Police institutionall racist?

[malumbu]

Discuss. They admitted they were two decades ago. Like society as a whole things have changed very much for the better.

But this is an excuse for a story. I'm at the Red Rose Cabaret at a Stop the Gulf War I gig. I miss the last train home to Sydenham so get one to West Norwood. I am too tight for a taxi so decide to jog home.

That day at work I decided to take all the crap that I had accumulated home. I had a large Brixton Cycles messenger bag to put it in, and was wearing a hooded sweat shirt.

Running home with the bag over my shoulder, as it was a cold night, I had the hood up.

A police metro drove the other way (yes it was a long time ago, for the younger readers a metro was a small rubbish English car). I think, wouldn't it be funny if it stopped, I'd ask it for a lift.

And then two mins later, the cops had indeed turned round and a young police man, and young police women, asked me what I was doing.

I thought 'great, a chance for a lift' and was only too willing to show them my swag (various rubbish from my desk). But when I pulled my hood up, they said "oh, we didn't realise you were so old" and lost all interest in me.

Or we didn't realise that you were......

(in American terms a WASP)

[El Pibe]

erm, gulf war 1 protests, 21 years ago n'est pas?

On the implications of colour, if in british terms you'd been a CHAV, I'm sure the reaction would have been different. Maybe some things just are what they seem.

I guess you'd need to conduct the experiment with an older black man and a younger white man just to be sure. We probably need to do it with a woman of each kind too.

And then each of the above sans hoodie.

[Parkdrive]

I don't believe the Police as an institution are racist. They certainly have had some shameful episodes in the past, and will probably have some in the future, as have many institutions. I can't believe for a second that each and every serving officer is racist. I've been stopped by customs and excise many times at check points on return trips from overseas purely because I have an Islamic surname, especailly since the troubles in the Gulf going back as far as the 70's, I never felt compelled to accuse HM Customs and Excise of being instituitionally racist. Bloody minded and difficult yes.

[KalamityKel]

I dont get the point at all. Malumbu you say this is all a time ago... so what relevance is this to todays' world?

[steveo]

There two lines for two flights at the airport; one flight contains people of a middle eastern appearance who have been frisked, one contains people of a middle eastern appearance that haven't.

Which one do you make your kids stand in?

[Jeremy]

The thing is, you never know... entirely possible that local units had been told to watch out for a suspect matching a specific description.

Ethnic profiling for anti-terror purposes is clearly a more complex issue as there are often legitimate reasons, even when you're not looking for specific individuals. Not that its any consolation for the poor guy who gets stopped every. single. day. on his way to the office.

[El Pibe]

Eh? My kids aren't middle eastern. That makes no sense.

[steveo]

Now you don't make sense

[El Pibe]

Nope, my kids still aren't of middle eastern appearance, or are you suggesting that my spanish swarthiness makes them so (they take after their irish mum).

[El Pibe]

awaits edited 2 time(s) .....

[DaveR]

I have a fair amount of experience of dealing with the police. In London, the vast majority of cops are white, and in some areas a signficant proportion of the local criminals are black. Not because being black makes you more likely to be a criminal, but because they are areas with lots of black residents, and because certain types of crime disproportionately involve black offenders (just as some other types of crime disproportionately involve Asian or white offenders). All too often it leads to a lazy assumption whereby young black male = potential offender. Young black men then get stopped and searched a lot, get p!ssed off and start complaining, get charged with a public order offence, and hey presto young black male = actual offender. And so it goes on. I've come across more than one black kid who has a criminal record consisting solely of public order convictions arising from being stopped for other crimes that evidently they did not commit.

All of that having been said, the position in London, at least, was always much better than other cities I worked in. In Bristol I was genuinely shocked by how overt the racism was. If a big fight kicked off the cops would turn up and arrest everybody, but by the time it got to trial all the white guys had miraculously become prosecution witnesses and all the black guys were in the dock.

I suspect that active racist attitudes are declining in the police as they are in wider society, and also because of the issue is taken much more seriously, hence more monitoring, internal investigations etc. The use of body cameras should be rolled out widely, because they act as a massive disincentive to bad behaviour by police generally.

[steveo]

Get out of that one

[El Pibe]

Honest truth? I genuinely wouldn't care. The chances of anything are incredibly small.

In terms of weighing up risk you'd be better off just not putting them on the plane in the first place, though how you get them from the airport is another matter entirely given the chances of dying increase the second you get them on the platform of the tube station.

I'm just not leaving the house, which will have the gas and electricity disconnected of course, and no furniture to fall off, it goes without saying that i've downgraded to a bungalow. In fact I might as well put them in a bag with some bricks and just bring on the inevitable.

[Jeremy]

TBH steveo your example doesn't really make sense.

a) regardless of the ethnicity of the passengers, i think we'd all rather everyone had gone through security

b) we all know that there's a specfic threat from islamic terrorists, but the chances of an arab fella on your flight actually being a terrorist is pretty damn small

[El Pibe]

Plus if it's a british airport then radicals are most likely to be home grown, probably of an ethnicity that could be afro-carribean, west african, east african or from the sub-continent.

Your middle-eastern type is actually the least of your worries.

Hell even one of the Kenya massacre people was a white woman from the home counties.

[steveo]

Yadda, yadda

It's an hypothesis

All your reasoning won't change the knee jerk reaction of the moment.

I know which queue will be longest and so do you

[El Pibe]

"I know which queue will be longest and so do you"

That wasn't the question, you asked what I'd do.

Of course we know what queue would be the longest.

Even taking the terrorism thing out of the equation a bit of snobbery and casual racism would more than be enough to account for it!

[Otta]

To be fair to Steveo...

Not long after the 7/7 attacks, my mate and I were on a tube station (possibly Embankment, defo District Line) when I young Aisan guy with a fuck off big rucksack stood next to us on the platform. We both moved away without saying a word, and as soon as we were on the train in a different carriage to him, we both admitted to each other why we'd moved, and that we felt pretty shitty about it, but you know...

I don't think I'm a racist, and I'm damned sure that my friend isn't, but that day we both (with no discussion) made a decision to distance ourselves from that guy basically because of his race. Had a white guy come along with the same rucksuck, I dare say we wouldn't have moved.

In our defence, this was very close to the tube attacks, and people were scared at the time.

[Jeremy]

What if it was this guy?

 

[steveo]

That's enough time at the confessional

[maxxi]

Or suppose it was THIS man...

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/10/18/article-2465939-18D332B000000578-574_306x490.jpg

Should we start being wary of Gingers?

Or maybe it's finally a good reason to go after hipster beards?

[Otta]

He genuinely looks like a nutter. Not a very hard nutter, but a nutter all the same.

[Robert Poste's Child]

steveo Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> There two lines for two flights at the airport;

> one flight contains people of a middle eastern

> appearance who have been frisked, one contains

> people of a middle eastern appearance that

> haven't.

>

> Which one do you make your kids stand in?

Are you by any chance related to SteveT or is the likeness just a coincidence?

[steveo]

You could try addressing the hypothesis if you think you're up to it

[Robert Poste's Child]

Why? You didn't.