UKH

Is the London Metropolitan Police really as corrupt as this YouTube episode suggests?

Can you use the word suggest when so much evidence, even from judges, is included?

youtube.com/watch?v=heoK_se4P8k&

There's an excellent fly on the wall documentary series on BBC called Line of Duty 

Is that like the documentary which follows a NASA Team to destroy an asteroid?

I think its called Armageddon.

Yes.  The whole Met Police needs dismantling and replacing.  Rotten to the core.

Politics forum. FFS  

How do you work that out?

Are the Police political?

Did I miss the memo?

Obviously!

I appreciate the sentiment, but how do you achieve such a thing? Sack every Met officer and re-recruit? That's not practicable. New uniform and rebranding as "I can't believe it's not the Met"? Purely superficial.

See RUC to PSNI for example of this type of thing being carried out successfully, and that had the added challenge of entrenched sectarianism... 

Are there other Metropolitan Police Services...?

"Evidence" ? Lol. 

I started watching it but the misrepresentation was too much.

Still, at least good old Patsy got to centre herself in the narrative again.

Hahahahhaahahah. The suggestion that the whole RUC was dismantled and replaced to form PSNI just underlines the fact that you aren't a credible commentator.

How about providing some evidence to counter the claims then?

Not expecting links etc. but a brief summary would do.

You have to admit, that there is a genuine feel of a public perception that there is something wrong with the London Met Police?

Of what was shown, which parts were misrepresented and which parts were factually incorrect please?

This will help me to understand, especially as your thoughts are grounded in the job rather from views of an armchair pundit with no understanding of the job.

Perhaps if the effort spent hiding the failings of the met were expended on addressing the issues they wouldn't drive people to distrust and even despise them in the way they managed with Patsy? It is likely a small minority of assholes like Wayne Couzens who drive this kind of stuff, however their colleagues closing ranks to protect those assholes and overlooking previous bad behaviour implies that the behaviour is not a big deal. People are dead because of that behaviour, it IS a big deal! The incidents cited in the video all clearly indicate issues with processes, culture and people which the Met never seems to address, that undermines the good work which they otherwise do! 

Who closed ranks to protect Wayne Cousins?

Perhaps you should let the trial judge know…he was pretty confident no such closing-of-ranks had occurred. 

Here’s his summing-up…note, the absence of the phrase ‘rotten to the core’

Note the final paragraph, which specifically recruited your allegation.

The judge who sentenced Sarah Everard's killer Wayne Couzens to a full life term in prison has praised the Metropolitan Police detectives who built a case against him.

Lord Justice Fulford said that the investigation was the 'most impressive' he had come across in his judicial career and rejected any possibility that the force had 'closed ranks' after discovering Couzens himself was a serving Met officer.

Detective Chief Inspector Katherine Goodwin, who was singled out for commendation, has also told The Times of her 'complete shock' at discovering the identity of Sarah's abductor, saying she would 'never forget' the moment she found out.

In total DCI Goodwin's team of detectives analysed over 2,000 hours of CCTV footage in order to locate the breakthrough clip captured by a bus camera which showed Sarah standing next to Couzens' hire car.

The judge said the prosecution material was so thorough that it made any realistic attempt at a defence from Couzens' legal team unlikely.

In his sentencing remarks, Lord Justice Fulford commented: "This has been the most impressive police investigation that I have encountered in 30 years of sitting as a judge. The speed with which the evidence leading to the arrest of the defendant was secured is highly notable, as has been the painstaking reconstruction of these events using electronic material alongside more old-fashioned policing methods.

"It cannot be suggested in my view, even for a moment, that the Metropolitan Police 'closed ranks' to protect one of their own. Instead, remorselessly, efficiently and impartially the investigating officers followed all the available leads, resulting in an overwhelming case against the accused.

So, who closed ranks?

Clearly it’s a lot more nuanced process than dismantling an rebuilding, I’m simplifying was is a long and complex progress.   You can read more about this here http://www.tara.tcd.ie/handle/2262/78533

The fact that you’re a police officer who, as is customary, will always side with the police even in the face overwhelming evidence of serious failings and wrongdoings on their part somewhat undermines your position.

Laugh all you want, nobody else is.

OffDuty has always been far more even-handed in his assessment of police performance than his detractors on this form. And is often critical of his profession. 

Can you present any evidence of him ‘siding with the police in the face of overwhelming evidence of wrong doing’? 
 

or is this just another unsubstantiated remark, like Spencer’s, above…

 I totally understand that you are now running back from your playground sloganeering to say that what you "meant" to say was "clearly" a lot more nuanced.

The fact you equate your nonsense about "dismantling and rebuilding" the "rotten to the core" Met police with the creation of the PSNI was obviously just a joke - emphasised by your comment that this dismantling had the "additional challenge" of sectarianism, rather than grasping the pretty simple concept that the problem of sectarianism was the core problem that the Patten report and the reform of the RUC set out to tackle - not some little "add-on".

There was some fairly broad reaching change implemented - with the key one being the implementation of a process of affirmative action to recruit 50:50 Catholics and protestants. What it certainly didn't involve was scrapping or dismantling.

We can have an argument about the semantics of the process that transformed the RUC to PSNI if you like, but I think we’re both better than that.   And to be fair, my initial post was quite playground slogan-y. 

But I stand by the view that caused me to make that initial post.  Root and branch reform of the Met is possible, and given the myriad of failings and issues over the years which have only become more frequent, it ought to be carried out as soon as possible.

That’s my opinion from what I see as a London resident. I’m not alone in it, and I’m sorry if you don’t agree.

Okay.

1/

This is fairly minor really but:

Saint Patsy the narrator has an issue with being arrested by "colleagues of Couzens".

Well, I suppose in an organisation of 40,000 people I guess that isn't exactly a lie.

