In the interest of being seen to do something, the Met today announced a ramp up of "stop and search" powers in "areas blighted by stabbings". That's pretty much everywhere in London, then. Assistant Commissioner Tim Godwin admitted that the measures would be "fairly in your face." Apparently the deployment of the 15 strong team had been planned for some time and now rushed forward as a reaction to the latest, depressing string of......

Londonist eye witnesses were alarmed yesterday when their quiet lunchtime pint in Camden (alright for some, eh?) was disrupted by "more than 30 police vans and unmarked police cars driving past with their lights flashing. It was quite surreal." Turns out the Met were on their way to an all out rout of Blackstock Road. An incredible 600 officers in riot gear targetted 19 premises on the busy shopping street near Finsbury Park, apparently......

Up to 9000 members of the Public and Commercial Services Union, including security staff at the Houses of Parliament, Police Community Support Officers, Traffic Wardens, 999 Operators and admin support staff will be striking - most pointedly - on Budget Day, 12 March, to protest against a below inflation pay offer. Seems union action is rumbling all around London at present. Yesterday we reported on the mobilisation of bus drivers for standardised pay and......

The Met Police have been hacked. Well, at least the external company that manages its site has been. Someone "emblazoned" their home page with fuzzy, stripey, red-lipped, unibrowed monster Brobee from Yo Gabba Gabba, a kids' TV show. Called Officer Brobee on the site -- gotta stay in character, right? -- he said "Oh hai guys, do joo wanna bes a policeman lulz? I see that teh so15 anti-terrorism anti-lulz police are hiring more incompetent......

That burly fella on the tube looking a bit shifty? The diminutive woman with a suspiciously large rucksack giving you the heeby jeebies? Got a funny feeling about that couple walking along Oxford Street? The Met want you to report it. A new campaign is being launched to encourage Londoners to "trust their instincts" and contact the Anti-Terrorist Hotline if they see anything untoward. Adverts on the tube and on radio will exhort people......

The Met might not be happy about their pay right now but they should certainly be pleased to learn that their boring old uniforms are being reviewed by students at the London College of Fashion. Oh wait, fashion students? Actually, that's probably quite alarming. On their homepage at the moment there's a lime green catsuit, rows of sequins and some silver biker boots. Still, lime green cat suits aren't a million miles away from......

Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people. But bullets need guns to fire them and people to pull the triggers, so it's a bit of a joint effort all round. The technicalities of death aside, one thing we can probably all agree on, and speak up now if you don't, is that we don't need guns on the streets. Of any kind. We'd rather not even have them in the hands of the police......

This is what we have learned whilst you have been browsing through holiday brochures this weekend: A pub in Tottenham with a really bad record for trouble is to be shut down. Londonist can think of a few more that should be… A gang fight at a greengrocers has left one man stabbed to death. A met. policeman accused of killing his wife has been found dead. As has his former mother-in-law. People have......

Office shag sees uniformed officer sacked even though he kept in touch with his colleagues by phone and radio whilst he enjoyed his internet date Rumblings in the House over transport security and funding for the Olympics. De Menezes inquest may take months The faithful defrauded But to end on good news, lightbulb amnesty at B&Q! Image courtesy of DICKSDAILY via the Londonist flickr group.......

We celebrated the good guys of the London Ambulance Service and St Johns Ambulance looking out for us on New Year's Eve - but we're a little less jubilant about the crowd of cameras keeping a beady eye on us every day of the year. A report in September last year said there were 10,000 surveillance cameras in London recording our every move, and putting the UK into the highest ranking country in the......

Seems some naughty police officers have been so busy catching criminals and patrolling the beat lately that they've forgotten to keep track of their credit card receipts. Apparently, more than £1m in "unreconciled expenses"needs to be matched to receipts sending the Metropolitan Police Authority into a tailspin with the auditors. Of course, a couple of officers have been extremely naughty with the public funds at their disposal via the magic of plastic and an......

The Taser may have turned a Flordia student into an unwitting celebrity earlier in the year, but on the streets of London it's a serious business. As we reported a few weeks ago, the Met has recently increased Taser deployment for a trial period. Barely a fortnight in, and the IPCC are already investigating allegations that an unarmed and innocent man was shocked repeatedly with the weapon. As part of anti-gun crime initiative Operation......

First it's our music venues, now it seems even our police stations are up for grabs. With a potential value of £1.5 billion, the Metropolitan Police property protfolio is quite a cash-cow. No wonder then, that they're going to be reviewing the number of nicks. This asset Management strategy predicts that some stations may close to be replaced with smaller facilities across the (32) boroughs. Unsurprisingly, there are a few concerns. Mike Green, councillor......

Bomb scare hoax caller convicted Met mutiny over backdating payrise Pigeon flypast for pet heroes £14m of fake pound coins land counterfeiter in jail Dobbey the Enfield reindeer goes to the pub Image courtesy of Ian Muttoo via the Londonist flickr group.......

Anyone looking at this case for the first time would be dumbfounded. Were the Metropolitan Police Force in breach of health and safety laws when they shot an innocent man seven times in the head? Health and safety laws? Isn't that like prosecuting Genghis Khan for illegal immigration? Terminology aside, the Met were yesterday found guilty of endangering the public when, on 22 July 2005, they misidentified Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes as a......

