Losing Control: London Chief of Police Snatches Microphone From Journalist’s Hand When Questioned on Two Tier Policing

The UK’s top cop seemed unable to control his temper when asked about growing concerns opver two-tier policing in the United Kingdom, lashing out at a journalist on Monday morning.

Sir Mark Rowley, the chief of the Metropolitan Police, London’s police force and the most senior in the UK, appeared to lose his temper at a journalist on Monday morning as he was questioned about the quality of response to recent incidents of public unrest including riots in England.

The top police officer was pictured stepping out of the Cabinet Office in Westminster, the central convening department of the British government where he had just attended a meeting of the ‘COBRA’ emergency response group chaired by the Prime Minister. As Rowley stepped across the pavement, a Sky News Journalist asked: “Are we going to end two-tier policing, sir?”.

Rowley seemed somewhat affronted, and in an unguarded moment grabbed the journalist’s microphone as he walked past and dropped it to the ground. Having dodged the question he then broke into a trot as he moved away from pursuing photographers and across the road to his official car.

The incident, displaying a concerning lack of self-control for the highest police officer in the land, comes amid growing concern in the United Kingdom about the government’s response to riots being very sharply tailored to the community behind it, the very antithesis of colourblind, ‘without fear or favour’ policing. As the present episode of protests got underway last week, Tory centrist Lord Goldsmith said the Police’s heavy-handed response “couldn’t contrast more starkly with [previous] reactions to the Manchester riots, where violent thugs demanded instant justice ‘or else’ & where ministers bent over backwards to explain that they ‘understood’ the anger.”

Comparing the present anti-mass migration riots with police activity during Muslim community riots just last month, Lord Goldsmith asked: “Why has the Home Office response to these two events been so different? Can they not see how this feeds the narrative of a two tier approach and drives people to the far right? It is extraordinarily shortsighted and unwise”.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage MP has also questioned the wisdom of two tier policing, pointing back this morning to when Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer — who now says “criminality is criminality” — knelt for Black Lives Matters just days after they ran amok in central London. Farage said: “Ever since the soft policing of the Black Lives Matter protests, the impression of two-tier policing has become widespread. The Prime Minister’s faltering attempts to address the current crisis have only added to that sense of injustice.”