Institutional Racism in our policing - Dawn Butler MP

[AuntyPasta]

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/09/labour-mp-dawn-butler-stopped-by-police-in-london

The police stopped the car being driven by her friend (she was a passenger.) Unlike the elite athletes stopped with their 3 month old baby in the car www.theguardian.com/law/2020/jul/06/why-did-police-stop-and-search-bianca-williams-and-ricardo-dos-santos she’s had an apology.

AIBU to think that if she wasn’t an MP the police would be sticking by their ‘reasonable suspicion’? Is that what it takes to be dealt with fairly by the police?

wouldn't joke.... someone stole some coping stones from one of the dry stone walls in my village last year!

I wouldnt joke either, because West Yorkshires appalling crime statistics are encroaching on neighbouring areas

You might think you're safe in your leafy suburbs 10 miles away but you're not. This is the whole point of County Lines crime. For criminals to target the money in those areas. There are a lot of resources being put into it by the criminals and so also the police.

More BAME people live in high crime densely populated urban areas where there is more policing. Do we agree? More people get stopped in high crime areas, whether they are black or white, and this will affect national statistics. The police are not as active in middle class suburban areas or the countryside, because there isn't as much crime. I think this is more about class than race. More about deprived areas, with high crime rates.

So are you predicting that - whether nationally or locally - car stops, broken down by race, mirror the demographics? You think 4% of motorists stopped are BAME In areas where the population is 4% BAME? 44% where the population % is 44%? Etc?

@YgritteSnow

Right so apparently he's black but very pale skinned, clearly, and even close up - in her edited video - his skin passes as white. So they didn't see two obviously black occupants of a vehicle and stop them "because they were black" did they? They've given their reasons and those reasons make perfect sense. It's bullshit.

I don’t know how you can conclude that unless/until you can see his face. I agree he’s fair skinned. Obviously DB says he’s black and she would know. The key thing here, though, is how he appeared to the police and whether he was likely to have seemed BAME to them. There’s no point anybody trying to insist he can’t have while his face is pixelated.

www.standard.co.uk/news/archbishop-of-york-police-stopped-me-eight-times-6497085.html

I really hoped the police had moved on from this.

You think 4% of motorists stopped are BAME In areas where the population is 4% BAME? 44% where the population % is 44%? Etc?

I dont know but comparing BAME statistics to the whole country, as some have in the thread, is flawed.

It's like the stats for covid19. If more BAME live in densely populated areas where there is more covid19, then obviously, when compared to national statistics it will show that BAME are higher in the numbers compared to a national average. Same for class. More working class live in densley populated urban areas of higher deprivation where there is more Covid19

Not saying that's the whole story but it's part of it

@Flaxmeadow

wouldn't joke.... someone stole some coping stones from one of the dry stone walls in my village last year!

I wouldnt joke either, because West Yorkshires appalling crime statistics are encroaching on neighbouring areas

You might think you're safe in your leafy suburbs 10 miles away but you're not. This is the whole point of County Lines crime. For criminals to target the money in those areas. There are a lot of resources being put into it by the criminals and so also the police.

Lol at 'leafy suburbs'! I live in a national park. The nearest city is 30 miles away, and it's also pretty clear my comment was a joke.

Only someone from the south east could hear the words 'North Yorkshire' and convert it into 'leafy suburbs'.

I've lived in a number of cities, including deprived areas of central London, as well as rurally. I dont need someone who thinks North Yorkshire is a 'leafy suburb' to tell me anything about any of these areas.

Is it just a tragic lack of critical thinking skills or wilful ignorance?

30km away even!

I know you’re very fact-driven @Flaxmeadow but can’t you at least concede that assessing probabilities is important too?

I wouldnt joke either, because West Yorkshires appalling crime statistics are encroaching on neighbouring areas

The traffic stop didn’t happen in West Yorkshire, the car wasn’t registered in West Yorkshire, the wrong plate wasn’t registered in West Yorkshire. West Yorkshire has literally nothing to do with it. Even if the car was registered in West Yorkshire, you think every person/car in Yorkshire is linked to crime?? You think simply “being from West Yorkshire” is sufficient for a police stop?

For criminals to target the money in those areas. There are a lot of resources being put into it by the criminals and so also the police.

Why do you keep banging on about crime, when the car license plate check didn’t bring up any links to crime, and there’s zero evidence anyone involved has any link or even potential suspected link to crime?

You seem awfully keen to keep shoe-horning crime and non-existent criminal records into a thread about a black MP being racially profiled.

It reminds me of the threads on the Ahmaud Arbery murder. Plenty of people started inventing hypotheticals involving hypothetical crimes to justify murder, and the problem is once someone creates a theory/hypothetical then it exists in the world.

I mean, I could easily post “well I don’t know for a fact that Flaxmeadow isn’t a Satan worshipper. But hypothetically she could be. I’m just saying we don’t know for sure whether she is or is not. The facts are not in yet.” Clearly the likelihood of Flax being a Satan worshipper is infinitesimal. But inventing a hypothetical designed to discredit someone and then justifying it by saying “well we just don’t know one way or the other if the thing I just made up is true or not” is outrageous.

Imagine if all that effort could be spent on fighting racism, misogyny and homophobia, the world be a much nicer place.

Imagine if it was spent on fighting class issues. Mumsnet is very much a middle class progressive site and class abuse is ever present. Even in this thread.

