BLM - Worried about the anti-police sentiment in UK

[Balhammom]

I went to a local BLM protest y’day. It was passionate and very good natured (and, before anyone asks, generally socially distanced).

The overall BLM message is clearly very important. I do not want to live in a world where black communities are treated differently or feel like their lives are worth less what anyone else’s.

However, the anti (UK) police sentiment troubled me. I know this isn’t universal but lots of signs features “ACAB” and messages like “defund the police “.

I appreciate the hostility towards US police, particularly in the context of the truly appalling death of George Floyd. However, how can it be okay to treat the UK police with the same hostility?

In London, in particular, hundreds of young people are dying from black-on-black violence. A generation are at risk from drug gangs. I have no doubt many protestors could name the handful of black people who have died following encounters with Uk police. But how many could name even the last couple of black murder victims?

I know they’re not perfect, but so many police are working so hard to literally save lives from gangs and solve some of these dreadful murders. Shouldn’t we all be helping them with this? Doesn’t BLM require us to end all types of unjustified deaths that disproportionately affect the black community?

Police are perfectly capable of looking after themselves and the vested interests they are employed to protect. Obviously. Not sure why you'd be worried about them.

I can’t say that the Met aren’t arseholes to black people in London, I’ve never lived or worked there. I can say that it is evident that police forces across the country have been fully supportive of the protests and most will want to engage with communities and strive to make improvements. They are not, never have been and never will be perfect but they are also not had bad as they are being portrayed to be eg the ACAB types.

In my experience, Northern Ireland, the police Are every bit as bad as the US police. It has been proved that they colluded with loyalist paramilitaries to kill catholics etc.

The amount of personal stories I have about the police is shocking and I grew up rurally.

Of course they have given them a shiny new name but it’s no different. And what’s worse, as they try to recruit more catholics, they will accept anyone even if they are not adept for the role.

I've seen a lot of people saying things like 'its not all protestors rioting, looting, being violent, lots of them were peaceful, don't lump us together with the rioters' etc...

But some people can't seem to accept that in the same vein, it's not ALL police that are racist, abusers of power either.

As a whole I think our police force is very good, especially in comparison to other countries. There are problem people within the force that need rooting out no doubt but screaming 'fuck the police', 'defund the police' etc... Is ridiculous. Where would we be without them really? Considering the majority, I believe, are just trying to do their jobs as best they can.

Why would you even care? I mean that seriously. In the context of this protest, why are you expending your efforts on protecting the police? Do you think they need you? That they require your work and attention?

The British police are corrupt as fuck and always have been.

in 2010 Jimmy Mubenga does while being restrained by immigration officers on a Heathrow runway.

In 2017, Rashan Charles and Edson da Costa both died after being restrained by police officers.

In 2012, Sarah Reed was thrown to the ground, grabbed by the hair and punched three times in the head by PC James Kiddie as he arrested her on suspicion of shoplifting. The attack was so brutal that Kiddie’s fellow officers reported him to the Metropolitan police’s directorate of professional standards. Four years later, Sarah hanged herself while in police custody because the police denied her mental health treatment and did not assess her as being at risk of suicide.

In 2015, Sheku Bayoh died in police custody, having been restrained with a level of force that caused him 23 separate injuries.

None of the police involved in these deaths have been successfully prosecuted.

The Lammy Review showed that while black people comprise 3% of the overall population in England and Wales, they currently make up 12% of its prison population. The percentage of black people in Britain who are in prison is higher than the corresponding figure in the US.

Black Britons are now stopped and searched for any reason at 8.4 times the rate of whites.

Drug searches made up 60% of all stop and searches, with most being for cannabis possession. Black and Asian people were convicted of cannabis possession at 11.8 and 2.4 times the rate of white people, despite lower rates of self-reported cannabis use. Studies have repeatedly shown that stop and search tactics are not effective in tackling knife crime.

That’s why there are calls to defund the police.

You know that saying, ‘if you only have a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail’? That’s exactly the issue with policing - they are an oppositional institution who exist to suppress, with force if necessary, problematic behaviour. They aren’t social workers, community organisers, advocates for young people, educators, public health experts, or therapists. All of those people are better placed to address issues like knife crime, but instead of funding them to the level we currently fund the police, we pay for an institution of force and punishment, which is hamstrung by its own vast systematic bias against black people and other POC.

‘Defund the police’ doesn’t mean ‘let’s have no police at all’. It means ‘let’s spend some of that huge police budget on other tools, so that we don’t just have hammers in our toolbox’.

OP the police are arseholes to black people in their 30s, 40s and early 50s who are middle class professionals going about their business. It takes until you are in your late 50s until they stop following you and stopping you for no reason. And this isn't just the Met.

