To feel a bit bad for the met police on bbc panorama undercover

But they aren’t going to deal with ‘the people’; just the ones who happened to be caught on camera, so to speak.

no I don't think it does. I think that the people ARE the culture, they make the culture.

I have only seen the coverage of this story on the news, @Bloodyscarymary, and frankly that was bad enough - I can’t imagine how much more dreadful stuff was on the full Panorama programme.

I have no sympathy for the officers involved - if they weren’t displaying horrific attitudes and saying racist, sexist, misogynistic and violent things, they wouldn't have been outed by the hidden camera footage.

I hope this sends a message to anyone else in the police force, who shares these vile attitudes, that it is utterly unacceptable, and they need to change, if they don’t want to risk their jobs. And the heads of all the police forces in the UK need to do everything necessary to root out any officer who shares these Met officers’ (lack of) standards.

Exposing the individuals takes that point away, though (I do agree with what you are saying, though.)

and we think that means they will have the book thrown at them? It doesn’t. It means the ones the BBC exposed will in all probability be dismissed; the ones it didn’t expose won’t be, all will carry on until next time.

I think the fact that these people can say and do these things DOES expose that it is institutional. If it wasn't institutional they wouldn't get away with it or be so open about it. It may be a culture of "no one cares" rather than its permitted or encouraged but there is something rotten there.

Glad you didn’t suffer them saying it in front of you. Sadly they probably didn’t say it to your face but saved it til you were out the office/ they were in the pub and it was just the ‘lads’.

How else are you supposed to conduct undercover reporting? Ridiculous. Of course you need to pretend to be “in” otherwise you’ll get nothing. He barely even chuckled at anything they said.

The reportage was very clear that it is sergeants' duty to maintain the discipline and the standards of the force, the group, the cohort (call it what you will) who are directly answerable to them.

I'd particularly target sergeants therefore. Leadership failure is screaming out from this report.

But each individual has his or her own conscience all the same, and all of them are sworn officers, who pledged to protect the citizens and uphold the law, so they're all culpable. All should be named and shamed and stripped of their jobs (and pensions imo).

Indeed but how are they going to be found without undercover reporters? That’s the heart of the issue. Because if anyone thinks ‘BBC have shown bad men, bad men have been shown the door’ they are unfortunately misguided and naive.

Like priests!

This

It needs tackling as a package. Tossing out the active bad apples is a start. Once you see that you can’t behave that way in a job, you’re either going to toe the line, get out of the job or be kicked out.

I don’t think anyone’s arguing it shouldn’t be, just that it should be exposed in an institutional sense rather than an individual one.

Otherwise new recruits will join the police and in ten years will be just as unpleasant and dangerous as these individuals, irrespective of whether or not they were when they started.

These are public servants!! We pay for them to have our safety and best interests at heart. Of course racism, misogyny, violence, abuse and corruption should be exposed FFS!!!

Interestingly I see it differently. I don’t think it’s as simple as removing the horrible people makes the organisation OK. It’s institutionally racist and sexist; it is that which needs tackling.

I am going back nearly thirty years here but two school friends of mine joined the police. They were really nice boys at school. I hope they have stayed so and become really nice men, but the problem with a corrupt institution is that it corrupts and changes everybody. Winterbourne is a good example of this.

Always hold people accountable. Those who are racist and misogynistic should not be in our police force.

Doesn't surprise me. A former friend of mine is a police officer and she invited me out a couple of times with her colleagues. They were horrid. Just spent the night insulting people they were supposed to help. They also had a Lego figure they would carry around and would take pics of it posed in ways they had found victims/vulnerable people. I found it so grotesque that I stopped being friends with her. That and the fact she had an affair with her married sergeant.

No, but putting the blame on a system instead of individual personalities is the problem here. These men are vile, they don’t belong in the service. Simple as.

It still won’t make a difference if changes aren’t made at the top. That’s where the SS comparison comes in. Or is anyone really so naive as to think ‘oh, these men are bad, sack them, all is now well’?

Having worked for an LA and given legal advice to the IOPC on disciplinary matters and complaints, I have no faith in the system whatsoever when it comes to taking action against officers. They close ranks, move them to desk jobs and reinstate them as soon as they can. There is no accountability.

This is nothing like your analogy of ss. These officers were blatantly vile, blatantly racist, blatantly misogynistic, and everything else. They were disgusting men, with complete disregard for anything and anyone around them. There’s nothing cultural about this. They are grown men who have taken oaths … they have disregarded everything in the worst way possible. They have their own minds and are in a profession that should behave very differently to how the did/do.

Yea I agree with that , it’s the context

None of the above.

I feel uncomfortable about holding individuals responsible when it’s a cultural problem. That’s my concern about this. It inevitably means those at the bottom will be disciplined (sacked) whilst those at the top will carry on.

It is like when an error of judgement is made at social services and the individual social worker inevitably carries the can.

Maybe. I know one journalist who works in PR for the Met, but that's not same as being out there on the streets.