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

Do I feel sorry for the Met police.. No.
As a victim of domestic violence and rape living in London I could write an essay on the grossness inside there police force, Or I could shut up and let them speak for themselves…..

That’s being professional though. It’s part of having everything you do at work recorded and open to scrutiny.

The Police are dealing with the very worst aspects of society. I’m sure all those involved would also be able to relate stories that restored their faith in humans too over a pint . But that’s not such explosive telly.

If I had to deal with vicious, ignorant, foul-mannered little scumbags day in day out I’m sure I’d blurt out horrible and offensive things as well

I think plenty of occupations have to deal with this. Retail, healthcare, airline staff…they seem to manage without the sheer contempt for people the Met show - and seen to get away with.

They were nothing but criminals themselves, kicking defenceless people, abusing power? Racism? Do you want to protect all criminals from going out on TV/documentaries?

I despair of people at the moment, I really do.
That poster sunk to a new low.

I heard extracts on the radio. They deserved everything they got and I can't understand sentiments expressed by @Bloodyscarymary .

Am so sorry for all of your experiences and I admire your comment. Indeed, let them dig their own hole. Take good care. x

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/X56rQkDgd0qqB7R68t6t7C/seven-things-you-need-to-know-about-antifa

Have a read to assuage your suspicious mind.

Mansfield Park is a dark novel by Jane Austen that explores many topics that were troubling, mainly slavery, colonialism and the wealth it provided the landed gentry.

YABVVVVU. It was sickening to watch, they were vile. That poor 17 year old autistic boy 😞 I’ve no sympathy at all for their names and faces being spread all over. I’ve been on the receiving end of the ‘power’ and solidarity of the uniform, and it’s fucking disgusting.

No I don't feel bad for them. They should be called out for the racist, misogynistic, beings that they are. They were showing there true colours in that footage.
Policing is a career that requires certain values and behaviours the are inherent in you as a person, and not something you can switch on or off whether you are on duty or not.

My job involves supporting victims of certain crimes and this documentary is not in the slightest bit surprisingly or new to me or any of my colleagues, we already know the issues with the police. It's not just a few bad eggs.

Some of what these officers say is horrendous. Equally, some of it is very reasonable and balanced and sounds like a pure observation of the problems they see around them.

i think the main thing with a question like this is not to let it be emotional.

Not just "I feel sorry for them".

But also not "they are tossers/racists/vile so they deserve what they get."

I do think there are real questions around what kind of private conversations it's ok to secretly record and broadcast. Even public servants and political figures are entitled to privacy, so there is a line. Where is that line is something that has to be discussed in a rational way, without sentimentality or a desire for revenge being part of the picture.

I mean one sure fire way not to be broadcast on national telly saying racist, mysoginistic shit is to not be saying it in the first place.

I'm bewildered that you are so upset that these people have had their privacy violated rather than by the blatantly racist crap they were spouting.

I don’t trust the BBC at all. The bias in their news coverage is appalling and once you can see it, it’s hard to unsee.

However, occasionally they do manage to do excellent reporting. This is one of them. The other I can think of is Hannah Barnes when she investigated the Tavistock Clinic for Newsnight. It really seems to depend on the production team.

Yes, there are problems with the Panorama programme, the guy in the pub seems a bit drunk but he said what he said and he sounded like he believed what he said. On balance though, it was a great investigation that highlighted the problems at the Met.

ETA: minor change for clarity.

From what I saw I don't think he thought she lied.

I think he just didn't give a shit that she'd been attacked, or that releasing the suspect could well lead to him attacking her again.

Wow. This is just a horrible comment.

I do get what you are saying about one or two of the pub conversations. At best they could be described as crude banter and something that was never intended to be said outside a small close knit of colleagues.

However, as the documentary went on, you cannot excuse Sergeant Stamp telling the undercover journalist to play down the level of violence used or there would be a complaint. Or the other sergeant automatically thinking a victim of domestic abuse is lying. Or the PC at the end who assaulted a vulnerable 17 year old and laughed and gloated about it, held extreme racist views and talked about killing black and islamic people by shooting them in the head or penis.

They might not be perfect, but I’d rather have them than not. I guess it’s a case of there being bad apples in every profession, be it nurses, teachers, doctors. Many in the police force do a fantastic job in very difficult circumstances. It’s not fair to tar them all with the same brush as some posting on here are doing.

He said something along the lines of 'that's what she says', implying he didn't believe her.
I think it was more than just not caring.

This.

The Met do seem to have a higher proportion of bad apples tho don't they?

I get what you’re saying and my work talk would also be boring. However, I am assuming you’re not a police officer dealing with rapists and violent thugs day in and day out - naturally your work chat in that case is going to veer into opinions on that.

I’m not saying their views weren’t horrible to hear or that they haven’t fallen very short of the standard we should expect from police officers, but I can see how it would be easier for them to start sharing how they think we should shoot rapists in the dick once they’re a few pints in vs you or I at our work drinks. So for the average person it’s really shocking to talk about that, but for a police officer it’s a daily topic at work.

Which is why the clips should have been shown to higher ups and them be fired, but I don’t see the public benefit in identifying the individuals in question. They could have blurred their faces and used their conversations as “examples” of the terrible culture, we didn’t need to know the identity of the police officer who was basically just spouting Reform talking points with a police brutality twist.

And I just totally disagree that if you don’t say anything you’re ashamed of you shouldn’t have to fear documentaries like this. It’s like saying “people with nothing to hide have nothing to fear” to excuse mass surveillance. It’s Orwellian!

I know and I thought that because of this a females would look down on these men and be ashamed and disgusted, but then you get awful posts like the one I quoted.