It's not like saying that when you were handcuffed at the vigil you thought, terrified, that was how Couzens got Sarah in the car. Despite the fact that the information relating to this wasn't revealed until the trial.

In terms of "colleagues" I don't expect there were any diplomatic patrol group on duty there. Just colleague like the female officer who reported that multiple women came up to her and wished she was raped and murdered.

2/The murder of Stephen Lawrence.

This has been gone over and infinitum. It was a car crash of an investigation, characterised by incompentence, which I have criticised on here before, but to suggest that because an anonymous list of names was posted on a phone box it was clearly a straightforward arrest and charge is a total nonsense.

You could criticise the SIO decision to run a covert surveillance operation rather than go straight for an arrest and house searches, but it would be useful to explain what actually qualifies you to make that criticism rather than hindsight and guessing.

The failure to charge isn't a specifically a police problem per se, it's an evidence problem - the evidence was put before CPS who said it was insufficient. 

As was found by Michael Mansfield when he failed to successfully prosecute the suspects in an extremely ill-advised private prosecution that then rendered them untouchable until the law about double jeapordy was changed and two convictions were obtained.

The finding of institutional racism made clear no officers had been racist but highlighted a problem of strictures and processes in Policing that resulted in unequal treatment of minorities. Not as many people seem to think an institution full of racists.

Do the moviemakers really think there have been no changes since then? A blindingly obvious change resulting from the McPherson report has been the vastly improved first aid training to officers - which now result in numerous examples of met police officers getting covered in blood as they administer sometimes life saving first aid and trauma care to present day victims of knife crime in London. Predominantly black young men.

3/ Jean Charles de Menezes 

I have to confess I couldn't be bothered to watch this lazy nonsense much more.

Suffice it to say, this is, yet again, another topic that has been hashed out numerous times on here. It was a tragic death. It's nearly always criticised from a context less background (a very fast moving manhunt for suicide bombers who had made a failed attempt to commit an atrocity within weeks of a previous successful suicide bombing in London) but here in the movie the criticism appeared to be that the police said he jumped over turnstiles and had a bulky jacket, and allegations of a cover up.

These comments were made by civilian witnesses to the incident. It was trumpeted at the time independently by the press speaking to those witnesses. The wrong information about the bulky jacket was picked up, incorrectly, within some of the Met press briefings. The story about vaulting the ticket barrier did not come from the police.

All this is dissected in detail in the independent Stockwell 2 report.

I got bored then and haven't watched the rest.

Hey, if you want to reform the Met based on the rubbish you appear to selectively read in the press that's your prerogative.

I take it by "root and branch" you mean get rid of the detectives praised by the the judge in the Everard case. Corrupt. All of them.

Abolish the Met firearms unit. Absolutely. All they do is shoot black people. Apart from the ones whose lives they routinely save by providing emergency trauma care as first responders to stabbings and shootings. Oh, and the firearms officers who have tackled the numerous terrorists involved in live attacks in London. All racists. Bin them.

The "myriad" you see is the myriad reflected by the reports you read of selected incidents. What you don't see is the routine, everyday work of the frontline response officer. Every day making a positive impact on the lives of Londoners. Or the unobserved work of the squads tackling serious and organised crime networks. People who are as routinely evil as you seem to believe the Met to be.

It's actually a positive, though wearying, that the press continually hold up the Met's failures for scorn and criticism. The real danger would be when they stop reporting failed policing because it is accepted that that is the expected standard of policing.

My opinion also the real world experiences I have of living and working in this city for years past 20 years.

So yeah sure, you can say I’m influenced by the press, but I don’t see any reporters there when I push my baby daughter past the gauntlet of crack dealers and addicts on the corner of my street (literally all day every day, and yes, we have reported it. Repeatedly).  Or any of the other awful interactions I, my family and friends have had with the Met over the past 20 years, that has completely eroded out confidence in them…

But yeah, it’s the press’ fault. Stick to that line of it makes you feel better.

You don’t live an work in London? Or do you?

Interesting thought experiment! I think one way would be to stand up a new separate entity with a new leadership, new independent regulator, and renewed set of underlying principles. Gradually recruit into and transition across to the new entity whilst freezing the majority of growth in the old. Eventually do away with the original altogether. I would be terrified if the current government did that though, given their current stance on how certain issues should be policed.

Whilst I agree that the media portrayal is a skewed representation and that there are many, many more good hardworking people in the force than bad, I do also want to echo Iamgregp's comment about the actual experiences of someone living and working in London (or in my case, previously doing so). Over a period of five years, having reported three bike thefts (and accompanying damage to doors/locks) and two assaults, including one with a serious head injury that should have been captured on CCTV, I've never seen any more follow-up than a "sorry that you're a victim of crime" pamphlet. The only time I've seen a police response and active investigation was when I reported the theft of signalling cables (assuming for copper scrap) from an above-ground section of the tube. 

Kind of a tangent but kind of not.  I was amazed at the tone of the Mayor of London with regard to the latest shooting fatality - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-62854660

A car is recognised by ANPR and linked to fire-arms crime, then tries to evade police pursuit.  I assume the fire-arms police are highly trained and use lethal force as only a last resort - this happens.  The Mayor then comes out and basically says "We're going to find out what the police have done wrong here".

I'm not here to defend crap policing service. I can't really comment on your personal experiences other than to say it sounds sub standard, without knowing further details.

The bald figures are that the Met deal with about 6.5 million calls to service per year with a total police staffing of (now) approx 32,000 which is not yet at its level of 2010 pre austerity. 

The knock on impact of austerity on all other public sector agencies has left policing being the 5 to 9 service of last resort, filling in for social services, ambulance, mental health, probation, which have been stripped of resourcing. This has an impact on the nature of demand and ability to respond.  

