Thanks for this, care to shed some light on why with such an influx of intelligence the force is still rife with racism? You know cause, being black will still disproportionately see people stopped & searched. . . & so on.
Sorry but I find a policeperson calling someone ‘arseholeish’ for making ‘sweeping generalisations’ laughable.
[& no I’ve not interacted with the majority of the force. Nor do I need to.]
I seldom get involved in these debates because they are rarely as clear cut as they appear. I think a lot of people have good intentions when they speak and protest against these sort of things but then can sometimes get too tangled up in blaming one thing or labelling everyone the same when that is a mistake.
We both know that the person I quoted was essentially saying most police officers in the UK are thick. To me that is being an arsehole and making a sweeping generalisation.
If you made that comment against any other group of people then I would have the same reaction.
Ill try and shed some light and give an honest opinion on things about the UK Met Police. I'm not talking about American police because they're too far gone, there is something seriously fecked up over there and there doesn't appear to be anything being done to sort it out.
But I'll start by addressing your stop and search concerns, and there's a disproportionately for sure. However, if you think that is purely down to 'racist coppers' you are gravely mistaken. Racism in the police compared to 30-40 years ago is not even comparable. I'm not basing this on speculation, this is from talking to black people (men in particular)who were alive in the 70's and 80's who went through some absolute shit and that includes black officers who were bullied. So actually yes there is an improvement because of the change in 'make up' of officers coming into the force.
Secondly, you saw that Amy Cooper video in central park right? and you're aware that
a significant portion of stop and searches are based around information given to police by members of the public?
I think we both know people like Amy Coopers are not in the minority, so imagine those types of calls happening all the time on a daily basis with words like 'drugs' and 'knives' thrown in for desired effect. These members of public have now put police in a position where it is their duty to do something (search, most of the time in the UK,
as we know officers in the US take a different approach) You cannot assume a caller is lying. It would not have been assumed Amy Cooper was lying.
Now the theory goes if someone has nothing to hide they'll be cool and calm but if they get angry and disruptive they do, I don't think this applies a lot of the time mind. If you're a black male ' doing nothing' but people like Amy Cooper are constantly calling police on you for nothing, there are gonna be occasions where you will rightfully be pissed off and agitated. If you think these factors aren't going to have a massive effect on the figures of stop and search you'd be very naive. A lot of response officers in London don't get the time to be proactive and most of their stops will originate from calls made by the public.
Sure, pose the question to police, but also pose the question to members of public, to society, pose the question to Amy Cooper's, why are you calling police on black people for no fecking reason? and why are you lying about what they've got or are doing? what is it that makes you so uncomfortable when you see a black person 'standing around' or 'sitting in a car' or 'having a bbq'. Why do you continually confuse Asian and North African people with black people? To be fair I don't expect you or other people to know this or be able to see this wider picture but it's why sometimes 'statistics' don't tell the whole story which leads me on to the ' Corona BAME fines disproportionate' figures.
People are up in arms about this but by just having a bit of knowledge about things, its easy to see that the percentage difference between whites to black and Asians is not overly concerning. To start with the majority of those fines would have been given out by Metropolitan LONDON police officers for obvious reasons. The ratio of black and asians to whites in London, dwarfs basically everywhere else in the UK. Yet those statistics were presented as a reflection of the whole of the uk. There are barely any police officers in the counties, where it is predominantly white, so there's nobody there basically to give fines to these predominantly white people breaking lockdown rules, yet they've been included in these statistics.
and I am in agreement with what you said in its entirety, however, the police are supposed to be the most obvious example of upholders of the law, values, morals etc. before the community itself so before we look at society we need to look at the very people we are supposed to trust and who are supposed to set an example.