Trust in policing has been badly dented, but by holding chiefs accountable we can develop an anti-racist police service
- Abimbola Johnson is chair of the independent scrutiny and oversight board on the police’s action plan on inclusion and race
In 1998, Sir Paul Condon, the then Metropolitan police commissioner, wrote a letter to the Macpherson inquiry into the response to the murder of Stephen Lawrence. “Racism in the police is much more than ‘bad apples’,” he wrote. “The debate about defining this evil … is cathartic in leading us to recognise that it can occur almost unknowingly, as a matter of neglect, in an institution. I acknowledge the danger of institutionalisation of racism. However, labels can cause more problems than they solve.”
In one sense, Condon’s words were insightful – his rejection of the “bad apple” argument strikes a contrast with Cressida Dick’s words about her own officers years later. But the fact that Dick would eventually be forced to resign amid a similarly fractious debate about problems of culture and institutional behaviour within the Met shows just how much work there is still to be done.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/6pL0sY9
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