These are not just Met problems they are policing problems.

I'm unsure that based on the poor response to your calls for assistance the correct solution is "root and branch reform" or abolishing the police and similar hyperbolic claims.

And no I don't work in the Met.

My uncle was a serving police officer at the time, and included working in the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad before it got disbanded for incompetence said anecdotally that "They" feked up on the day.

I actually agree with pretty much all of what you’ve said here. My experiences aside (which I’ve not told you the half of, since my last message on this thread my family and I walked past three people huddled in my street shooting up in broad daylight) there’s no doubt the chronic underfunding imposed by our current government has lead to a deterioration of the service the Met provide.

And that’s why, at a time when they are expected to do more and more work with less and less resource, they can’t afford these own goals that seem to be happening on an increasingly frequent basis.

Underfunding doesn’t cause stop and search to be used overwhelmingly disproportionally on BAME people, it doesn’t cause institutional racism, it didn’t make those officers take photographs of the two murdered sisters lying dead in park and send them to their mates on WhatsApp, or didn’t cause the amazingly inept investigation of Stephen Port’s crimes - a serial killer whose crimes the police didn’t even link until members of the public carried out their own enquiries, it doesn’t make officers form WhatsApp groups where they make homophobic, racist and misogynistic jokes… I could go on, but these failings are well documented, frequent and not budget related.

These are Met problems, not police problems (I hope?).

Successive Met police Chief commissioners have failed to get a handle on this. Root and branch reform should have happened decades ago.

Also, I haven’t said the police should e abolished, please don’t argue against claims I haven’t made.  

The police service is vital, I want it to be better, not cease to exist.

Your bias against "Saint Patsy" led you to comment at length on a short film you didn't watch in full. 

I think this might be part of the issue, and not just in the Met.

You don't need to spend time you'll never get back watching a film which clearly lays out its prejudices and inaccuracies in the first few minutes. It would be a bit like me bothering to watch a Conservative party political broadcast to the bitter end (whatever happened to those, BTW?)

FWIW I think Khan's hounding out of Dick was the greatest blow to the possibility of significant improvement to the Met it's possible to imagine. In the meantime: Is the Met the obvious focus for any anti-establishment sentiment? Of course. Are the vast majority of the Met conscientious and steady officers? Er, yes, probably - there's a lot of them. Are there the occasional bad apples? Yes again. Are there pockets of macho culture ? Possibly. And are we grateful for that macho culture when officers have to (and do) put themselves in harms way for our protection? You tell me.

As much as stop and search statistics are trumped by the likes of yourself as evidence of police racism, the reality is far more nuanced and complex; BAME over-representation in drug and knife crime, the ethnic make-up of the population in inner city areas, and numerous other factors, lead to skewed figures….not racist police officers with nothing better to do than target black people.

You can thank the demonisation of stop and search, particularly by the likes of Sadiq Khan, for the reduction in its use, and the subsequent spike in criminality and lawlessness, particularly black-on-black knife crime. Perhaps, even, the presence of drug addicts at the end of your street. 

As for the charge of Institutional Racism, do you know what this means? As point out by OffDuty, it doesn’t mean that the organisation is full of racists who spend their time hatching racist plots.

Anyway, can you name an institution or organisation which hasn’t been accused of institutional racism? Schools, universities, the NHS, banks, businesses, gardening (!), the BBC, society in general have all been accused. It seems to have become the standard jibe of the ‘progressive left’. 

Photos and WhatsApp groups? Unacceptable behaviour, of course. But it was identified by police colleagues of those responsible who reported them up-the-chain…leading to discipline, dismissal and imprisonment. This speaks of an organisation with a strong moral compass and robust disciplinary procedures as much as it speaks of racism and misogyny.   
 

Yes, I am biased against Patsy who I think is an attention seeking narcissist who has quite literally used the murder of a girl she knows nothing about to leverage herself a career in anti-police activism.

I made comment at the time that I saw a real danger that the motivation at the time to tackle misogyny and VAWG would just be manipulated into an anti-police movement. Look where we are.

Obviously you could have addressed my specific criticisms of the movie, that you yourself requested, and perhaps persuaded me that it was worth continuing to watch.

But you haven't.

Your points have largely been addressed elsewhere by Walrus, but you are literally doing what I previously accused you of. Selectively reading press articles, which themselves pick out specific elements of policing to criticise.

BAME are over represented within the entire CJS. Also as both victims and offenders. The stop search statistics are extremely complex and the broad brush "more black people equal police racist" doesn't really stand up. How about considering the proportion of black youths who have their lives saved by police following stabbing in comparison to the number of white youths. I guarantee that there will be an overrepresentation of BAME in that statistic - racist police?

That's not to say the police are perfect. Far from it. The label of institutional racism has caused huge harm to policing by providing an easy club to beat us with, whilst ignoring all reforms and changes that have occurred since it was published 23 years ago.

Worth mentioning the conclusion of the McPherson report wasn't just about the Met but about "other institutions countrywide". That would include most people reading this thread. 

6.39 Given the central nature of the issue we feel that it is important at once to state our conclusion that institutional racism [......], exists both in the Metropolitan Police Service and in other Police Services and other institutions countrywide.

The two officers WhatsApping the murdered women is just gob smackingly appalling. I have no idea what would possess them to do that. I would have expected them to be sacked just for crossing the cordon in a murder scene,.let alone anything else. Literally escapes me why anyone would go to that extent. They were reported straight away by colleagues and quite rightly sacked. Not indicative of a culture where that material is acceptable.

