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?

@blurpityblurp

But that is not the point.

No the point is a police officer made a decision to manually run a check on a licence plate for zero reason than because he believed two black people in an expensive car looked dodgy.

It could well be that the ANPR system picked up the plates.

But then what thought processes went on?
Did it flag anything up on the computer?

It would be very helpful to have voice / dash cam recordings in police cars.

Saying 'Ah but North Yorkshire is near West Yorkshire' makes the speaker sound frankly idiotic.

Exactly.

And the assertion that a car being registered in a low crime county that happens to border a completely different county that does have some high crime areas so whatif the car was actually infamous for being used to traffic sex slaves and was actually registered to Blofeld and the police just kept all this secret for some reason even though it would exonerate them from racism claims.

But obviously black people are?

Please do not put words in my mouth. I did not say that. But if you live or drive around in a high crime area, you're more likely to get stopped by the police. It doesnt matter if it's an inner city area or a council estate. It happens all the time

But neither Dawn Butler or her friend have a criminal record.

DB yes but we dont know the full details.

The car was not lined to crime in any way. The computer record didn’t flag anything to do with crime.

How do you know this? We do not know. The car, or car they thought it was, could have been previously owned by a criminal. We just dont know all the details yet

Saying 'Ah but North Yorkshire is near West Yorkshire' makes the speaker sound frankly idiotic

Do you know what County Lines means? Hope it never happens to your family or someone you know

Juniperfather. Name change?

Or someone else who loves to use the word "snitch"

Christ some people will just fall face over arse about themselves to make it fine.

There could be video - with an interviewable public audience of 100, on a heavily CCTV'd street at 2pm on a weekday, with ITV news running a live news stream in the background with this square in shot - of a cop screaming:

"I'm a racist cop! You're black! I'm going to beat you now, because you're black and I'm a racist cop! I have no cause to detain you and you are breaking no laws, I'm just a violent racist arsehole!"...

...and these people would still tie themselves up in knots to find a way it wasn't racist.

I bet these same people think they'd be on the side of right in the 1960's US South too. "Because that was different".

The ANPR details are different to the car and the registration in front of them.

That may have been why the car was pulled over!

A friend of ours, who lives in W Yorks received a penalty notice (or whatever they are called) for his car for an offence in London. As it so happened, his car was in a an official car park with CCTV in Yorkshire at the time. The police told him lots of cars are being driven round London on duplicate plates.

@Flaxmeadow

Saying 'Ah but North Yorkshire is near West Yorkshire' makes the speaker sound frankly idiotic

Do you know what County Lines means? Hope it never happens to your family or someone you know

Every single county in the UK has borders with other counties. Should we all be regularly stopped whenever we drive outside our home county just in case we're drug trafficking?

Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?

How do you know this? We do not know. The car, or car they thought it was, could have been previously owned by a criminal. We just dont know all the details yet

Because the police are on record as saying the reason for the stop was the car being registered in North Yorkshire.

Are you suggesting the police are lying about the reason for the stop, and for some bizarre reason are choosing to keep this invented-by-you “criminal owner” secret even though releasing it would exonerate them from the racism accusation?

Do you know what County Lines means? Hope it never happens to your family or someone you know

You hope what never happens? Seriously what on earth are you babbling about?

The manual licence plate computer check showed the car was registered in North Yorkshire which is a low crime area.

I don’t see what right the officer had to ask where she was going? A bit bloody extreme!

I hadn't heard that story, but she was mistaken for a cleaner by a Tory MP, when she was in an "MPs only" lift. He told her that the lift wasn't for use by cleaners!

You couldn’t make it up, could you

Mind you, same thing happened to me at work - ie I was asked to clear a spillage - I think because I look Hispanic like the rest of our cleaners

DGR yes depressing; but yet strangely fascinating watching the flaxen one being handed her/his arse - and I'm grateful to the posters who are so patiently doing it.

So 44% of people think OP is unreasonable and don’t think there is racial profiling in stop and search

County Lines is a drug-trafficking ploy.

www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/what-we-do/crime-threats/drug-trafficking/county-lines

It's got nothing to do with this story.

