Corruption, incompetence and criminality is giving critics enough ammunition to compare the British police force with the 'mafia' – claims a UK cop writing for PublicServiceEurope.com under a pseudonym

I have often found myself wondering what would happen if you were to bring Multiple Miggs to 'show and tell'. The answer, of course, is obvious: it would be unpleasant and leave a bitter residue. In London, New Scotland Yard - the home of the United Kingdom's largest police service, which experienced its glory years in the 1970s - is feeling a similar sensation. The revelations last week or so are grim, will leave stains and no amount of shouting or spraying from Barry Scott will make the slightest jot of difference. Bang. The dirt is still there.

The Metropolitan Police Service, the first service to be established in England by Sir Robert Peel in 1829, now employs around 30,000 police officers and takes national charge of counter terrorism operations for the UK as well as keeping nine million Londoners safe every day. Known colloquially as 'the Met', it seems it may have been doomed from the start; the legend of the police constable with warrant number one says that he was arrested for being drunk on the first night the Met came into being. The organisation is now being rocked by whistleblowers.

Operation Herne is being managed by the Independent Police Complaints Commission and is focused on the investigation of the deployment of undercover officers into protest groups. Undercover officers, brave though they often are, now have children - it has been revealed - having duped a number of women into bed to maintain their deep cover. This rightly raises significant questions of ethics because of the impact on the offspring of people that do not exist. Innocents have been condemned to a life of confusion and undoubtedly will suffer further, as the emotional turmoil affects their mothers.

The simple question: can consent be given to a person that does not exist? Sadly, I fear that question may never be asked in a court unless it's one of these new 'secret' ones. In any other circumstance, the fact that everyone is talking about them would be delicious. These are significant human rights issues, which will doubtlessly become pan-EU legal precedent once the European Courts are reached. These are also significant issues shaking the foundations of policing in the UK, as the entire system relies on the consent of the public to be policed. Understandably this consent is being eroded.

Time and time again the Met has been at the centre of policing scandals, which have rocked all of the 43 forces across the country. In 1993, a young black teenager was the victim of a brutal and racist murder in London. The Met got the investigation wrong from the outset and it has since been plagued by corruption allegations. The resulting public inquiry, following a successful campaign by the tireless family of the murdered boy, resulted in the MacPherson Report. It branded the police as 'institutionally racist' and changed the shape of training for officers across the country. The 20th anniversary of the murder was on April 22.

The stain on the Met spreads further as the Lawrence family has been rocked by the Peter Francis revelations. Francis was an undercover officer with the 'special demonstration squad' at the time of the murder and was deployed, he alleges in his book - released this week - that the SDS were deployed to gather dirt on the family and the key witness; to discredit them in the wake of the racist murder. All the while Lord Condon, then the commissioner of the Met - often referred to as the top policing job in the country - maintained in the face of being branded institutionally racist that "labels cause more problems than they solve".

This would seem to be a two-faced statement if Francis' allegations are proven true. Of course, it would appear that the malt label on the whiskey he allegedly bought for Francis - in private - was less problematic. Condon has publicly denied that this event took place. Personally, I have long thought that Condon was right about labels - just not as he appears to have intended. Sir William MacPherson hit the nail on the head about the culture of the Met; the breeding, corrosive disease of it. The problem is that he described the whole culture and it got lost in the furious media focus on racism. The problem is that label was almost joyfully accepted, as it meant only having to fix one problem. The rest could continue because a label had not caused but permitted the continuance of more problems than it solved.

Institutional racism was a symptom, not the disease. Aside from this, the only other aspect of the Lawrence Inquiry and the MacPherson Report which I disagree with relates to Neville Lawrence's summation that when officers put on a uniform they should leave aside the self. It is more than that. The self goes out of the window with the taking of the oath and clothing is irrelevant. Further horror seeps from the now public infiltration of the Met by gangsters and private detectives, often former officers themselves. Seeking and selling the details of witnesses, working with the fetid News of The World. This is the axe buried in the face of Daniel Morgan, a private investigator murdered in the 1980s. Only now, thanks to the long campaign of his brother, will the corruption be exposed.

Already the Met is posturing; ready to take a step forwards and declare this mess behind the force. It makes the expected statements. It says: 'This was 20 years ago, times have moved on; we have been through the cycle of organisational learning.' Well, have things changed? The Leveson Inquiry part one - the large investigation into phone hacking, media ethics and relationships with senior police officers - concluded only in the very recent past. And part two is yet to begin. In between, it has become clear that evidence was withheld and again the allegation is that senior officers covered up serious corruption.

There is 'Plebgate', an incident relating to a cabinet minister and allegations of police corruption leading to him leaving his job. This only kicked off last September and the penalties are yet to be taken. And it was only in 2008 when rape victims were being convinced not to make reports because it looked bad on the performance figures. All of this stems from the Met. Little has changed. The police ability to keep secrets, so ably displayed with the Hillsborough revelations - they buried evidence and blamed the fans to absolve themselves from 96 deaths in a stadium in 1989 - shows itself as true today as it was when Jimmy Saville and other television and radio stars of the BBC abused children, and nothing was done.

The police reaction to all of this, on social media at least, has been a clear display of institutional protectionism. It smacks of the uncritical self-understanding highlighted in the MacPherson Report. Some of the more thoughtful officers are, however, standing out and saying 'enough is enough'. It is foreseeable that they will find themselves subject to rendition at some point soon, especially considering the stance of the Association of Chief Police Officers. The official line is that dirty linen should remain private, firmly linking the past to the present and bolstering the point that whistleblowers - much as elsewhere - are considered the problem rather than the concerns they raise.

In conclusion, when it comes to British policing the sorry truth is that ethics have gone the way of communications data: secretly intercepted, tinkered with and deleted after 30 days. To end on a different note, here follows a predictive policing update. Rumour has it that we can all give it two months and the current Met commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, will be mounting his white horse and riding into the sunset. His replacement is not known but Patricia Gallan - a deputy - would be a good choice, if you were inclined toward cynicism. There are deep wounds of racism and sexism at the yard and a black female commissioner would pay the ideal amount in public-facing lip service.

There would be organisational learning up the old wazoo and the door on the past would slam shut in one move. The ripples of the Met will be felt across policing throughout Europe as human rights cases are brought and conclude and although the full scale of the international impact will not be known for some time - the credibility of the police service in the UK, often thought of in positive terms, lies in tatters. I used to say 'it is a good job we do not have the mafia in England'. I am no longer sure that we do not. On that note, it is now time for me to plod on, to head back to the beat. The crooks will not police themselves you know and neither will the criminals. Besides, I have to help make arrangements for a dinner party and Hannibal Lecter can be quite a fussy eater.

The author has been a serving British police officer for many years. His real name has been kept secret for fear of disciplinary action by his employer