has to do something so bad, to warrant it.
The case surrounding the death of Ian Tomlinson being an example.
I mean, the Labour Deputy Leader and Shadow Deputy Prime Minister Harriet Harman is even dismayed about how an officer involved in a rape case avoided being sacked when an accused male who should have been dealt with for the offence later went on to murder his two young children.
The Met said the action of the officer wasn’t gross, but just misconduct.
However, my actions were.
The only thing that is gross, is how the MPS gets away with stuff like this. Or, think they can.
An employment tribunal has now ruled that I will have my opportunity in court in January 2014 over a three-week period to challenge the Met Commissioner’s dismissal of me, the full facts of which will become public.
Three crime journalists who have independently covered my case and whom I have no alliance to, themselves are not soft in what can and does go on behind Scotland Yard’s closed doors.
- Black and gay police officer hounded out of force ‘like enemy of the state’
- Why Kevin Maxwell refused to be a gay poster boy for the police
- Kevin Maxwell: ‘I was meant to be the future. I ticked the boxes’
Does any right thinking person really believe if I was such a ‘bad’ Police Officer as the Met would have the public believe in sacking me that, the Chair of the UK Parliament Home Affairs Committee would even sit next to me on a live TV programme to talk about ‘Leadership and Standards in the Police’ – him and his fellow committee members having invited me to give evidence to their inquiry which has since been accepted?
If I didn’t believe that the actions of the Metropolitan Police were perverse, I wouldn’t be wasting my time.
All I know is that, the more the Commissioner tries to harm me the more clear things become.
Even those that would not naturally be allies of mine because of my race and/or sexual orientation, are not naïve in their reporting of my challenges to know that all is not and has not been well in my case.
Like I have done, I hope the courts sort out the incident of late involving Mr Miranda being stopped under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
The justice system has to work, for the average man and woman on the street.
It’s the only hope, most of us have.