Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has given his support to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, but the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) has renewed its calls for him to resign.
On Monday, Mr. Sunak told journalists he shared the shock and anger expressed by the general public over the incident and said the Met would have to work hard to rebuild the confidence and trust of the Jewish community.
Sir Mark is meeting with Mayor of London Sadiq Khan on Monday to discuss “community relations,” and is also expected to meet Home Secretary James Cleverly.
A spokesman for Mr. Khan said the Met “must have the confidence of the communities they serve and it is right that they have apologised for the way the incident was handled and their original public response.”
Mr. Sunak said, “I share the shock and the anger that many are feeling when they saw the clips over the weekend ... what happened was clearly wrong, and it’s right that they’ve apologised for that.”
Met Accused of Appeasing ‘Violent Racists’
The force has been heavily criticised for its handling of the pro-Palestine protests and on Monday Mr. Falter said, “It is by now clear to everyone that the Met’s policing policy at these weekly anti-Israel marches represents the inverse of how policing should work.”“Police should be protecting those believed to be under threat, not threatening them with arrest to appease suspected violent racists,” he added.
Mr. Falter said, “Since the incident, the Met has issued and withdrawn a series of statements, some apologetic and some belligerent.”
He said that despite a suggestion in the Met that Sir Mark had reached out to him, there had in fact been no offer to meet with him about the incident and its wider implications.
Mr. Falter said the Met was “scrambling to save the commissioner’s job” and he said its response to the incident had been “shambolic.”
He said, “It is extremely telling that the Met does not appear to have even started investigating the potential crimes that were committed by some of the protesters who surrounded me and which were caught on camera.”
Mr. Falter denied he had “provoked the crowd” and he said, “This has now gone far beyond victim-blaming.”
Braverman Says Met ‘Chose a Side’
Ms. Braverman, who was sacked by Mr. Sunak in November, has accused the Met of having “chosen a side” and she told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme there had been a “wholesale failure” to “combat anti-Semitism and to maintain the peace on the streets of London over the past six months.”She said, “At this point in time there is unprecedented anti-Semitism on our streets, there is disproportionate police resourcing being deployed to police these marches and the police have chosen a side.”
The force has apologised twice over the incident.
But in its second apology it apologised for the wording of the first apology, which had suggested opponents of pro-Palestinian marches “must know that their presence is provocative.”
