Broken and rotten
The London police force is a mess.
The Metropolitan police is broken and rotten, suffering collapsing public trust and is guilty of institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia, an official report has said.
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The 363-page report details disturbing stories of sexual assaults, usually covered up or downplayed, with 12% of women in the Met saying they had been harassed or attacked at work, and one-third experiencing sexism.
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The report found a bullying culture, frontline officers demoralised and feeling let down by their leaders, and discrimination “baked into the system”.
But the people in charge are pushing back.
Sir Mark Rowley, the force’s commissioner since September, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic that Casey insisted Britain’s biggest force deserved.
Attaboy! You tell those politically correct inspectors where to go.
Rowley said he wanted more time to study Casey’s recommendations, but said he accepts the findings. He said he accepted Casey’s factual findings about racism, misogyny and homophobia in his organisation and they were systemic, but neither he nor the Met would accept they were “institutional”, claiming it was a political term.
Hey, you know what else is a political term? “Police.” Of course it’s political, because the whole thing is political. What else would it be?
The current Home Office is opposed to the idea of institutional racism.
The Tory Home Office that is.
Until now, Rowley has generated a small degree of hope with his vows to reform, but Andy George, the chair of the National Black Police Association, said: “The commissioner is wrong to once again fail to accept the Met is institutionally racist. We risk repeating history and cannot let this moment pass as another missed opportunity.”
The Guardian gives the last word to Harriet Wistrich.
Harriet Wistrich, of the Centre for Women’s Justice, said Casey’s findings were “without precedent in its unswerving criticism of a corrupt, institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic police force”.
She said the two government inquiries after the Couzens scandal should be given greater powers and placed on statutory footing.
Because of the institutional racism and misogyny.
So much for the pretence among those who like to think of themselves as libertarians that racism doesn’t really exist, and that it is white people who are really the victims.
Sir Mark Rowley is cravenly following the Home Office (in its present incarnation) in its pretence that ‘institutional racism’ does not exist; he did, however, speak of racism as well as misogyny as being ‘systemic’ in the Met. One would like to know what his definition of ‘systemic’ is, and how it compares with ‘Institutional’.
Tim, I suspect that ‘systemic’ is an acknowledgement that the behaviour is everywhere throughout the operational space of the organisation (but obviously not senior leadership!), but that it is the fault of the individuals involved. ‘Institutional’ would mean that it was a feature of the organisation from the top down, known about, condoned, even perpetuated by the senior leadership and intentionally designed into the organisation. Whatever they have to tell themselves to sleep I guess. Frankly I consider it splitting hairs with no meaningful distinction. Apart from anything else, how does someone work their way up through the rotten system without being tainted? how many decades of such a systemic issue do you have to have before it becomes de facto institutional?
There is in fact a very clear definition of ‘institutional’ racism in the Macpherson Report about the murder of Stephen Lawrence and its disgraceful aftermath:
‘The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racial stereotyping.’
The present Home Office wishes to pretend there is no such thing, which is why Suella Braverman said in the House of Commons in response to questions about the Casey Report, which used the term to describe the mess that is the Metropolitan Police, that the term itself was merely political.
It is an important distinction: if it were merely an institutional problem, well cut off the head and the body dies. If it’s systemic then it’s simultaneously impossible to remove and no one’s fault (which is probably true to a degree)…
Can’t really comment on the state of British policing but I suspect if better people became police the problem would gradually solve itself. Now convincing those people to become police… Not so easy.
Blood Knight # 4: ‘Cut off the head and the body dies,’ you write. But please read Macpherson’s definition. If that definition is acceptable, I hardly think that cutting off the head is going to be sufficient. And what is your definition of ‘systemic racism’ that makes it so radically different from Macpherson’s definition of ‘institutional racism’? It seems to be defined in a variety of ways. And what is Rowley’s? I don’t know what Rowley’s definition is, and suspect that, if pressed, he would find himself forced to give much the same definition as Macpherson’s for ‘institutional racism’.
Regarding the problem of ‘bad’ policemen, if people who are, or who prove themselves to be, unfit for the job are accepted into the force or allowed to remain in it when it becomes clear that they are unfit (as has been happening), then it is no simple matter of harbouring the vague wish that ‘better people’ become members of the police. Problems so great as those of the Metropolitan Police hardly solve themselves.
And here’s a few paragraphs from an article by John Fox, Senior Lecturer in Police Studies, University of Portsmouth on the website ‘The Conversation’:
“Baroness Louise Casey has found that London’s Metropolitan police force is institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic. We heard similar 24 years ago when, after the incompetent investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, Sir William MacPherson reported that the Met was institutionally racist.
“The Met’s commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has accepted the findings of the Casey review and acknowledged that work needs to be done. Yet he rejects the ‘institutional’ label to describe the Met’s problems.
“In fact, the review reveals exactly what it means for these problems to be institutional.
“Racism and sexism by officers towards their own colleagues and the public has been allowed to flourish unchecked by the organisation. For Rowley to quibble about phraseology, and disagree with this term because it is ‘political’, is a sign that he is already trying to protect the Met from external criticism – an example of the harmful and excessive hubris Casey describes.
“What stands out most to me is that the good people within the Met workforce are scared. They are afraid of their own colleagues, but also scared of speaking out about them because they fear their managers are just as bad. And they are worried about losing their jobs if they rock the boat. As one officer told the inquiry team in a chilling comment:
“‘I am scared of the police. I don’t trust my own organisation.'”
Every time I hear that three-point list of failings I notice the absence of the thing that usually gets mentioned early on in every recital of The List Of Bad Things We Should Be Against. Thank goodness, no transphobia in the Met!
Catwhisperer#8: I imagine that transphobia comes under homophobia.
https://www.treelobsters.com/?786
I recommend listening to this Youtube recording of Baroness Casey, the person in charge of the Casey Report, talking about Institutional Racism and other matters to a House Select Committee:
Politics JOE: MPs shocked as the full extent of the Met’s racism, sexism, and homophobia is revealed
I liked the lobsters and the apples, Jim Baerg#9, but as will be clear from this recording, the matter goes far beyond bad apples (or lobsters!).
Link to the video for convenience.
Thank you, Banichi. I’m not very good with proper links!