I've seen young working class women reach out in forums for help and simply because they have literacy problems, they've been shunned and laughed at mercilessly

This is bullshit. She wasn't even driving, her white Male friend was! Seen the video? There's assertions that she flipped it to make it look like she was driving when she wasn't. She's absolutely loving every minute of it and enjoying making a huge meal out of it. I've linked to the video. I've had to use a random video rather than a mainstream news copy because the mainstream ones seem to have edited out the white driver. So make of that what you will.

This is from the Channel 4 News journalist who covered the story:

"As I’m getting a lot of nonsense about this too, here are some facts:

1. The driver (Dawn’s friend) was a black man not white
2. No one has “flipped” the video
3. The Met Police say their officers made a mistake"

mobile.twitter.com/fatimamanji/status/1292758664324030465

Q: As a journalist can you confirm you have checked who the driver was and he is a black man?
A: Yes
mobile.twitter.com/fatimamanji/status/1292808344911196161?cxt=HHwWgsC9keKV_fAjAAAA

I know you’re very fact-driven @Flaxmeadow but can’t you at least concede that assessing probabilities is important too?

Yes I agree, and also it's an infolding story.

Yes I agree, and also it's an infolding story.

Not really since the police and Johnson have admitted they were at fault.

They aren’t going to turn around and say “oh btw Dawn’s black/white/young/non-young friend is actually a wanted criminal we just completely forgot to mention it till now.”

As I linked above The Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu was stopped and searched 8 times when he was Bishop of Stepney. I wonder how many other Anglican Bishops suffered the same.
I really hoped it had changed.

As a white person I find the attempts to undermine her account or justify what happened as sickening.

@Flaxmeadow

Imagine if all that effort could be spent on fighting racism, misogyny and homophobia, the world be a much nicer place.

Imagine if it was spent on fighting class issues. Mumsnet is very much a middle class progressive site and class abuse is ever present. Even in this thread.

I've seen young working class women reach out in forums for help and simply because they have literacy problems, they've been shunned and laughed at mercilessly

Now we're getting into serious whataboutery.

Classism is wrong. That doesn't mean we should all defend racists.

@Flaxmeadow

Imagine if all that effort could be spent on fighting racism, misogyny and homophobia, the world be a much nicer place.

Imagine if it was spent on fighting class issues. Mumsnet is very much a middle class progressive site and class abuse is ever present. Even in this thread.

I've seen young working class women reach out in forums for help and simply because they have literacy problems, they've been shunned and laughed at mercilessly

I agree with you there too. The two things often overlap, of course.

Classism is wrong. That doesn't mean we should all defend racists

Firstly, I'm not defending racists

My point was, the police also stop working class men, black and white, in high crime areas driving expensive cars. Whether that's right or wrong, it happens all the time because the police are more active in those areas

they are more likely to be stopped, compared to national statistics, by living in an area where more crime is committed

For many years, I lived in a part of Croydon that regularly had the highest crime rate in the borough. It also had a very high rate of "sus" searches and was a racially mixed area.

I often walked home very late at night, from time to time worked in a pub where a fair few of the regulars were active criminals and kept some decidedly dodgy company. On one occasion, I was walking home while a racially-motivated murder took place within a quarter of a mile of the house I'd been visiting.

But I never got stopped, regardless of whether I was on foot or driving, pissed or sober, alone or with friends. I wonder why that was?

It could have been because I'm female. But none of my white male friends ever got stopped either, yet I would see the police searching young black men on a regular basis.

I'd really like to see the figures for police stops broken down by ward and by ethnicity. If being present in a high crime area is the reason for stopping people, the ethnicity of those searched should broadly reflect that of the area.

I think that data shoudl be gathered and published. If the police aren't racist, they can afford to be transparent. And if they are racially profiling, there will be some empirical evidence and measures can be put in place to stop it.

LakieLady I wonder why that was?

Because you and your friends didn't fit the description?

Being black and being WC aren’t mutually exclusive. The difference is if you’re white and WC your family’s lives could change in a generation and leave the worst of that prejudice behind. If you’re black then you can’t educate or earn yourself out of prejudice. It doesn’t matter if you are poor or rich, educated or uneducated, famous or unknown, you’re going to have people making judgements about you because of your skin colour, whether it’s being stopped by the police, mistaken for a cleaner www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-london-35691467/black-mp-was-mistaken-for-a-cleaner-in-westminster or being told to use the back door at work when you’re the boss www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/15/british-vogue-editor-edward-enninful-racially-profiled-by-magazine-security-guard

Afterthought:

they are more likely to be stopped, compared to national statistics, by living in an area where more crime is committed

This is a form of victim blaming, really. Culpability by postcode.

@ReceptacleForTheRespectable : Coping stones? Clearly a criminal mastemind.

The crime where I live now is terrible. Three years ago, someone had a bicycle stolen from their garage. It was the first crime in at least 24 years, if not longer.

When I left my car keys in the ignition one evening, someone removed them, locked my car and posted them through my door. That wouldn't have happened in Croydon, I'm sure!

This is a form of victim blaming, really. Culpability by postcode

Why?

Do you not think working class people, especially the victims of crime, want more policing targeted in their areas? Why wouldn't they want more policing?

I'm working class, I live in a high crime area. I want more active policing not less. I want more cars stopped and more searches. As a woman, especially on the streets I have to walk around on a daily basis

You may not believe that you are 'defending racists', Flaxmeadow, but your first instinct was to disbelieve the account of the black woman who was present at this incident.

Similarly, I am sure that the people who say "Well, what was she doing in his hotel room? It's entirely possible she just regrets it, we don't know the whole story, do we?" don't think that they are defending rapists. But by immediately disbelieving the account of the woman who was present, that is exactly what they're doing.