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

[Bloodyscarymary]

Just watching the BBC Panorama doco “Undercover in the Police” and I can’t help feeling a bit uneasy.

Yes, the behaviour shown is awful and they should lose their jobs, but having their faces, names and secretly recorded conversations, sometimes even off duty over a pint broadcast feels like a bit of a violation of privacy.

I honestly would have thought secret filming like that couldn’t even be made public, but clearly it’s legal or the BBC wouldn’t air it.

I’m not excusing what was said at all. The culture clearly needs to change. But is it fair to single out these particular officers when the problem is obviously widespread?

I also felt some of the more junior officers had just absorbed the culture around them, and at times the journalist might have been nudging them into certain topics. A few of the comments even felt like dark humour or going along with pub chat. Still unacceptable, but if you secretly recorded doctors or other professions that probably use a lot of dark humour to get through it, I’m sure you’d hear things that would seem really callous to an outsider.

Absolutely they should be fired/reprimanded, but do they deserve complete public exposure like this? AIBU to feel uncomfortable about it?

YABU they deserve everything that’s coming their way

YANBU it’s too much personal exposure when the real problem is the Met culture not these individual cops

What are the police recorded as saying?

Really? Have you forgotten Sarah Everard? The Met Police have a rotten to the core culture and it seems they don’t really care and have done nothing to address it. If that’s been exposed (again) I’m all for it.

AIBU to feel uncomfortable about it?

Why? They've been exposed as racist mysoginist creeps.

These are people we are paying our taxes for! FFS.

Good on the BBC for exposing them.

Culture is sustained by individuals going along with it and not challenging so yes, they are individually accountable for their own behaviour. Dark humour is too often used as a thin veil for discrimination and disrespect particularly of people who are incredibly vulnerable for various reasons. The police are public servants, they have a code of ethics which include integrity and respect - I very much doubt the people involved didn’t know what they were saying was, at best inappropriate. Whether they should be made publicly identifiable is I guess challenging but it does shine a light on a work culture that impacts the public they are meant to serve. I don’t have much sympathy.

Deeply inappropriate comments. Lots of sexual comments about people in custody / victims. One case on the BBC website shows a sergeant disbelieve someone reporting rape and domestic abuse. She reported her abuser had kicked her in the stomach. According to another officer in the video who was unhappy with the decision to bail the person accused the woman had an obvious footprint on her stomach, corroborating her claims.

This is good journalism. They have only shown those who were abusing positions of trust and did so repeatedly.

And look, I’m an investment banker. We’re loathed as a demographic post the financial crisis. The culture in our industry had to change and it really has. Nobody in my sector behaves in the way we did pre financial crisis - on camera or off camera. It wouldn’t bother me if Panorama filmed my team meetings undercover, all they would hear is ‘is that fair, should we check with compliance, are we being transparent?’

DH’s oldest friend joined the Met. When his friend was getting married, DH went on the stag. He’s never regretted anything more in his life. A whole weekend away with sexist misogynistic pigs. DH had no idea his friend was anything like that until he saw him with his work colleagues and they had been friends since they were small children. It’s endemic and it needs to be brought out in the open.

They are the police. One group of people you’d expect to behave in a civilised manner. You feel sorry for the racist misogynists? Fucking hell

Vile behaviour, of course they should be exposed! I worry more for the undercover guy and his safety going forward. Shame missed the last 10mins due to a tech issue

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgq06d44jyo

Article - video clips also prominent on BBC news page.

A little power is such a dangerous thing, and power corrupts.

having their faces, names and secretly recorded conversations, sometimes even off duty over a pint broadcast feels like a bit of a violation of privacy.

Handy hint: if you're not happy to have your name attached to it, don't fucking say it.

The end and worst possible result of these creatures going unchallenged is cases like Sarah Everards. A culture of sexual harassment, misogyny and rape myths. Racism and hatred, violence and thuggery.

How anyone can make any excuse for this is just beyond me.

We have 2 very senior police officers in our friendship group (friends with us only because of their wives). This programme did not surprise me in the least. I’ve heard far, far worse from both of them.