Police are perfectly capable of looking after themselves and the vested interests they are employed to protect. Obviously. Not sure why you'd be worried about them

Why are people chucking bikes at police horses in London because of a police murder in Minnesota? Why are police in London responsible for that? Are police in Sweden guilty? Are police in Quebec guilty? What about police in Singapore? Or Peshawar? Are police globally guilty? The policewoman whose horse was attacked has broken ribs, collapsed lung, broken collar bone. Is that in honor of George Floyd? Why isn't David Dorn's name being sprayed on memorials? Does his death not matter? The people using George Floyd's death to violently attack cops are thugs. The people justifying them are thug apologists. Neither give a single toss about George Floyd, David Dorn or anyone else.

It means ‘let’s spend some of that huge police budget on other tools, so that we don’t just have hammers in our toolbox’

Ahh so all those years that people have spent moaning (and lots of them on threads here too) that the police are too underfunded to effectively deal with crimes, attend call outs in a timely fashion etc are just incorrect now? The police have a huge budget that they can afford to lose do they?

None of it is acceptable zscaler, and you're right, we absolutely do need a bigger range of tools in the box.

If I hadn't read your explanation though I too would have taken "defund" to mean de-fund (remove funding).

@zscaler I can appreciate the anger over the deaths that you have raised, and also the stats about disproportionality, but I don't really see how "defunding" the police would help. None of that is/was caused by the police spending money on military style equipment (as in the US). If anything, the remedy would be more training (which costs money), and potentially more neighborhood officers (I.e. officers that build a relationship with the local community, as opposed to e.g. the TSG coming into an area in a rowdy van, stopping and searching men they don't know, and then buggering back off to their base). Again this would cost more money.

N.b I absolutely believe there should be more money spent on work community workers, educators etc as you say, and also definitely in the wider criminal justice sector (access to lawyers, cases getting to court within a sensible length of time, rehabilitation in prisons etc) which currently disproportionately affects black people.

If the police stopped black and minority/mixed ethnicity people as frequently as they stop white people how many days of officer time would that save in a year? 5? 50? 500? Or over 5000?

www.stop-watch.org

Ahh so all those years that people have spent moaning (and lots of them on threads here too) that the police are too underfunded to effectively deal with crimes, attend call outs in a timely fashion etc are just incorrect now?

I think it’s a fairly common misconception that more money for police = safer, healthier and more peaceful communities. But when the police are a fundamentally racist institution, that will never and could never be the case.

Being able to name one horrific incident every few years really is not evidence that the police are all bastards. The issues in the UK, and there are issues of course, are of a different magnitude to the US.

I personally know and have known through personal connections multitudes of decent, liberal, non-racist police officers. They shouldn't all be tarnished with the same brush, just as young black men should not be. I do agree that older officers probably more likely to hold racist views but as a BAME person that is sadly my experience across many areas of society.

Front line policing needs funding to support many different things. The government allocating money to youth workers, children's centres and community outreach should not have to come from robbing a different public service.

Prison statistics clearly impacted by policing strategy but also by CPS decisions, judges, people getting into crime in the first place. All of these problems need far more nuanced solutions. Throwing things at police just won't help.

My opinion re: police reform is that I'm sure reform is needed but actually it's a small peice of a puzzle.

If a disproportionate number of black people are ending up being stopped / arrested / charged / incarcerated (which I believe they are are) then we need to look at why that is happening and the reform needs to happen there.

Taking that step back in the chain then means you're also in a position to impact on the reasons behind gang crime. As a pp correctly highlighted, gang crime is not exclusive to black people, in places not as diverse as London it's obviously a white crime. We need to work on the causes and impacts of poverty, the impact of low educational attainment, the disenfranchisement of the deprived.

That's where it all starts and that's where you'll find the fact that BAME are twice more likely to be in poverty. It's all connected and focusing solely on the police won't change that.

@zscaler

Ahh so all those years that people have spent moaning (and lots of them on threads here too) that the police are too underfunded to effectively deal with crimes, attend call outs in a timely fashion etc are just incorrect now?

I think it’s a fairly common misconception that more money for police = safer, healthier and more peaceful communities. But when the police are a fundamentally racist institution, that will never and could never be the case.

Surely a better answer is to properly fund all of the organisations mentioned social workers, community organisers, advocates for young people, educators, public health experts, or therapists initially, not by removing funding from an already underfunded police force.

In that case, it's a misconception that people have been complaining about for years. We can't just now act like the police are massively overfunded and have a huge budget they can afford to have cut. Like all public services, they are actually underfunded. That's been well known for a long time now.

