I’ll sack police officers who hide their identity badges, says Met chief

The Met Commissioner pledged to crack down on indiscipline in the force following the controversy over the policing of the G20 protests.

He said he was "concerned" at videos showing alleged brutality by his officers — but added the "overwhelming majority" of his force had behaved properly during the demonstrations earlier this month.

The Met has been plunged into crisis in the aftermath of the protests. One of its officers has been questioned over the manslaughter of newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson, and another is being investigated over striking a woman while concealing his shoulder number.

Sir Paul said he had also called for a review of how identification badges were attached to public-order uniforms, and that he wanted officer's names to be added to the tags.

He revealed that one officer, who was pictured in the Standard last week at a Tamil protest, had been disciplined after it was shown he was not displaying his identification number.

The officer was revealed today as a medic who had jumped out of a van to help treat someone, but had "forgotten" to transfer his numbers from his uniform to his riot overalls. The officer, who had immediately admitted his mistake to his supervisor — although he had repeatedly refused to provide his number to an Evening Standard photographer — had been given words of advice, Sir Paul said.

The Commissioner said: "Some of the video footage of some police actions are a clear concern to me and I think they should be thoroughly investigated. But, while I have concern, we have to find out what is behind these images and I think it would be wrong to prejudge the investigation into these incidents.

"The overwhelming majority of officers at these protests carried out their duties in a professional manner. None of that takes away concern over the video footage, the identification numbers and the tragic death of an individual. Officers have to stand accountable for their actions, but the majority were a credit to the police and kept London safe."

Sir Paul welcomed a review of public-order tactics, in particular the policy of containing demonstrators known as "kettling".

But he said: "I think there is a very difficult balance between ensuring people's right to protest and ensuring that we do not have a situation that leads to widespread disorder.

"We have a history of policing demonstrations and some of these have caused massive damage and huge amounts of fear.

"As a consequence, we have developed a policy of control which may involve containment. If there is a better way of doing it, we would be happy to learn about it."