Query: is anyone actually surprised that Met officers at Charing Cross have been found to have made appalling remarks about women and apparently made light of domestic violence and rape, not to mention cheerily suggesting that illegal migrants should be deported or shot?
Among the comments recorded by a BBC reporter, Rory Bibb, who went undercover at the station, was that of an officer who reported stamping on a detainee’s leg and another who observed that he could break the fingers of anyone who didn’t want to be fingerprinted.
My own feeling when I learned about all this was one of déjà vu. How many times have we been told about a problematic culture among Met officers? Too many to count. And from the looks of things, it hasn’t gone away.
Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has wearily responded that “Officers behaving in such appalling, criminal ways, let down our communities”. And of course he is right. They do. He says it’s likely that the offenders will be sacked within weeks, pour encourager les autres. That will give others pause. Similarly, the PM has condemned the reported remarks as “shocking”.
But I’m also right behind the Commissioner in refusing to accept repeated invitations to admit that his force is institutionally racist rather than that individual officers are. It is possible to identify a culture of bullying and unacceptable shared assumptions – the sort that only a very brave soul would confront - without suggesting that the entire institution is racist. That was, remember, the conclusion of the MacPherson report after the appalling racially motivated killing of Stephen Lawrence, and the upshot of that judgment was disastrous. It meant that the force was forced to spend endless time and effort attempting to change the mindset of its members, and engaging in ritual self-flagellation to appease its critics instead of dealing sharply with actual offenders.
If those who belittle alleged rape victims or fail to investigate domestic violence, let alone threaten detainees, know that they’ll be sacked if they’re found out – as may well be the case with the nine officers identified in the BBC documentary – well, the rest will learn the lesson.
Let’s consider seriously what happens however, when a force in effect decides that it is institutionally racist and inculcates that mindset in its members. You end up with a reaction in the other direction, as with the sins of the police force in Rotherham and other cities who turned a blind eye to the child rape gangs of Pakistani origin over the course of decades.
We learned yesterday about some of the horrors of those crimes when some of the Rochdale ringleaders were sentenced yesterday for raping girls as young as 13, repeatedly and systematically. One of the most shocking aspects of these cases was that the local police turned a blind eye to the activities of the perpetrators – gang rapists – because they feared being challenged for racism. And the victims there were the most vulnerable imaginable. It’s cases of this kind – and they were replicated in scores of towns and cities across England – which make me allergic to the institutional racism label. The upshot of that designation will have disastrous consequences in itself.
But one reason I’m not surprised why the Charing Cross coppers were so ghastly is that they give every impression of being rubbish at their job. A friend of mine lives less than ten minutes from that station. Repeatedly, she’s been to them to report drug dealing on the street next to her and the intimidatory atmosphere this creates in what is the very heart of tourist London. She’s frightened to leave her flat sometimes. She says wearily that the police simply won’t go down the worst street for drug dealing, though I suppose it’s possible they do and they’re all undercover. If she is to be believed, this central police station is characterised by unforgivable inactivity, not just bad attitudes.
And thanks to the closure of half the police station front desks in London, it’s to Charing Cross I must go if I need actually to report a crime to a real live police officer, because all the local stations near me – Shepherd’s Bush and now Hammersmith – are being closed. Sometimes you have to feel sorry for the Met Commissioner - but even sorrier for us who look to his force for protection.
