On Friday 12th July, I attended the London Police Race Action Plan (LRAP) community engagement meeting in Croydon, aimed at ending the systemic racism of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS).
Apparently 6 London community consultation sessions are taking place. The top 13 boroughs with the largest black populations have been chosen by the MPS for community engagement meetings –
- Enfield, Haringey, Waltham Forest
- Brent & Ealing
- Newham, Barking, Dagenham, Hackney
- Lambeth, Southwark
- Lewisham & Greenwich
- Croydon
Most People Of Colour Excluded
It’s disappointing that although the R in LRAP stands for Race, yet the Asian population of London (numbering more than London’s Black population) is totally excluded from LRAP.
So for example the large Bengali population of Tower Hamlets, victims of police racism and Islamophobia, are being totally ignored. Just as I write this, a video has gone viral showing the brutal unprovoked attack by a gang of police on a man carrying a Palestinian flag outside East London Mosque in Tower Hamlets. Local councillors and local mayor have all condemned the attack and currently Bethnal Green Police Station is under siege from the local community. Why is this community of over a million Londoners being ignored?
Croydon Event
The Croydon event was organised very last minute and under advertised, not even a mention on Croydon MPS social media. This was explained that apparently there was a problem – their initial event for 30 places got block booked by just 3 accounts in Hackney so no one else could book a place so it was thought pointless sharing the QR code on social media. They tried chasing up the accounts but got no reply so they banned them and had to recreate the event.
Anthony King hosted the event which was run by Chief Inspector James Weston with Superintendent Mitch Carr sitting in.
It seems most people in the room already knew each other. Chief Inspector James Weston explained that in order to expedite the process to ensure they got black representatives from the community they had sent invites to their black contacts in the community which explained how he was already on first name basis with many of the audience. A cynic might say that the community representation for the engagement was, to an extent, hand picked by the MPS.
The Presentation - What is LRAP?
Chief Inspector James Weston first went through a slide show on what was wrong with the MPS (Casey report) and what the London Police Race Action Plan (LRAP) was about. LRAP aims “to improve trust in the police in London’s black communities, and [MPS] to become an anti-racist police service”. Lofty goals indeed, though I would humbly suggest implement the latter first, then you will earn the trust of the community.
The presentation culminated in 4 consultation questions they wanted feedback from the 30 participants representing the community. Weston stressed the importance of not straying from the 4 questions for this consultation.
The consultation question were:
1. How to enhance public safety to reduce victimisation
2. How to improve service delivery to victims of crime to improve outcomes
3. How to improve representation to be reflective of London’s black communities
4. How to create a service that is fair, respectful, and equitable in all its actions and interactions.
Breakout Sessions
After the presentation the room was divided into 4 breakout sessions to solicit feedback on the 4 questions. Four black MPS staff coordinated the 4 breakout teams and collect feedback on laptops to report back to the whole group at the end.
Our group was assigned a down to earth, understanding black police woman, from whom we saw honesty.
Do You Get A Commission For Each Stop And Search?
With her story she had confirmed his worst fears, that it was much worse than what he had imagined. They were not stopping and searching him for monetary gain, but because they hated black people – they were racist and they knew the organisation they were working for would allow it to happen.
PC Lathwood
Since our groups discussion question was on “enhancing public safety”, for my contribution I mentioned the case of PC Lathwood – the local Croydon Met was shielding a convicted felon amongst its ranks who had attacked a black mother in front of her child in Croydon, after falsely accusing her of not paying £1.75 bus fare. The initial charge against him was racially aggravated assault but I guess they couldn’t prove that the black mother had been racially profiled, so he was instead convicted on assault by beating. The MPS has refused to sack him. How was the community meant to feel safe with a convicted felon patrolling their streets? The double standards were glaring.
The police woman empathised, nodding in agreement, saying they had had a meeting on it, without revealing any details or conclusions.
At the end of the breakout session, our MPS team leaders summarised the groups discussion to the whole room. Unfortunately my mention of PC Lathwood didn’t make it to the summary.
Question Time
A local councillor commented that the police need to “say sorry” when they get things wrong. Antony King, standing, burst out in loud applause “yes, say sorry!”. But when a black gentleman suggested rotten apples in the police force should be booted out, there was no applause, just silence from the panel. Apparently is okay to ask for an apology, but not okay to ask for justice.
I took the opportunity to emphasize his point with mine, and raised my hand, luckily I was selected.
I asked Chief Inspector James Weston:
“Actions speak louder than words…”.
Weston started nodding in agreement, but then he stopped when he realized where the question was heading.
“… We have a convicted felon on the force who has been found guilty of beating up a black mother in front of her child. The met is not doing anything about it. Why hasn’t he been sacked?”
Weston, taken aback, replied “This isn’t the forum for that conversation. You can talk with me outside of this forum about it.”
Remembering the first slide in his PowerPoint about the aims of LRAP, I interjected “Isn’t this about building trust in the community… when the community sees double standards…”
He cut me off “I understand, I’m happy to talk to you about it afterwards, you can visit me.. or we are here every Friday.”
