Who'll Lead Investigation into Sean Hoare's Death?

The death of News of the World whisteblower Sean Hoare raises serious questions about the ability of the Metropolitan Police to properly investigate his passing.

During recent weeks, it has become clear the force is endemically corrupt and suffers from an acute lack of accountability.

Hoare’s death comes almost 10 years to the day since police shot and killed 29-year-old parking attendant and father Derek Bennett (pictured above) as he ran away holding a gun-shaped cigarette lighter.

A jury decided Bennett was killed ‘lawfully’, and since his death, on average, police officers have shot and killed a member of the British public every three months.

While there is no suggestion Hoare was killed by police or anyone else (a coroner found no evidence of third-party involvement and described his death as ‘non suspicious’), the killings of Ian Tomlinson, Jean Charles de Menezes (below) and others, coupled with recent allegations that officers accepted cash and gifts in return for confidential information, make it difficult to place absolute confidence in the Met.

In 1972, incoming Met Commissioner Robert Mark told his colleagues: ‘The basic test of a decent police force is that it catches more criminals than it employs.’ Perhaps it would be wise to analyze that ratio today.

Who can be trusted to investigate the death of a man prepared to testify in court that Andy Coulson knew, while he was editor, that News of the World employees hacked into computers and phones looking for news stories?

Certainly not the same Metropolitan Police officers who are already up to their necks in the scandal, nor a parliament-led inquiry, which would be open to abuse by the Prime Minister who is yet to admit that hiring Coulson as his director of communications was a mistake.

In the videos below, journalists from opposite sides of the globe discuss the credibility of London’s police service, and British father Michael Doherty reveals how he was attacked by officers from the Met after he told them a paedophile was grooming his daughter on the internet.