The Charing Cross misogynist WhatsApp group has been discussed here before. I was surprised to find that Charing cross had a team who worked permanent nights with minimal, rapidly changing, and inexperienced supervision. I said at the time that, as has been my experience in other industries, night shift is when the bad stuff happens - whether that have involved the fairies getting work done when health and safety weren't around, or corners being cut in the knowledge that management would see it.  The creation of a team like that without strong supervision was idiocy. I would imagine it was created as the most cost effective way to police an area with a demand that was primarily night time economy. Because austerity means cost effectiveness and creating cheaper solutions...

  I think there were 14 Misconduct/gross misconduct cases with the offensive comments coming from two officers who were sacked.

I have to confess I don't know much detail of the Stephen Port murders. What I do know sounds like really crap initial investigation by local CID and a lack of an investigative mind set. What I would say, for context, is that I have dealt with a lot of death. You would be surprised at how many deaths might involve a degree of secondary investigation by police. The similarities that leap out - grieving families and friends who see criminal explanations for drugs related deaths and suicides because they want someone to blame. Lots of deaths that are just shit. Unexpected overdoses. Cry for help suicides that have gone to far. Totally unexpected suicides.  None of this is an excuse for failure to conduct a thorough investigation. In my case I am 'lucky' enough to have worked with some extremely intrusive coroners. Once you have had one investigation forensically and critically dissected in a court room, you don't make those mistakes again. I have also worked with coroners where I have walked away from court taken aback at the cursory examination of the evidence prior to conclusion.  

Unlike on TV a serial killer wouldn't be identified by one team of detectives moving from murder scene to murder scene. It relies on one team of detectives doing a thorough job on one investigation - which might leave some unanswerable questions. Then it relies on a totally different team of detectives (even on the same District - we work shifts remember) - knowing about and linking together two deaths and having a strong investigative mindset. It is entirely feasible that in the volume of deaths I have investigated I would be utterly unaware that a similar death at a similar location had come in some months before. Add in to that the volume of deaths being dealt with and the situation becomes complex.

That being said, there is no excuse for not conducting a thorough initial investigation - and as I understand it, these deaths were not investigated well and the connections were flagged up to the police and dismissed - presumably on the basis of over concerned friends and family.

Where I work those concerns would also have triggered the coroner and that would be likely to result in connections having been made if the initial investigations had been poor. 

Why would there be a poor investigation? No real excuses for not having an investigative mindset, but when you have an increasingly overwhelming workload due to the national lack of detectives, and the austerity driven imperative to do more and more work with less and less staff - then the risk is that if presented with what appears to be an 'obvious' drugs overdose - you do the minimum required and move on.

Just realised that went on much longer than I intended - anyway hopefully context is of interest.

So - some failings may be budget related, some not so budget related.  What I think it's reasonable to say is the problems aren't simple, and I would argue not cultural. I've struggled to find anyone who wouldn't condemn the what's app group incidents.

Cherry picking examples over a 25 year period and sprinkling on terms like "disproportionate stop search" or "culture of misogyny" is very much a media driven veneer of oversimplification to justify "root and branch" reform - whatever the hell that is supposed to actually mean in real terms it sounds very much like abolish the police and create something different.

Thanks for your long and really detailed reply.  Again I agree with a lot of what you've said here....

Firstly I agree with what you said re. overrepresentation of BAME people in the entire CJS, but essentially what you're saying is having a stop and search policy that targets BAME people disproportionately is justified we're actually saving them from being victims of crime.

Essentially, we're reducing the right to privacy and freedoms of a group of people based on their skin colour, but that's ok because it's for their own safety.  Not a policy I want to see in this city.  The policy is racist, even if individual officers aren't.

Your mitigations re. the Stephen Port murders are all valid, and I hear you around the difficulties and challenges that exist in linking cases.  But honestly, the failings here simply cannot be explained by the difficulties you outlined.

I mean look at the basics  - Port kills first victim with OD of GHB, leaves body on own doorstep and calls police from own phone. Kills second victim in same way, leaves body in park a few hundred metres away to be discovered by poor lady walking her dog.  Does the same to third victim, even leaves the body in the same park, discovered coincidentally by same woman walking her dog, but this time he leaves note on body in his own (Port's), handwriting saying he was committing suicide as he killed the second victim (they were completely unknown to one another) and that it was "nothing to do with the guy I was with last night" (Port). 

The police still aren't linking them, and still don't when the fourth victim is left in the same park again seemingly yet another accidental GHB overdose in the same park.  Despite the young man having no history of depression, or drug use, in fact he was vehemently against drug use.

As you say, friends, family, a victims landlord, Pink News and the forces LGBT independent advisory group all flagged the connection to Barking police and were dismissed.

The Police Conduct (IOPC) report said “the public cannot be satisfied that police are making decisions based on evidence and fact”, because of how assumptions made about “the lifestyles of gay men” informed investigations.

And the Met? The Met said it was just "a lack of personal curiosity by their officers."

Please.  That's a cultural problem, clear as day.

Can you honestly say to me you think the investigation would have been identical had the victims all been young straight women?  

We don't have a policy anything of that sort. I've know idea where that suggestion has come from.

We don't have a policy of that sort. Not at all. As above.

[.....]

Thanks for the further info - as I've said I've not delved in to the detail and I don't propose to. 

From what I've seen, as I said - at great length - the initial investigation was not up to standard.

It's a shit investigation of apparent sudden deaths problem. It's also a shit process if associations are being flagged up and dismissed.

If you insist every screw up is evidence of a "cultural problem" what do you call every example of excellent policing or detective work?

I don't know. I would hope the investigation of ANY death of  would have been dealt with better.

How many deaths of young straight women as a result of drugs overdoses or suspected suicide have you dealt with?

I've dealt with a lot. Leaving aside the Port murders - nothing is easier than going over an investigation with the benefit of hindsight and armed with numerous reports dissecting it at great length and going "I, wholly unfamiliar with any of the legislation, powers, processes, people, demands or priorities of those involved, would have done a better job."

