This is huge and it will come back to bite us if you don’t do something

On 14 September 2014, Detective Inspector Meriel Buglass, who headed a unit dealing with sex offences in Rochdale, said this in The Mail on Sunday:

"The fact is the police failed those girls. I could not have been more vocal about the threats and risks... but I was appalled at the response. Management appeared not to be interested, they were only interested in targets, it was a completely target-driven culture.

The main priorities were acquisitive crime – robbery, burglary and car theft. Money was being piled into these crimes... They didn’t want to class the abuse as Asian on white girls. They didn’t want to cause a fuss... Political correctness and cultural sensitivities were important to management."

The day after she submitted the report, Meriel had a meeting with Superintendent Martin Greenhalgh, who said:

"If I choose to investigate it, we will."

Meriel replied:

"This is huge, there are massive threats and it will come back to bite us if you don’t do something!"

However, The Sunday Mail tells us 'she was told to concentrate on domestic violence because the crime ‘featured on performance targets'.' The Mail added:

"She was so frustrated that she took the matter further and was promised help – yet it wasn’t until eight months later that the investigation was taken up. ‘And then it was taken away from me,’ said Ms Buglass...

Just as political correctness was partly blamed for failing abuse victims in Rotherham – where it emerged last month that 1,400 children were sexually exploited between 1997 and 2013, Ms Buglass says it stymied her work in Rochdale...

In 2012, nine men from Rochdale and Oldham who ran the child sexual exploitation ring were given sentences ranging from four to 19 years."

Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk was quoted thus:

"The scandal of how police and other agencies failed children being raped on an industrial scale is getting worse every week. Police leadership have completely lost touch with ordinary people’s values."

Lost touch?

It's worse than that. They don't care. Civil servants like Greenhalgh progress on the back of their ability to turn a blind eye. Those who are content to despise their own kind most aggressively reap the richest rewards.

Treachery is now institutionalised, expected and, at the highest levels, insisted upon.