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

Exactly, where this Muslim guys talking poorly of white women the same people trying to minimise this would be up in arms and demanding names and faces all be exposed. And the chat about immigrants not understanding or valuing British values would ensue etc

Double standards.

I really don’t think doctors and firefighters share these views as you say

I think some do.... I don't know much about firefighters as I have not worked with them.....but I have come across occasional NHS staff with those views and can say that they are generally not tolerated by their collegues. I think the difference is in the culture- that in the Met, even the people who are shocked by it won't/can't act against it.

Yes, if I remember right, they were told to look at Charing Cross station as were told was problematic. Someone tipped them off I presume.

If you want to engage in misogynistic, racist, victim-blaming "banter", then don't join the police.

someone who had perhaps tried to address it via internal channels and got nowhere?

It has exposed them.
This is good.
They should be held accountable.

They know this is wrong and yet still chose to behave in this abhorrent manner.

We don't need police officers like these so they can leave.

Also calling anyone toerag and scumbags is not professional nor acceptable either.

it's not fair that they only show the bad side of things not going well when there's so much good too

But the good does not balance out or cancel out the bad. It is not a case of showing both sides of what a person or company or team is like.
If a person is capable of saying truly disgusting racist and misogynistic things, then that is who they are. The 'good' side is just an act, a performance, to cover up the bad for social situations.

But it's not proof of the hundreds of similar abuses going on in the Met every hour of every day due to a toxic culture. Naming and shaming a dozen individuals does not address that. More seriously, it enables the narrative that getting rid of a few bad apples that we now know about is addressing the issue. This covers up a failure to address the toxic culture. It could have been more effective to air the footage anonymised. The story is then a rotten barrel, not a few bad apples. The culprits could still have been reported and dealt with off the scene, but not been the main story.

In their job, their off duty views and actions matter. It matters how they talk, it matters how they view women, it matters how they view minorities.Their views directly impact the way they do their job and the way they treat those people when they come into contact with them.

The off duty chat also matters because it shows the culture amongst them. It shows the way they all behave and how they condone each other’s views, allowing it to continue they are back on duty.

Most corporations have morality clauses for their staff, higher up staff absolutely. If they’re caught saying or doing this sort of thing, off duty, then they’re out a job. Because it’s no acceptable for people who behave like this in private to hold positions of power in public. That’s why it matters.

Why don’t the police have a morality clause in their employment contract? This shows why we need it.

Presume something like that. It does smack of a frustrated staff member. Good on them actually if that was the case, brave.

Absolutely this. There’s a BBC podcast series, Undercover - The Spycops about this which is well worth a listen.

That's nice to know, as I haven't watched the episode yet.
It certainly wasn't mentioned on the episode about the place I worked.
What unsettled me about it was the fact that we all shared a changing room and they recorded in there, while we were getting changed for work. Yes, they're not going to air that footage hopefully but it's not nice being recorded without your knowledge in a state of undress. It's not nice.

OP the copper apologist seems to have done a runner.

I do get your point on this.

Agree, it is because of their job that it matters.
If a bloke who works in a shop, or garage, or sales, or accounts team, for an ordinary company was spouting this vile stuff, that is bad, but it is not a matter of public concern (beyond the fact that no-one should feel safe to say such stuff).

But these people are police officers, with a HUGE amount of power over ordinary people, including women and people from ethnic minorities.

The Police are the biggest gang in any village, town, or city, and they act like it.

One ifgicer talked about how he enjoyed hurting people, while at work, on a break. Then they treat a autistic 17 year old, in care, appallingly and violently. The officer, on a night out admits to, what amounts to torturing him, in the van, for twenty minutes. It isn't low to record that.
@FlyMeSomewhere look up jobs in prisoner transport, custody suites, prison officers etc, there's lots of vacancies.
Although I will say that some of the views that they will get disciplined for, should be allowed. The man who wasn't treated great, but not subject to violence, had impersonated a police officer to try to kidnap a woman. I stand with them on, multiple rapists should be shot in the head. Anyone who wants to have sex/marry a child is scum.

We have seen the murder of Everard by Cozens, the nasty rapist finally jailed (David Carrick), and this SAME group of police officers in CHARING CROSS (FFS) were caught and some dismissed for sexist and racist WhatsApp group comments.
the Centre For Womens Justice report on domestic violence perpetrators in all English police forces is really alarming. So yes, there is clear evidence of sexism and racism in our police. This affects tgd public, especially Womem and BME groups.
Rowley seems to be impotent in sorting them ( the Met)out. My own perception of the Met is that they ARE sexist and racist.
so YES , I think panorama did a good job exposing them.
WE wd not be sexist and racist on or off duty in our lives. Wd we?
the worrying thing is that many will probably not be sacked.

I think the only thing to consider is whether exposing their faces and opening them up to a public shaming will be more or less effective at changing their views. I would assume less. Most people who are publicly shamed tend to double down or develop a persecution complex.

I agree it would have been better to report them to superiors and have those issues addressed properly with counselling/disciplinary action/firing. Publicly exposing them (ie not blurring their faces) should be a last resort - better that we know people are thinking those things than have them hiding them and thinking them anyway. How else can views be addressed and changed?

Publicly exposing them means the MET can’t sweep it under the rug. Which is what they do.
Let’s not pretend the bosses don’t know. They know about all of this behaviour. It’s allowed to go on. Always has been, because it’s not public so they can just let the officers remain.

Now, they can’t. And it needs to happen more and more until they’re all public.

@EuclidianGeometryFan exactly - we don’t go all gooey on here over a guy who is a great dad to his child, kind to his mother but hires hookers and treats his wife like shit - we say 20% shit is 20% shit too much . My brother in law was reasonably high up and in the Met for a bit and other forces for a long time and he acknowledged the Met was awful in all kinds of ways and that many better officers don’t want it - although he did say they actually do have some of the more interesting work in the Met . He also did say that it’s really easy for the police in London ( and surrounds) to get a very stilted view of ethic minorities ( both uk born and immigrants/short term visitors ) because in London he said it was a fact that at least 50% of cases involved them ( or it certainly felt like it) - however he did acknowledge that was because London attracted a lot of low life’s ( some even here as tourists) for short term stealing, burglary , pimping, drugs etc -it gives a very slanted picture , rather than a true picture of the domestic situation - the Met certainly has had trouble recruiting too and to be frank guys got into it who wouldn’t be accepted elsewhere and also kept in - who would have been booted out elsewhere - itsa real issue .

@Caoilinm at least 8 already have been I believe

The bbc of old was left leaning but the previous government filled it to the brim with Tory media types. If you want proof, look at the amount of appearances that froggy Farage has compared to the leader of Plaid Cymru or the UUP. They have roughly similar numbers of MP’s but pound land trump is never off the news cycle.

"Anyone who wants to have sex/marry a child is scum"
The problem with that sentiment is that the people that say it tend to assume that anyone who isn't white is guilty of it! It's a much favoured statement of the far right! You can't have people in the police force that assume every man of ethnicity is guilty of these things. You can't walk around wanting to shoot men in the head based on racist assumptions.

I’m of the same opinion. They should offer all met police officers the opportunity to serve in other forces and offer bonuses to picked officers to move into the met. No one wants to sack decent hard working officers but the met fails the decency test repeatedly.