I accept that it not an official policy to stop and search more BAME people than white. But that is what happens right?  That’s what the data says.

And why are police so much more likely to stop and search BAME people than white people? 

You can talk about population distribution, inner city areas, likelihood of being a victim all you like, but the simple reason for the massively disproportionate use of this on BAME people is the simple fact that police think they’re more likely to “get a result” if they search black people rather than white.

At least that what one of them said to a black friend of mine when he was pulled over and had his car searched for the nth time despite having done not a thing wrong.

Is that a situation you’re happy with?  

Of course you do, we would all hope that.  But you’ve sidestepped the question.

Again, you’ve made good points and I agree that the benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing, and does give us somewhat of an advantage.

But it doesn’t mean that when we find serious dereliction of duty we shouldn’t act on it.

Port should have been stopped way before he killed 4 people, and, in my opinion, would have been had it not been for the prejudices of Barking police. Some of his victims would have been alive today if they had even carried out basic checks.

I can't combat your anecdotal account. 

There is no policy to target BAME by stop search. The numbers and data are scrutinised at length by numerous layers of oversight.

You can dismiss the statistical context of the disproportionately if you want and base this on the account that your mate has told you was said to him. Again - there's not much I can do, other than point out the data, which you have decided to dismiss.

Its hypothetical nonsense that's why. I'd want an A grade investigation to take place in any death. Does it always happen - no.

Are some of the factors (in addition to those I have already mentioned) based on the characteristics of the victim? Yes .

Would I have potential biases if I am attending the apparent death by drugs overdose of a destitute drugs user in comparison to a person proclaimed by his family and friends as straight as die who wouldn't touch drugs? Yes.

Have I attended jobs like these where in both cases they have been overdoses and/or suicides. Also yes.

Again I don't know the details, the number of detectives - or in particular detective inspectors involved, and I have no idea of the oversight in place there to try and "catch" poor investigations. Which can happen anywhere - not just Barking and not just the Met.

I believe the IOPC have reopened the investigation in to the police handling of the murders - again I haven't taken the time to look in to the details but that would seem a reasonable way of identifying what deficiency(s) there were, and whether they constituted Misconduct.

Erm I haven’t dismissed any data? In fact I cited it in my previous post… Here some important bits:

“there were 7.5 stop and searches for every 1,000 white people, compared with 52.6 for every 1,000 black people

almost half of all stop and searches took place in the Metropolitan Police force area in London

there were 38.1 stop and searches for every 1,000 people in London, the highest rate out of all police force areas“

So as we can see although there’s no policy of targeting black people. It’s just that it’s used against black people around 7x more often than white. Despite black people making up a small % of the population.

Are you happy with these numbers?

I think disregarding the murder of 4 innocent men as hypothetical nonsense says more about your determination to avoid the question than the question itself, but I’m happy to rephrase it if it helps. 

Do you think the sexuality of the victims plates into the thoroughness of this investigation? I do. Friends and family of the victims do. IOPC does. In fact the only people who seem to think it didn’t are, unsurprisingly, The Met.

How many of them were found in the same place by the same person as the previous person just weeks before?

Time will tell. Perhaps we should revisit this when those findings have been made?

So, your analysis of the correct use, or otherwise, of stop-and-search powers by the Met Police is based purely around whether the number of stop-and-searches that take place in Greater London is proportionally balanced with the number of BAME living in the entire area.

And on the anecdotal information supposedly passed to you by your supposed BAME mate, following his supposed encounter with some Met coppers?

You wouldn't expect more BAME people to be stop / searched at, say, last weeks (drug, gang and murder ridden) Nottinghill Carnival, which was attended almost exclusively by BAME people than at, say, the Chelsea Flower show?

You don't think that disproportionate BAME representation in the dubious fields of drug dealing, gang related murder, knife crime and the carriage of weapons would manifest itself in a proportionally higher stop-and-search frequency amongst people of those communities.

You wouldn't expect there to be more BAME people stop-and-searched in Central London, where something like 1/3 of the of the population were born overseas, than other, whiter, parts of the the area.

Your approach to such a complex issue is almost child-like in it's simplicity and lack of nuance. 

Its also classic demagoguery; offer simple explanations to complex problems, follow the noisy minority and blame the police!  

I am neither happy not unhappy with the numbers. Rather than rush to judgement of "racist police" like you seem to be doing, I'd like to understand them.

How about considering the proportion of BAME Vs non-BAME who are "out and about" at the time of stop searches? How about looking at the ethnic make up of the districts where stop search is used more often and comparing that to the SS figures? How about looking at the ethnic profile of offenders where SS is used more common - street theft and robbery in London? 

Then how about looking at outcomes of SS? Are they disproportionate? What are the ethnicity breakdown and positive stop search rates? -  are more BAME stopped for no reason?

These figures have all been considered and examined - and the conclusions are "it's complex". Obviously that doesn't sell as many papers as "racist police".

Here's some food for thought:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-stop-and-search-race-myth

Gavin Hales who is an analyst who used to work in the Met and now works in a freelance basis I think - looking at police data across a wide area has done a lot of work on SS and published a fair amount of analysis in it.

For example by analysis of the numbers it appears the Met is less disproportionate in its use of SS than the rest of UK policing (data for 2020)

https://twitter.com/gmhales/status/1281658254637125632?t=P2NX17QK8sVPicPJDy...

Excellent misrepresentation. I'd almost say you were basically arguing in bad faith. My comment was made at your demand to compare apples with oranges - and explain what would happen in an entirely different circs with an entirely different victim.

I don't know - I explained the biases that I was aware of.

I believe one dog walker found two bodies - but as I say I have no idea of the intricate details of this job I have already been critical of the investigations I'm not sure what more you want.

