A few days ago a story broke about two retired Metropolitan Police officers who were charged with various child sex charges and who will be in court for their first appearance on the 9^th of February. The arrests of these two retired officers, whom the BBC named as Jack Addis, 63, from Perthshire, and Jeremy Laxton, 62, from Lincolnshire, came after an investigation of another officer, a serving Chief Inspector named Richard Watkinson.

Watkinson was due to be charged with a whole host of child sex offences which have been reported as being conspiracy to distribute or show indecent images of children, three counts of making indecent photos of a child, voyeurism and two counts of misconduct in public office. Watkinson, aged 49, has seemingly taken his own life prior to being charged.

Whilst Laxton and Addis are of course entitled to be considered innocent until proven guilty, the apparent suicide of a serving Chief Inspector accused of sex crimes and the fact that there have been subsequent arrests and charges, suggests that there may have been a ring of officers sharing materials depicting child sexual abuse. Time will tell whether these charges are the end of this particular investigation or whether more uniformed Met nonces will be uncovered.

Here’s part of the BBC report into these charges:

Two retired Metropolitan Police officers have been charged with child sex offences, as part of an investigation into a serving Met chief inspector who was found dead.

The Met said the charges follow an investigation into Richard Watkinson.

His death is being treated as unexplained but not suspicious.

Jack Addis, 63, from Perthshire, and Jeremy Laxton, 62, from Lincolnshire, will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 9 February.

Ch Insp Watkinson, 49 was a serving chief inspector for neighbourhood policing in the West Area Command Unit. He had been suspended from duty following his arrest.

He was found dead in Buckinghamshire on 12 January, the same day the Met says he was due to be charged with conspiracy to distribute or show indecent images of children, three counts of making indecent photos of a child, voyeurism and two counts of misconduct in public office.

If, as is likely, the police are going through Watkinson’s communication records with a fine toothed comb, then I would not be at all surprised to find out that more alleged nonces in uniform are being uncovered. There could be an enormous amount of worms to emerge from the Met Police’s woodwork, with the investigation into Wilkinson’s activities being but one in a number of reasons.

There’s always been bad cops in large part because there has always been bad people, but the Met seems to have incubated an inordinate number of rapists and nonces to put alongside the occasional murderer from their ranks. Something has gone very badly wrong with the Met to not be aware of predators in uniform or to ignore their presence. It’s a failure by Met management at both the recruitment stage and after officers are deployed, that so many bad or predatory officers have been allowed to remain in the force. Bad cops are a fact of life and have been so since the days of the old Thieftakers of the 18^th century, but the job of the management of modern police forces is to ensure that the dangerous and deranged are not recruited or kept on as police officers. At this time we can see that there are a lot of wrong ‘uns employed by the Met and maybe that would not be the case were Londoners not being policed by a police force that is as morally, politically and ethically degraded as the Metropolitan Police has become .