@zscaler

Meanwhile, as people chuck bikes at cops in London because of a police killing in Minnesota, this is what is happening in Harlesden, where a two year old was shot to the other day.

Residents on the Church End estate spoke yesterday of their shock and anguish at the shootings. One local man who knew the family said that police had struggled to end the bloody conflict between gangs from Church End and the neighbouring Stonebridge estate after police station closures. “My friend’s son Quamari Serunkuma-Barnes was stabbed to death outside school,” he said. “Now her daughter and grandson have been shot. Ask yourself. How would you feel? Sad and angry. That’s how you’d feel.” A mother of three who lives within 20 yards of the shooting scene said she was “shocked” and “sad” about the injured boy and mother. Abrar Fyad, who has lived in Harlesden for seven years, said: “I’m really sad about this for the mum and the child. I want police to find the shooter. The family have the right not to get shot. That family are scared and so are we. I have two daughters, five and ten, and a son, he’s nine. I don’t want to go out. It’s not safe. My three children sleep in bed with me at night.“The other day I saw a boy with a knife the length of my arm outside my house. Others have tried to break into my house. We need CCTV, more police officers, more police cars

And just to clarify, I am not suggesting for a moment that there are not issues within our police. At all. I've no doubt that there needs to be some change, certain individuals need to be rooted out etc. But the answer is not to 'de-fund' an already underfunded public service.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/harlesden-shooting-toddlers-father-was-cleared-of-stabbing-man-to-death-6hxpgtgjz

Well we won’t be able to pick the best police officers if they are treated like this as no one in their right mind will want to join
Typical treatment for public servants

Thanks to everyone who has posted after I did last night. Finally an engaging discussion with people explaining their reasoning it is so interesting.

I wish I could quote multiple posters in my reply but I can't so I'll try and just answer a couple of points that posters have raised.

Do we have regular training? Yes. We do indeed. When new bobbies come in they go through an initial training period of intense study and also personal safety training it is force dependent how long is spent on this.

After that you are assigned a partner and go out with them for a period of around 3 months. You're on probation for a whole 2 years so you're a trainee or student officer for this time. It is not common in my force, but entirely possible for a few candidates per year to not make it through their probation period.

Once you are a fully independent PC you still have to recap training you have already done so every year you are tested that you have maintained your fitness level and you also have to redo OST which is officer safety training. This includes everything from having to handcuff someone to evacuating a fire to how to put your hands over your head should you end up being dragged along the floor.

My force hold very high standards in terms of officer training and encourage us to become more and more qualified over time in different things, sometimes there is a big waiting list for training meaning that you are waiting years to learn a particular thing, this is a real shame but is due to such extreme staff cuts over last decade so there are a lack of trainers. So many people who retired were never replaced.

So the 20k uplift which is talked about as some sort of magic present is just a joke because along with job cuts and the amount of people who left the force during that time means we lost closer to 50k officers. 20k simply isn't enough to get us back to pre 2010 numbers it needs to be more!

Another poster made a comment saying police are not social workers/mental health practitioners etc and that is true, we are not. But please don't assume there is no knowledge or training.

As part of the uplift my force has powered on with recruitment quickly not even stopping for lockdown.

I had a new cohort come in this month of 32 candidates.

In the group only 2 people are fresh out of uni. The other 28 are social workers, teachers, mental health support workers, children's home staff, prison officers, parents, ex PCSOs.

All of this previous life experience will be completely amazing and will certainly lead to a more qualified and understanding workforce. It really isn't the case that people come in at 18,19 or 20 anymore. We look for people with a previous life experience instead as we know it is important as to support members of society properly you must reflect the diverse communities that you represent.

@leckford

Don't expect any of the people who are chucking bikes at cops in London to consider any of that. You see, only some lives matter. Only some kinds of racism matter. As for the ludicrous suggestion that there is an umbilical cord linking unarmed London cops to a police killing in Minnesota? That narrative is being pushed by people who want to smash things up. And burn things down.

Being able to name one horrific incident every few years really is not evidence that the police are all bastards. The issues in the UK, and there are issues of course, are of a different magnitude to the US.

Are you just conveniently ignoring the statistics about stop and search and disproportionate levels of black people in prison because it doesn’t fit your ‘few bad apples’ narrative? Can you manage to sweep the murders of Black people under the carpet as long as they only occur every few years?

This isn’t about whether all police officers are bad. My husband’s best friend is a police officer and he is one of the most fair, honourable, upright and anti-racist people I know. He has been hugely vocal in his opposition to what US and UK police have done.

But the institution is fundamentally not fit for purpose. The police are wearing too many hats. They can’t play every role in creating safe, fair and peaceful communities. It’s time we tried funding the people who can instead.