Again - it's very easy to go back in hindsight and pick out mistakes. It's not like the TV where you stand over a body in episode 1 and the theme music tells you that this is a 6 episode series and this is the first murder. 

And I've stood over a fairly significant number of bodies at fairly unreasonable times of the morning and desperately wished the theme music would give me a clue as to whether this was a murder mystery, a fly on the wall about policing, the end credits from a tragic life, a day in the life of a pathologist, or just a long intro tune to the next job  I'd be going to.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-stop-and-search-race-myth

What a remarkable article; Tories stirring up race-based hatred of the police to attract the BAME vote! 

I certainly put this kind of thing past them, but I'm surprised that so many people have called for it, Iamgregp amongst them!

Me too. 

I think the question we have to ask ourselves do we think the disproportionate use of SS on BAME people is justified to the level it exists?  (I've never said it should be proportionate to population makeup as has been suggested above).

Or another way to phrase that - Are BAME people roughly 7 times more likely to be the perpetrators of crime than white people?

Given that people from BAME backgrounds constitute 14% of the general population in England and Wales, but make up 25% of its prison population I would say not?

Yes, BAME people are stopped for no reason more than white people. 

However it's difficult know by just how as the well-documented "thought I could smell cannabis" is used as justification on a great deal of unjust searches, which will go down as suspect searched for a reason.  There's been a paper published on this very issue recently.

Bit of a weird article that - cites a single unnamed unreferenced home office study that the author saw in the late 90's but now can't find and nor can anyone else.  And that's the evidence on which this race element of SS is a myth?

Not saying I don't believe the author of course, in fact probably he's telling the truth.  I'd just like to see the evidence rather than be told it exists.

To be fair, that was a bit naughty of me and I have misrepresented what you dismissed there.  Apologies.

The reason I did that was that I was a little perturbed by your politicians style answer that we see so often: "Is it X or Y?" to which they answer "Well what I think is important to people is Z".  You're better than that.  

Fair enough, I'm disappointed that you won't give me an answer on this but I'm not going to go all Paxman and start hounding you for an answer.  

Masons init?

Edit to add.

I believe the discussion about using smell of cannabis as a trigger for stop search stemmed from one of several HMIC reviews of stop search ( all of which were critical of policing). The instructions following this was that smell could not be used as grounds.

There is now some push back from that by either NPCC or Police Fed I believe ( and given the new HMIC I would imagine he may have a different view).

Whilst there are certainly opportunities to misuse smell as a ground for a SS if you have ever pulled a car with typically young lads late at night then the smell of weed when they crack the window can sometimes almost knock you out.  One of the characteristics of cannabis is that it stinks.

That paper has been referenced a few times in the general stop search discussion I think it's  MVA and Miller J. (2000). ‘Profiling populations available for stops and searches’. London: Home Office. 

I don't have a copy I'm afraid. I believe Waddington and others have referred to it in work they have done looking at these details.

It's the kind of population profile that does make sense when you think about it.

No problem. Fair enough.

My blunt answer would be - yes I would investigate the death of a dead white straight woman better than this - BUT - I would hope that I would investigate the death of a dead white gay male a lot better than this as well.

If anything I was admitting to a bunch of biases that are likely to be shared by investigators everywhere - when I turn up to the death of a known recreational drug user who first reports indicate has died of an overdose - I'd be lying if I said I didn't have some preconceived idea of what might have happened. The skill is in balancing and recognising those biases and conducting a suitably diligent but proportionate investigation. In real life you cannot call every death as suspicious "just in case" ( a suspicious death would result in the whole show coming out - murder scenes, detective superintendents, murder squads etc....)

Yeah this is a really sorry state of affairs. I feel for you on this.  If a police officer genuinely smells cannabis on someone of course they should be able to search them on that basis, the stuff stinks and is illegal to posses, should be a given (my personal feeling on the matter aside). But then this has been used as a bogus justification for a SS by so many officers so frequently that you’re straring down the barrel of not being able to search someone when it’s patently obvious they’re committing possession.

That’s difficult but this situation has been caused by police officers using at as a bogus reason (or lying, if you will). I’ve had it happen to me on several occasions, and many of my fiends too. And now that’s f****d it for the rest of you, the honest police.

That’s an answer, but not to the question I asked.  

I didn’t ask what you would have done. I asked whether you think the sexuality of the victims had played into the thoroughness of the investigation.

But look, like I said, I’m not going to hound you on this. And actually, I think what you’ve written in the paragraph below is actually really key, interesting and insightful. 

Like I said. This is a really good insight into policing. Biases, although it sounds like a bad thing, are useful because you simply can’t investigate every incident to the same degree. You could call it coppers nose, intuition or expirience. 

Your comments about the skill being in balancing these biases is really, genuinely very interesting to me. I guess maybe where the Port investigation went wrong is the police let these biases (and, I guess you could call them prejudices) overrule the cold hard facts that they observed? 

Do you accept the MET has, at least, a serious image problem? Even if it's nothing more, surely this needs addressing? If you object to an approach similar to that taken, apparently fairly successfully in NI, what do you propose?

No, it is not.

It was a HUGE issue in the recent past, as you surely know. It's meant to have been cleaned up a lot by now, but I have no idea how effective this has been.

Isn't that inevitable with ANY police service (or more usually, force.) It exists to stop people - us - doing things we want to do. Never going to be great PR, is it?

I don't know, is it an image problem or is it a perception problem - why don't you start by suggesting what you think the Met do well?

It won't be evidence then.  Just one person's opinion.

I don't think so. Most police forces seem to manage to have broad support most of the time without endless reports of botched investigations,  rape "joke" WhatsApp groups, shooting unarmed suspects etc etc.

Because I am not the Mets PR arm

And there in one post you have it.

