Former Scotland Yard Detective Peter Bleksley has hit out at Kent Police, following their "hugely damaging" arrest of a pensioner over a social media post.
Retired special constable Julian Foulkes was arrested and detained for more than eight hours over the online post, warning about the threat of antisemitism in Britain.
The incident took place in November 2023, just after the October 7 attack in Israel. Kent Police has since admitted the caution was a "mistake" and deleted it from the accused's record.
Foulkes is now preparing to "take legal action" against the police force following the incident.
Peter Bleksley has hit out at Kent Police after arresting a pensioner over a social media post
GB News, Getty
Expressing his outrage at the arrest, former Scotland Yard Detective Peter Bleksley told GB News: "The police chiefs are leading it, and they're incompetent. And so many of them got away from the rough and tumble of frontline policing as soon as they possibly could.
"Because rolling around on the pavement with robbers, burglars, car thieves and suchlike was way beneath them.
"They prefer the comfort of their leather topped desks and their vast offices. And so, consequently, the disconnect between senior police and the frontline has grown."
Warning of more situations like this within the police force in future, Bleksley added: "There is a language that the ambitious cops have to speak now if they want to climb that greasy pole of promotion.
"And so dissenting voices, of which there should be some experienced cops getting these situations going 'there is no crime committed here, what on earth are we doing getting involved in it?'
"And until voices like that are going to be heard, then these kind of ridiculous situations are merely going to happen again and again."
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
Bodycam footage showed police raid Foulkes's home, where the examined booked and went through his cupboards and drawsThe TelegraphOffering a "brief history of policing, Bleksley claimed that the police forces becoming increasingly more "intellectually snobby" is "indoctrinating" incoming generations of officers into believing these sort of crimes take priority.
Bleksley explained: "Right around 1997, a certain politician by the name of Blair said 'education, education, education', and an ambitious police officer thought, 'we'll have a piece of this', and off they went to university.
"And they came back, many of them, into policing with a feeling that they were part of academia - and of course, this has perpetuated through the subsequent generations of police leaders.
"And in their intellectual snobbery, they've got to the point where they want so many of the frontline officers to get degrees or have policing degrees as part of that recruitment process."
Bleksley observed: "So policing really has moved away dramatically from the blue collar occupation that it was, where police patrolled the streets, prevented crime and investigated investigated crime when it occurred, to this ideology, which has been picked up and indoctrinated into policing generations.
Bleksley told GB News that arrests over social media posts are 'hugely damaging'
GB News
"It is so hugely damaging that they're taking it upon themselves to patrol free speech rather than patrol the streets. And we are getting a catastrophic situation, time and time again."
A Kent Police spokesman told The Telegraph that the force had "concluded that the caution against Mr Foulkes was not appropriate in the circumstances and should not have been issued".
The spokesman added that a further review would be carried out "to identify any learning opportunities".
Responding to the incident, a Home Office spokesman said: "This incident occurred under the previous Government.
"The Home Secretary has made clear that she believes all police forces should be focused on the central priorities of the Government's Safer Streets Mission."