Over a dozen local community organisations, including this one, had already written to Andy Brittain – Chief Superintendent of Croydon Police, and Mark Rowley- Commissioner Metropolitan Police Service a month ago, demanding PC Lathwood’s dismissal , they were ignored – didn’t even receive a reply.
Although I didn’t get any answers, I hope that by raising the issue in a public forum like this, it will have registered with Superintendent Mitch Carr who was sitting next to Weston that the community aren’t going to drop this, this time the MPS will not be able to sweep it under the rug.
Feedback Form
He moved on to feedback survey forms they had for us to fill. He said if we didn’t want to include our contact details that was our choice, but it was very important we fill in the bits about ethnicity. The 3 page feedback form didn’t actually have any box for feedback, its was just to collect our demographic details – our ethnicity broken down into about 20 sub-categories over two pages, and contact details. It seemed it was very important for the Met to show they had consulted with black people.
Conclusions - Cognitive dissonance?
I felt there was a sense of cognitive dissonance running through out the event – every member of the MPS in the room, all of them decent people, recognised the systemic racism in the police force, yet at the same time none of them owned it, or took any responsibility for it. Not the best start to tackling the problem.
Instead they were trying to recruit more black people to join this racist institute as if that would solve the problem. That is never the solution – the most racist Home Secretary’s we have had this century – Braverman & Patel, were people of colour. They made it worse, as they could get away with racism that previous white Home Secretary’s couldn’t. Yes black representation is needed, but that will not fix the rotten systemic racism at the core of the Met – it might even make it worse as next time if it’s a black PC who assaults a black woman who has been racially profiled, the racism might not be so obvious for all to see.
Chief Inspector James Weston showed slide after slide of the damning findings of the Casey report, talked of the black community being under protected and over policed, giving the example of blacks Londoners being 3x victim of homicide (under protected) and 3.5x more likely to be stopped and searched (over policed) and how this must change, but at the same time he took no responsibility, and his force is still protecting a convicted officer who has been found guilt in a court of law of attacking a black mother. And when this was raised, both him and Superintendent Mitch Carr saw nothing wrong in ignoring the concerns of the community they wish to build trust in.
It was as if they didn’t appreciate that systemic racism required systemic change, not window dressing, to resolve it.
For me, it seems that the PC Lathwood case was the litmus test – they failed the test of whether they were serious about building trust in the community let alone turning the corner to aim towards being anti-racist.
The cynic in me wondered if this was all window dressing to help get the MPS out of ‘special measures’ status? Two years ago, following a slew of failures and scandals, the Met’s Commissioner was sacked, and for the first time in its history, the MPS was placed into ‘special measures’ as a failed institute. Two years on it still remains under ‘special measures’. Under special measures it faces intense monitoring from the police watchdog HMICFRS and needs to show improvements to be taken off ‘special measures’ status.
No More Fine Words
Its also revealing that the National Black Police Association has, as of last month, suspended its support for the Race Action Plan (RAP). Their statement on the rollout of RAP talks of “not conforming to the principles of authentic engagement… gaselight communities and gives the impression that things are improving, when they are not.” [their emphasis]. That there are “deliberate attempt” to ensure “MPS is not forced into making improvements in London”.
They say they are suspending support to RAP because “the experience of black people and civil society organisations are neither listened to nor valued”.
Their own members who worked on the RAP are themselves being discriminated against and they are having to give evidence of discrimination at employment tribunal. Its grim reading.
Furthermore, their London branch – the Metropolitan Black Police Association has this month issued a strong statement of support for the call for suspension of support for LRAP.
It reads “London deserves a police service we can all be proud of but we are disheartened with the continuous rhetoric coming from the Commissioner and Senior Officers who do not appear to understand or care about the concerns of Black, Asian, or Minority Ethnic officers, staff and communities.”
It ends with “Actions speak louder than words #NoMoreFineWords”
UPDATE - 20th July 2024
Since we published our account of the public meeting on LRAP organised by the Met, it has gained a lot of positive traction, much of it within the police force itself critical of what’s going on. A link to it has been retweeted by:
- Abimbola Johnson, chair of Police Independent Scrutiny & Oversight Board
- Andy George, President of the National Black Police Association in the UK
- Metropolitan Black Police Association
- Charles Ehikioya, chair Metropolitan Black Police Association
- Dr.Peter Jones, former police officer, now focusing on implicit bias in policing.
- Nusrit Mehtab, former Scotland Yard Superintendent, author of ‘Off The Beat: My life as a brown, Muslim woman in the Met’.
And many others.
We are very grateful for amplifying our tiny voice. The article has as a result received 1000s of views. We hope it will help Croydon MPS to do the right thing.
Interestingly, in the days following the post going viral, we, for the first time since opening our kitchen over a year ago, received a visit from two police officers. It must have just been a coincidence!
Our message to the police is: “You are most welcome to visit anytime, both in your official capacity or as our guests. We saw the shocking figures published in March 2024 showing that 1 in 10 police officers have been forced to turn to food banks in the last 12 months, with 1 in 5 missing meals to get by. It won’t impact our pursuit of social justice.”