Please explain how the Met can improve its image when you as a person who believes himself to be unbiased (!), are criticising them for "Shooting unarmed suspects" - when, as far as I can recollect all shootings have been subject to intensive independent scrutiny and found to be entirely lawful and justified.

And as for "endless botched investigations" - you are emphasizing the fact that it's not about what they do (an incredible volume of extremely good, complex and successful investigations) but instead about the press report you've read about what they got wrong.

It's a great example of wilful blindness - even in this thread there is an example of an almost unprecedented level of praise by a judge for one investigation, yet your take home is, I quote again "endless botched investigations".

That's a massive over simplification. Where I used to live the police was the second most respected institution in the country after the defence forces. Above doctors, nurses, clergy, civil servants, teachers etc. etc. A police service can exist to 'protect and serve' - no wonder that where effective they are loved.

The Met clearly has deep seated issues on top of those - predominantly the results of massive funding cuts under austerity - that also affect all other forces. The Met's national role also brings further focus to them that other large forces with their own deep seated problems (GMP for example) don't face.  

Welcome to the public sector! What do you ever read or hear about social services besides when things go wrong and some poor little kid is murdered by their parents? Teachers - we are all work-shy lazy shirkers about to go on strike except for when we are trying to fill children's minds with 'woke' propaganda. Even the NHS doesn't get a pass these days - covering up their mistakes by persecuting whistle blowers etc., failing to deliver babies safely. And so on.

There are even politicians out there of all parties who work hard and serve their electorates!

 I am sure I am  biased in all sorts of ways like everyone else, and have never suggested otherwise.  Stop putting words in my mouth.

As I wrote above, my "take home" is that the MET has a serious image  problem at best.  Arguing about whether it's justified doesn't get us very far.  You think it's doing great; increasingly the public and politicians don't.  Regardless of who is right, the fact it isn't perceived as doing a good job is surely concerning to you?  Or do you not care?  If you do care, I am asking what your suggested remedial action is.  I'd support something similar to what led to the PSNI.

I'm not putting words in your mouth. I am suggesting, perhaps mischievously, that you are biased. You appear to agree.

I don't think "it's doing great" - I am highlighting that - by the very examples you chose - it's an almost hopeless task. 

I note you don't actually address the points I made - which to be clear are that your opinion of the met based on the examples you have chosen are;

a)in the case of police shootings - wrong

b)in the case of "botched investigations" - unfairly balanced

How does the Met address your incorrect perception of it?

As I said, arguing over whether the MET did a good job with these is now futile.  They are not seen as doing so by a large and increasing proportion of the public.  If the police aren't in general perceived as fair, decent and competent, they are failing.  You can argue until you are blue in the face that they followed some arcane procedure correctly.  I can point to findings of institution racism, corruption etc etc, loss of confidence by politicians etc etc and that won't change your view, so let's move past those discussions.

When full IOPC investigations, inquests, and criminal proceedings which totally exonerate officers are seen as "arcane procedures" we are on a hiding to nothing.  A totally justified, lawful and proportionate shooting of a criminal is considered to be the police acting wrongly.....

I have addressed the 1999 finding of institutional racism before. This is not "an institution full of racists" - quite the reverse - no racist officers were identified. And, as I said the report found that institutional racism existed in institutions across the country - which is likely to include yours, whatever that might be.

Loss of confidence of politicians is an interesting one. What do you want, an independent police force? Or one that flexes to the whim of politicians -and in the case of Khan, takes unlawful action as he demanded?

You are doing exactly what I accused iamgrep of doing - judging a police force on the media you read.

The challenge for the Met against a media onslaught is to present a picture more reflective of the actual work that the Met does - but that doesn't sell papers or get clicks. 

No-one is interested in "Met give lifesaving treatment to (yet another) black victim of knife crime", when they can have rallies, get headlines and drive the news agenda with themselves in the centre by proclaiming that the Met shoot unarmed black men....(with the unsaid insinuation that this must be unjustified and racist...)

Although, I should point out

Menezes was not armed.  Chris Kaba was not armed.  So it is you who are objectively wrong here.

Please could you let the IOPC know that you have key information that the shooting of Kaba was unjustified. Or perhaps, unlike the media, you could wait for the facts to come out. Then you can be as outraged as you want.

Edit to add - I don't propose to dissect the de Menezes shooting again. You've already dismissed the huge amount of independent scrutiny by multiple agencies as acquitting the police based on "arcane procedures" so it would seem pointless. 

All right, let's assume I and many others are credulous dupes of the press.  The point remains we have a low opinion of the Met.  Is your position that nothing  should change as a result?

You are at it again.  I never said anything about justified or not.  You are beginning to sound like you aren't debating in good faith.

If you can explain what is wrong with the shooting of Kaba I will listen. But if your argument is that unarmed people shouldn't be shot then I would refer you to the death of Andrew Harper as a potential consequence.

If your argument is that De Menezes shouldn't have been shot - I would agree. But if you are unable to take a balanced view based on the vast amount of information available on one of the most publicised high pressures manhunts in UK history that was scrutinised in depth by numerous agencies then there is no point discussing it.

My position is that, given that you have resolutely failed to say ANYTHING positive about the Met - when even a lazy glance at this thread could have provided a couple of examples - then it would seem a perception problem just as much, if not more, than a problem with what the Met police force actually do, routinely, day in and day out.

There's undoubtedly things that can change and improve but given you are using a 1999 label of institutional corruption, and a 2005 shooting to label them negatively 17+ years later then I think the only solution that would satisfy you would involve a memory wipe.

If it makes you  feel good, I am quite happy to accept the met does much good stuff.

Yes, that's exactly what I have been emphasising throughout my posts above.

