We are poised for the gunfight at Kensington Creek. Crawling west along Kensington High Street, in west London, is one Wyatt Earp (Superintendent Ali Dizaei, the Iranian cowboy). And in the opposite direction, dragging his left leg, long and slow, is Doc Halliday (the Metropolitan Police commissioner, John Stevens). The guns will be blazing for sure in this internecine war. Metaphorically, that is.
Dizaei, who has joint British and Iranian citizenship, has been suspended from the Met since 18 January. He has not been formally charged with anything. But a whole host of allegations have been made against him, with as many as 42 officers investigating him at one stage.
A hot racial conflict is alive and well and living in the Met. In at least five cases over the past year, blacks have walked off with huge sums after alleging racial discrimination in the Met.
Dizaei was just about to sue when he was suspended from his £52,000-a-year job. The list of allegations is remarkable for its range: assault, misuse of drugs, deception, seeking pecuniary advantage, corrupt practice, divulging confidential, unregistered interests, sex with prostitutes, accepting gratuities, being beholden to individuals. In short, according to his accusers, a rich and thriving exile pimped, stole and defrauded.
Dizaei denies all the allegations. I have met the man. He is a very striking and charismatic personality - not only a man of phenomenal intelligence, but absolutely lyrical with it. He carries a certain Persian sophistication. He has a PhD in law. He worked for the Thames Valley police force and then moved to the Met on promotion, before being posted to Kensington police station. I cannot think why, with such loud qualifications, he should want to join the Met. First degree? Yes, but a PhD? I don't get it. Perhaps he belongs to a caste in Iran which has traditionally served the state in areas of internal and external security.
It seems Dizaei doesn't live in the same world as the average policeman. Close associates of his family are diplomats - the Liberian ambassador at large lent him his car for a couple of days. That is one of the alleged crimes: he drove a car with diplomatic licence plates. Another alleged crime is that he helped the same man in a dispute with a builder. The case went to court and the diplomat won. Yet another alleged crime is that he went to a restaurant owned by a long-standing friend of his father, and got free meals and drinks. The owner faced the revocation of his licence because of noise levels. It is said that, somewhere in all of this confusion, the restaurant owner handed over an envelope to Ali Dizaei.
The list goes on. Dizaei allegedly took tickets, seven of them, from the organisers of an Iranian concert. He allegedly accepted presents of a Filofax and other trifles from a local casino. He met a friend charged with drink-driving and allegedly received payment for his advice.
Blacks in the Met say all of this is trivial. Dizaei did not socialise with other officers. He has a haughty bearing, he cocks a snook. He is Persian, for heaven's sake. That is a civilisation with each caste in its place, fixed, fast and frozen. He cannot simply shed his past, on coming into the police, like a snake shedding its skin at whim.
Dizaei is also an active member of the National Black Police Association. The association exists because of the miserable failure of the white-oriented Police Federation, and it has been thriving particularly since the Lawrence inquiry. The police and the army are replete with racism. It is a way of life. The former recruits from the latter.
The current investigation opens itself up to huge ridicule. The fallout within the Met is going to be beyond our imaginations. The Met had better give up, for the time being, any hope of recruiting a reasonable number of blacks. White officers, by and large, do not want them. The Met is bleeding black police from within. Soon, it may be lily white again. Much depends on the results of the gunfight at Kensington Creek.