How do you know this? We do not know. The car, or car they thought it was, could have been previously owned by a criminal. We just dont know all the details yet

The car - not the one they pulled over because as you have acknowledged this was different to the one on the computer as it had different plates and a different model - could have been owned by a criminal.

But not the car they pulled over.

As I said, it's a good thing this wasn't a hard stop with guns. Who knows what could have happened there?

Mistaken identity, police all alert to drugs / guns, a wrong move or an interpretation of a wrong move, police then react....

And someone is dead.

Remember Jean Charles De Menezes

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes

Actually, not sure why I'm even bothering. The racism is so blatant

Blatant in what way?

The problem with accusing people of racism without any evidence is that it waters down the meaning of the word and the crime. Is there racism, yes of course there is, no doubt about it. But what evidence is there, so far, that the police were being racist?

The problem with accusing people of racism without any evidence is that it waters down the meaning of the word and the crime. Is there racism, yes of course there is, no doubt about it. But what evidence is there, so far, that the police were being racist?

You must admit it looks probable that racial profiling played a part. I know there’s the huge sideshow of mistaken car identity and Yorkshire whatever, but if there was a manual search, that was done for some reason, and not a reason the police are keen to put forward.

But what evidence is there, so far, that the police were being racist?

Because a police officer made the decision to run a manual check on a car licence plate based purely on the fact that something about two black people driving an expensive car looked dodgy. Whatever the computer check showed, he didn’t know that information at the time he made the decision to run the computer check - since obviously he hadn’t done it yet.

Black people being disproportionately stopped by police for little or no reason, or for reasons white people would never/rarely be stopped for, is a very well known form of racism. Have you literally never heard of racial profiling?

Blatant in what way?

Blatant in that constantly playing the whatifery card and being desperate to invent wild hypotheticals out of thin air (hypotheticals all predicated on the racist stereotype of black people being criminals) for no reason other than that you seem utterly desperate to defend racial profiling and deny racism.

@Flaxmeadow

Actually, not sure why I'm even bothering. The racism is so blatant

Blatant in what way?

The problem with accusing people of racism without any evidence is that it waters down the meaning of the word and the crime. Is there racism, yes of course there is, no doubt about it. But what evidence is there, so far, that the police were being racist?

Your posts on this thread say something about you.

From the start, you have talked about the reverse video, the fact she was not driving, the ANPR

The police involved are either (subconsciously) racist or they are incompetent.

Neither are good qualities for a police officer.

”All I saw in this video was a police officer politely doing their job. I have no idea what the complaint here could be.

Real racism is so much uglier than this.“

So some forms of racism is just pretend?Please can you explain what “real” racism is?

Ah - I guess it’s like “real” rape or “real” sexism

After all, if it doesn’t involve a lynching Or racial slurs, I guess it’s not “real” racism

I’ve been pulled over many times for routine checks. The best was a hard stop with 3 police cars and 6 officers, it was the early hours of the morning at the speed limit in a legal car. I’m a white, middle class privately educated male.

@Flaxmeadow - serious question: do you think the police were just doing their job with George Floyd?

How can you tackle institutional racism when people refuse to recognise that it exists?

I wish I knew, @AuntyPasta, I really do.

I feel very despondent about it, because we seem to have made very little progress in my adult life, despite legislative changes, landmark court cases and no end of campaigning. The conversations taking place about this and similar events are just like the conversations we had about stop and search under the "sus" laws in the early 80s.

I can't believe we're still revisiting the same sort of thing, where white people simply cannot see that black people are being repeatedly stopped because of institutional racism and racial profiling, nearly 40 years later. Half a lifetime on and no further fucking forward.

And we have the same old shite spouted in defence of racist behaviour, often by people who really should know better.

I could weep, I really could.

DH was stopped driving my car for a 'routine' stop. We were about two hundred miles from where the car was registered. They were very rude and borderline aggressive with him until he was able use his phone to bring up the insurance documents