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

Isn’t that the issue?

They might well behave in a manner that upholds the service.
These were private observations that weren’t discussed with the general public or even voiced anonymously.

I listened to the leader of the Green Party on radio 4. He’s Jewish, his Deputy is Muslim. Just from the interview you knew both would have thoughts considered “anti” or “ racist” of each other in private. Yet both men seem to function perfectly well as representatives of the Green agenda.

They were in the workplace. Not only that, they were saying these things in public, where anyone could have heard.

At best, they behaved unprofessionally, contrary to their contract of employment, created a toxic work environment and dismissed victims.🤨 At worst they've broken the law, committed assaults and covered up crimes.🤯

Did you even watch the documentary?

they weren't private comments if they were said in a public place. its the "behaviour likely to bring the organisation into disrepute" thing. You are also ignoring the behaviour witnessed and discussed.

Tbh I think the whole thing should’ve been filmed while they were on duty, like the vile sergeant, to ply someone with booze after 5 pints he was a bit set up I think, not condoning the behaviour but I do think it should’ve been filmed while they were on duty, two of them were very coerced, having dealt with the similar sort of thing they edit to what they want the narrative to look like

as I said upthread, you could get me ratarsed and I would never say such things. In vino veritas and all that.

YABU. Those officers deserve what's coming to them. My sympathies are with the guy that went undercover to capture this evidence. He took a massive risk to achieve that.

💯

My sympathies lie with the police, 99% of whom actually do take enormous risks every day (unlike this “ journalist”” with dubious methods). Yes punish this small number. But the hatred whipped up against the police is disgusting. It puts them in even greater danger. The way the BBC reported the person who had been hit by a bullet inside the synagogue ad “mistakenly shot by police” well no, they didn’t shoot him, they couldn’t even see him, he was hit by a bullet that police (who were stood by a terrorist with what looked like a bomb) killed not knowing if doing so would detonate a bomb and kill them.

i’m fed up of stupid or evil people slagging off the police, yes there are always going to be bad cops but the vast vast majority are good courageous people. Spreading hate about them makes their job even more difficult even more dangerous. As for the absolute cretinous appearing on the news saying to defund them - I have no words.

If you want to make a difference go volunteer as a special, own the increased risk you’re causing by your hate. You wouldn’t last a single shift.

Maybe you don’t have a stressful job dealing with all the dregs of society - what do you do for a living?

Why does it have to be the job that makes these people so awful? Why are you so keen not to lay the blame squarely where it lies?

Is it not possible that this is just what these men in the film are like? After all there are many many police who are decent who do the same job. Going by your train of thought all police would be utterly disgusting human beings.

😐 you think saying elderly people are taking up hospital beds is equivalent to racism, misogyny and assault ?

The police should go on strike for a week and see how everyone gets on. I'm sure the defund the police lot would step up to do the job.

Why? Because you want them to throw their toys out the pram because some bad police have been caught out?
Do you feel the same with carers who abuse the elderly in care homes? What about those who abuse children in children's homes? Your logic is off. I guess you are a copper/know a copper.

Has ANYONE on this thread said that all the police are terrible or that the police should be defunded? Do you not think that the majority of police who are good people want to see the bad ones rooted out and the culture changed?

I agree entirely with you.

But just to point out, I work with many police officers who are equally appalled by the Panorama programme, because they know how important it is that the public can trust the police. If any police officers are making excuses, they're likely the ones that need weeding out.

I don't think anybody in that program, or on that thread, is whipping up hatred against the majority of good caring police.

I work with police forces and a lot of senior officers will be head in hands this weekend over this. We saw the reaction of Sue Fish and others in the programme (incidentally I wonder what they would say to the long justifying post upthread from the Police Jokes guy). They are well aware that the lack of public trust in the police is the fault of the bad coppers not the people who whistleblow on them.

Cop culture exists in all forces not just the Met and has done for decades. My brother, who is now retired, was mocked with the nickname "Serpico" because he refused to conform or be a party to this type of behavior when he joined the police force. He felt isolated and sadly was eventually worn down with bullying by colleagues and senior officers.

It doesn't matter if it was in work or not. It is bringing 'the profession' in to disrepute.

I put the profession in quotes as by a lot of measures it isn't a profession.

Teachers, doctors, nurses, solicitors, you name it can be disciplined for things outside work.

Yup and I think people who contuinue to post this "oh it wasn't at work" "it was said privately" bollocks need to RTFT because this has been said several times.

Yes I totally agree, it seems that the ability to assess something from all sides, understand perspectives without agreeing with them, be curious about root causes rather than quick to write people off as scum are in short supply these days.

I am left wing myself and actually work in a role that is related to promoting DEI but I am still able to converse with people who disagree with all of that and understand that their views can be driven by different priorities, misunderstanding, fear, exposure to online misinformation driven by algorithms etc.

It is very rare that a person is truly evil - “never attribute to malice that which can be explained by ignorance” is a good life motto!

I can’t actually watch this documentary because I know it would massively trigger me. I was raped and every aspect of the investigation was handled appallingly to the point that the officer in charge got a written warning. This was the Met police. The man who raped me got away with it because vital evidence was “lost”. I was left so traumatised by the whole thing I would never now encourage someone to report a rape to the police. I think if I watched that documentary it would set me back massively. So yeah I’m a little hard pressed to find any sympathy for any of the people involved.

My original OP wasn’t about them not deserving to be disciplined/fired because of what they said at the pub, I agree that clearly brings profession into disrepute and is probably gross misconduct.

The OP was about publicising their identities for the whole world to watch - a dire consequence for them personally that I don’t think they would ever have considered happening to them. Imagine waking up the next day being like, god I wonder what I said last night, usually the worst that would happen is you are reported and fired. You being filmed and put in a bbc documentary is the stuff of nightmares.

I would say the public interest was in using the recorded examples as an illustration of widespread culture issues. But we didn’t really need to know the identity of individual officers to achieve the aim of the doco. It’s always about weighing up benefit vs harm and I think the decision was wrong in this case, but very happy to hear differing viewpoints and see that I am in the minority!

The BBC has guidance around secret recordings:

The subject of the secret recording may be a single and very specific individual target responsible for wrongdoing, or it may be a number of people with varying degrees of responsibility. Sometimes it may be appropriate to secretly record individuals who are representative of a particular group… When content makers do that they will have to consider the public interest in exploring those patterns of behaviour, and whether it will be appropriate to identify the individuals or organisations in the broadcast material…..

When the prima facie evidence is against a group, but not against specific individuals or organisations within that group, content makers should normally disguise the identity of the individuals when the material is broadcast, unless they consent to being identified or their behaviour is such that there is a clear public interest in exposing their identity.

www.bbc.com/editorialguidelines/guidance/secret-recording

Agreed, but at this point I suspect they’re exhibiting wilful ignorance.

and? I think that according to the BBC guidance, the program absolutely fits within the allowable parameters. I think that the "dire consequences" are absolutely merited.