I'm.not sorry. One was recorded saying an immigrant should be shot and allowed to die.

YABU to feel sorry for them. All of the officers featured chose to spew their racist/ sexist opinions. Yes, the Met is institutionally racist and misogynist, and many police stations are pretty toxic workplaces, but an individual officer (or civilian employee) doesn't have to go along with crappy behaviour to the extent shown in the documentary. They could instead try to change the culture, uphold the law, show compassion towards victims of crime and refuse to go along with the bullies.

YABU. Every one of those with their faces shown made disgusting comments and, even worse, reference to causing actual physical harm to people they had detained, including a 17 year old with Autism. My only sympathy sits with their female colleagues, their female victims and suspects from ethnic minority backgrounds for whom they applied their own ‘justice’, before collection of evidence and trial. Their behaviour is frightening and public shaming is the least they deserve. The documentary also highlighted examples of very good, compassionate, lawful policing. It’s excellent journalism, exploring depths of culture that the Met would never be able to truly explore.

Undercover reporting doesn't sit well with me in general, though I admit I haven't watched this one (yet). It is tricky that bad people need to be called out but good people get caught up in the crossfire.
I worked in a place that was the subject of an undercover Panorama episode and did nothing wrong (& therefore wasn't featured in the program) but it still made me feel manipulated and violated. I thought I genuinely got on with the person and it's not fair that they only show the bad side of things not going well when there's so much good too.

If it makes more police scared of exposure to the point they never ever behave in such a way again then that would be a good thing. This is a force that has been in the spotlight for the last few years and was supposedly addressing the appalling culture. The police and police staff involved will not have been unaware what they were doing and saying was wrong. I felt sorry for their colleagues who were identifiable and clearly didn't agree with the culture. I worry they will be targeted. It was vile and I have no doubt more will be reported off the back of this. Brave journalists and colleagues who whistleblew.

This guy I didn’t have a problem with being in the documentary because he was discussing a case in the office. I also don’t have a problem with the recording of actual instances of police violence or discussions about that.

The ones that made me particularly uncomfortable are the off duty conversations, or the jokey things that were clearly just bravado (like the finger breaking guy - I really doubt he has ever done that and we have zero context of what else was being said by others in that conversation).

The most concerning to me was the really young officer at the pub drinking with the journalist, who was prompting him, agreeing with what he said and literally egging him on to share his views when he realised he had gone too far. Yes he was horrifically racist - he should be fired as police officers must be held to a high standard of morals. But I’m not sure he deserves that conversation to be completely public for the world to see for all eternity.

We could probably have done with some of their undercover journalists investigating the vast number of BBC nonces over the years. People in glasshouses......

You feel bad for them?! After the filth that has come out of their mouths?! I’ve just watched this with incredulity. The Met is toxic and rotten to the core. It’s frightening, terrifying. These are people we are supposed to trust…god help any of us if we find ourselves in London needing the assistance of the police. You are most definitely being unreasonable.

Do every job , especially if in a position of trust , as if you are being filmed . Or if you are in retail etc, imagine you are told there's a mystery shopper is in the area.

I remember there being an almost exact same exposé, possibly another Panorama one I'm not sure after Stephen Lawrence was murdered and several officers were covertly recorded spouting all kind of racist shit. Best part of 30 years later and here we are again with the same story and this time they are also spewing Andrew Tate style bollocks.
And then we're expected to feel sorry for them, really?!

The programme makes a point of saying that many officers there are good public servants who are doing their best in challenging circumstances. The arseholes caught on camera being racist misogynists deserve to be named and shamed.

I absolutely despair that you feel sorry for them.

These people aren't selling fucking paperclips for a living. They have an extraordinary level of power over ordinary people's lives. The standards that they are (supposed to be) held to are in place for a bloody good reason.

Not being racist is hardly “high moral standards”, it’s common decency and the absolute minimum of standards. The person had many options open to him - he could have challenged the journalist, walked away, changed the subject. It’s more than overdue that this stuff is exposed and people held to account.