Double-take caption in the Times today reads: “More whites than Asians stopped by antisuicide bomber police.” According to this article, Scotland Yard released figures yesterday on the ethnic composition of its stop-and-search figures: of the 32,000 people stopped between April and August of this year under the Terrorism Act, 17,348 were white, compared to 6,755 Asians and 4,287 blacks. Of course this evidence does not extricate the Police from the witch hunt charge: given the......

Wonderful, wizard wifi. It keeps the Crackberry addicts happy, the laptop lovers mobile and coffee shops full of latte-quaffing surfers. We've marked out where to find free wifi around town and want to see more little flags on the map so even more of you can enjoy internet access wherever you may end up. However, there seems to be a gossamer-thin line between free and stolen which was crossed just this week - and......

The third of our interviews with the Tory candidates for London Mayor. Previously, Victoria Borwick and Andrew Boff. Warwick Lightfoot has, no doubt, spent a lifetime tolerating jibes about his Tolkeinesque name. He's also acquired an outstanding CV that includes stints as Mayor of Kensington and Chelsea, Special Advisor to the Chancellor and 20 years experience as a councillor. Most impressively of all, he's the first Tory candidate to admit to vomiting on the......

If you’re a woman in London, you have most likely experienced being groped, touched, leered at, harassed, followed or hit on by random strangers in public. It happens to women of all ages, from preteens to grannies. It has even happened to this Londonista, getting pushed into traffic by a man whose wrath was incurred when his request to 'smile, baby' was turned down five years ago. If you haven’t experienced something like this,......

First Friday of the month today which means Tate Britain is open late tonight with lots of free events to round off your week. This month's gallery fun coincides with the last few days of Sing London and has been cunningly named Sing Local as all things SW1 will be celebrated too. If you're limbering up for the big finale on Sunday at the South Bank Centre then you might want to get down......

We know people can love their pets a great deal and this morning, we have learned of how far a dog owner is willing to go to protect his puppy pal. About as far as the nearest police station, if you are Jose Mourinho. Mourinho, Chelsea Football manager, was arrested last night for obstructing police when two officials tried to remove his Yorkshire terrier dog from his home as it was suspected of entering......

The fight for London Mayor is seriously beginning to kick off. Our Ken, Greg Dyke, John Major, that the guy from the Big Issue - all have been fingered for the job. Now the latest candidate being touted is none other than Brian Paddick. Paddick is the Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. In Lambeth he famously focused his efforts on class A drug dealers and took a 'relaxed' approach to cannabis use.......

Chelsea and Arsenal have both won it in the past, but this year's London Senior Cup, premier competition of the London Football Association, will be fought over by Bromley FC and Tooting & Mitcham United who, as it happens, are also staging the final at their Imperial Fields ground (pictured above). The cup, which these days is "open to all non-F.A. Premier League and non-Football League Senior Clubs affiliated to the Association or approved......

The kind of record-breaking attempt where you balance an egg on your head while performing La Traviata backwards in a vat of custard - Londonist thinks those are pretty lame, on the whole. The kind of record-breaking attempt where you stand up for free speech in the UK while pointing out the ridiculousness of the paranoid laws introduced by the government which curb the right to protest, however - those are the kind of......

Here's an alert from the Westminster Police Security Desk: This message is to give you and your business, colleagues and friends advanced warning of Intermittent but significant additional Helicopter activity from 0800- 1600hrs (weather permitting) between Tuesday 5/02/07 and Wednesday 6/02/07. This is due to the filming of a major new film. Filming will take place over The London Eye / Victoria Embankment SW1 / River Thames between Westminster Bridge & Hungerford Bridge. Some......

oh dear. Tony Blair has been interviewed for a second time by police investigating cash-for-honours allegations. Downing Street disclosed that the 45 minute questioning took place in Number 10 last Friday, but was kept secret at the request of the Metropolitan Police. What happens if Levy turns rat? Will the whole thing end badly in an Infernal Affairs / The Departed inspired series of head wounds and elevator doors? Could it be that Blair......

We think this originated in a tabloid but we spotted it on a PSP forum via Digg: They were supposed to be guarding a wall in danger of collapsing in Chingford, East London, during last week’s gales. Thirteen people were killed by storms nationwide — including a two-year-old crushed by a falling wall in North London. A builder took the snap of the cops. He said: “They were oblivious to everything else.” The Metropolitan......

So first we say we can put on a better Olympics than Paris and much to our surprise we were taken seriously. Much backtracking later and a LOT of scaling down of the very same plans that won us the bid, we realise that we can't afford it. And now the new security director of the 2012 London Olympics reckons that al-Qaida will want in on the games too: The al-Qaida terrorist group is......

This is a tricky one. Do we really need a permanent SAS unit on standby 24/7 in London? Well, we've got one: The basing of a unit from the elite special forces regiment “in the metropolitan area” is intended to provide the police with a combat-proven ability to deal with armed terrorists in the capital. The small unit also includes surveillance specialists and bomb-disposal experts. Although the Metropolitan Police has its own substantial firearms......

Someone has updated the statue of Sir Winston Churchill standing in Parliament Square: A statue of Sir Winston Churchill has been attacked by vandals. Red paint was streaked across the stone plinth on which the statue stands... The Metropolitan Police said the incident, which was reported on Sunday afternoon, was being treated as criminal damage. Well it depends which way you look at it. A splash of colour cheers everyone up and the old......