Who does the police work for? A Statement by Southall Black Sisters

You are right that there are myths around this, and there have certainly been attempts to sue doctors for Good Samaritans acts but, even in the US, they are not successful unless you do something really egregious. There are still some grey areas though, e.g. on planes crossing multiple countries' air space.

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow I was once very unwell at London Bridge station (near The Pillar Of Controversy, in fact) & was positively swamped by off-duty doctors & nurses. For which I’m very grateful.

That isn't correct about doctors; we have a professional obligation to provide help in emergencies and we can get in serious trouble with the GMC if we don't. There are thousands of people alive today because off-duty doctors/nurses/paramedics gave them emergency care.

It's also not true that we become personally liable if things go wrong - doctors hold personal medical indemnity/insurance policies and are protected from claims that arise from Good Samaritan acts.

As with the police, though, there have to be reasonable thresholds. I have many times given help to someone who has collapsed or been seriously injured when I'm off duty, but I can't intervene for everyone who looks a bit poorly, or I'd never get anything done.

The Police are only interested in white straight men.

Disgusting that your friends were treated like this OP ,but no surprise to me.

Hopes justice will be served (I doubt it though)

And a particularly nasty racist attack, too. It’s perhaps too easy to forget that kind of overt, blatant aggressive racism, at least where I live and hang out, as I don’t see it.

I agree it's unwise to speculate about a case that seems to be on its way to court. But I'm happy to place on record that I have huge respect for Southall Black Sisters but not quite so much these days for the Crown Prosecution Service.

"Girls" was used upthread of both the white and black women, but I agree that it has particularly loaded connotations when applied to black women, and we should all be careful to avoid it when talking of adults.

Yes. The racist abuse sounds disgusting.

I wonder whether the PP using ‘girls’ got the wrong impression from the idea of a group physically fighting- it’s something I associate with youngsters on a night out, perhaps wrongly.

I have a lot of respect for SBS, and their exec should not be described as a girl.

And, whatever turns out to have happened with the fight, it is vile that the women involved experienced racist abuse. I'm not going to justify violence, if they started the fight (not saying that they did), but I can understand feeling physically threatened by verbal abuse.

Also reserving judgment until the full facts are available. This is very clearly just one side of the incident.

SBS do some very good work so hoping justice will prevail.

Given the nature of the injuries I'm surprised that they can just caution someone and not take it to court. I'd guess the assailant was pleading self defence against 3 people and claiming not to have initiated the violence.

Until it comes to court it wont be obvious what exactly happened so I'm not going to speculate. I subscribe to innocent until proved guilty.

Black 'girls'? One if them is Selma Taha, Executive Director of SBS, who is over 12 and deserves the title of adult female human, aka woman, as do her friends, also presumably adults.

SBS is a well respected organisation that has been fighting violence against women and supporting women since 1979.
To the best of my knowledge it has never accepted the TWAW line, and is actually women-only, unlike other crisis centres who have been in the news recently.

So if the Executive Director of SBS says she experienced something, with or without photographic evidence of injuries - I hear you, Selma Taha, I'm sorry you had that frightening experience of the kind of violence your organisation has been fighting since 1979, and I hope you get justice.

I notice misbehaviour every time I go out. Imagine being expected to intervene all the time.

And completely agree off duty police should not have to intervene in every given situation. We don’t live in a police state.

I think best not to jump to conclusions and let it play out.

If this version is correct (which it certainly could be), that will be made evident in court, when the video becomes public.

There does not seem to be any dispute that the black women were subjected to racist abuse, as the white woman has accepted a police caution. What is less clear-cut is what happened in the physical fight. We will find out when it goes to court.

You assume wrongly, it’s in the news reports. White woman started on them after they asked her to move her suitcase after she nearly hit one of the women with it.

Incidentally, the CPS is probably doing exactly what you did. Recently white people have been getting so upset poc speak out against racism that they’ve been excusing all racist behaviour and trying to find some way to make it the poc fault.

The black woman in this scenario was bitten, had her hair pulled out, was called a slave and had monkey noises made at her. There are pictures of her injury all over the Internet. Why are you going to assume that somebody who has been so violent is the more innocent party in the scenario?

Inevitably, all that happened is that they were trying to get the woman off when the policeman initially failed to bestir himself. It will be interesting to see all the responses once that trial is over. Even if they’re vindicated, somehow it will still be their fault.

Nah, all the real information is all going to come out in the wash. It'll be a highly publicised trial.

I look forward to seeing the CCTV footage and hearing the facts from beginning to end - not just the cherry picked elements from either side.

The white woman accepted a caution for racially aggravated public order - to receive that outcome, she's admitted her crime and is eligible for a caution, so that's over and done with.

The three women are clearly denying any offences and as such are not eligible for a caution. Therefore they have been charged and will have to go to court to either plead not guilty and see a trial through or plead guilty.

CPS made this charging decision, not the police. They will have had to have seen all the CCTV footage, any body worn camera footage (which also records all sound) and any statements from any person who has given one - and any explanation as to why someone didn't or wouldn't give a statement.

There's a lot more to this than we've been told so far.

Yes, the question of who protects women from racial or misogynistic abuse in public remains unanswered. And the retreat of the police from routine patrols of the streets as a policy decision (not blaming individual officers) makes us all less safe. I'm tired of being gas-lit that "Bobbies on the beat was a myth" or that a visible police presence is not cost effective - it's conveniently difficult to quantify crime prevented or the public feeling safer.

Really interesting set of questions, and I think all the assumptions can be true. Yes the met is often racist and misogynist. Yes one white women behaved appallingly. Yes three women responded with defensive aggression.

Yes, all those organisations commenting should have been more careful about what they said.

No, you can’t believe anyone about anything these days! 😅

Sad times when CCTV is necessary everywhere.

Yep. It's unreasonable to expect off-duty officers to intervene in every potential offence, and I doubt we would like it if they did. You see potential offences all day, every day. They wouldn't be able to leave the house.

I would guess that, in this case, the officer clocked that the woman being verbally abusive was outnumbered and female, so the risk to the women being abused was low. It is tricky because, of course, being racially abused is going to make anyone feel very unsafe but, in most cases, in this scenario, they wouldn't be at physical risk.