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- "Plebgate" (also known as "Plodgate" and "Gategate") was a British political scandal which started in September 2012. The trigger was an altercation between Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell and police officers on duty outside Downing Street. Leaked police logs, later apparently backed up by eyewitness evidence, suggested that Mitchell had sworn at police officers and called them "plebs" (a pejorative word signifying someone of low social class) when they refused to open the main gate for him as he attempted to leave with his bicycle, telling him to walk through the adjacent pedestrian gate instead. Mitchell apologised, stating that he had used bad language but denied using the words claimed and in particular calling police officers "plebs". However, finding his position untenable amid the media storm surrounding the incident, he resigned from office a month later. The story returned to the headlines a few months later, when CCTV footage was released to the media which threw into doubt the police version of events and when it was revealed that an email purporting to be from a member of the public, which had backed up the accounts given in the official police log, was actually sent by a serving police officer who had not been present at the scene. The Metropolitan Police investigated the incident as Operation Alice. The affair was revisited again in October 2013, after a report from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) concluded that three officers had given a false account of a meeting they had with Mitchell at his constituency office in October 2012, and that the findings of a subsequent investigation had been changed just in time to recommend no disciplinary action be taken against them. After both Home Secretary Theresa May and Prime Minister David Cameron criticised the conduct of the officers involved, the officers issued a statement in which they apologised for misleading the public. At the Old Bailey, PC Keith Wallis subsequently admitted falsely claiming to have witnessed the incident and was sentenced to 12 months in prison. Once the criminal trials had concluded, Mitchell sued for libel. The judge ruled "on the balance of probabilities" that Mitchell had said "the words alleged or something so close to them as to amount to the same including the politically toxic word pleb." (en)
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