No, I am using the general perception - the image - of the MEt that has developed over time, including those incidents but also many more recent ones to suggest that they have a problem that should be addressed.  You seem to think that the perception of the police is irrelevant.  I disagree, I think it's vital that the police have broad public support.  A "memory wipe" is probably a good idea, hence my suggestion of something similar to the PSNI.

As ever on the police threads you seem to be overblowing the scale of the perception problems. There is bad news in the steady decline in recent years (and things have got worse since the link below) but even though just less than half now think the Met are doing a good job in their area, more than half still support the police.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/16/half-of-londoners-unhappy-w...

There also seems to be a public disconnect with the reality that poor funding will continue to impact services. The link below is oldish but the message is clear: funding increased 30% in real terms from 2000/1 to 2010/11 but decreased in real terms from then by 19% to 2018/19:

https://fullfact.org/crime/police-funding-england-and-wales/

It's obvious that in some BAME communities support for the MET police is terrible, and stop and search changes just haven't helped with that. If there was evidence rates matched crime levels or that stop and search reduced knife crime it would have been produced (that Spectator analysis link is worthless without data). Things have improved though... watch the Steve McQueen BBC series if you want to be shocked about racial injustices in the 70s and 80s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Axe_(anthology)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p08vxt33/small-axe

Maybe we can all agree that despite the scandals the ordinary police in the MET broadly do a good job under ridiculous budget constraints but there is plenty of room for improvement, especially at the top.

If under 50% think they are doing a good job, am I really overblowing things?  Typically 70% think so according to this

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/03/21/despite-qu...

Which given the above will include the MET, implies support is >>70% elsewhere.

Supporting the MET police overall is not the same as thinking they are doing a good job in the local area. On the questions on what most would regard as general support, numbers are coming out around 60% (but declining) which is disappointingly low and a poor trend but the numbers directly contradict your claims that most in London don't support the police. If you want to be taken seriously stop exaggerating and cherry picking (mind you, the Guardian in that link is also guilty of some headline spin in your direction).

PS the UK equivalent numbers on doing well on local crime in your linked poll are not 70% they are 59% (up from 53% earlier that month).

To be clear, I think the prosecutions of those in the Everard vigil were a disastrous decision, which involved misusing temporary police powers from the pandemic. As soon as the CPS were 'back in the loop' they were clear the prosecutions were not in the public interest. That to me is clear evidence of yet another senior management failure in the MET.

The police in general are positively viewed by the public, with 65% saying they trust them, and only 31% saying they don’t. People outside of London give similar results when asked about their local police force (by 65% to 28%), and individual police officers are likewise largely trusted (by 56% to 26%).

But, when asked specifically about the Metropolitan Police in London, trust dramatically decreases. Only 33% of the British public trust the Met, and 42% say they do not.

I don't think you're overblowing anything.

So you think people's perception  of the MET from outside London is more accurate than those who live in London (and that despite London having a much larger proportion of BAME citizens who have some good reasons to be the more unhappy than most)?

I would say there is absolutely not a disconnect in London - it’s a Labour city! The disconnect is between large swathes of small town and suburban England who don’t want to pay a penny more in tax than absolutely necessary and the residents of large cities who rely on better public services and want to pay for them.

You're barking up the wrong tree with this.

Police use of force is governed by Common Law, S.117 of P.A.C.E, S.3 of the Criminal Justice Act and various sections of the Human Rights Act.

Nowhere in this legislation does it require the 'subject' to be armed for the police to be able to shoot him, legally.

The legislation talks of honestly held belief, proportionality, reasonableness and necessity.

Whilst the likes of Dianne Abbot and Sadique Khan have been quick to condemn the police, their opinions are not valid until the facts are known.

As are the opinions of the demanders of 'justice for Chris' and the representatives of BLM, who appear to have taken time off from embezzling funds and purchasing mansions to hit the streets once again.

Given the propensity to jump to the conclusion of police-guilt (and grab headlines), from people who should know better, before the facts are known, it's hardly surprising that the police have an image problem.

What we do know is that Kabba was a serious criminal, who had involved himself in armed crime and county lines drugs trafficking and that the car he had been driving was used in an 'armed incident' a few days prior to his death.

There has been speculation, based on pictures taken at the scene, that Kaba may have attempted to drive at the armed officers who stopped him. If this is the case, and the circumstances are not yet known, it may well have been reasonable for the police to shoot him to 'defend themselves or another from imminent attack'...regardless of whether or not he was pointing a gun at them.

You, like Off Duty, are missing my point. Quibbling over whether this or that action was legal or justifiable is pointless. The fact is there is a widespread impression that the Met is varyiously racist, corrupt and incompetent because of an ongoing string of appalling behaviour by its officers, manifest failures and questionable decisions. This isn't healthy for either the Met or London. It is also in itself a severe failure of the Met - if it can't command the confidence of the public, it is failing. It needs to be addressed somehow.

Maybe the reason that there is a widespread impression that the Met is as you say is that the media and other interested parties have deliberately stirred the pot by sensationalising every negative action of the Met.
It also doesn't help when the Mayor of London appears to be one of those interested parties...

It is also the case the the professional inspectorate has placed the MPS in special measures as a result of its recent failings. For all that there are some who would like to see criticism of the MPS as being prompted by ignorance, malice or bias, it does seem significant that a body such as the HMICFRS should feel the need to intervene in such a way. 

https://www.policeprofessional.com/news/hmicfrs-places-mps-under-special-me...

Maybe (although I don't think that is true) but so what? The problem is just as real. Also the mayor is surely a genuinely interested party? The police need to be accountable and he is one element of that accountability.

I think Sadiq Khan is absolutely a genuinely interested party.  He, like me and many other Londoners, wants to see the MPS perform much better than they are now, and wants to see change in the service. 

When Cressida Dick (finally) went it was because he had no confidence she was willing or able to deliver the type of change and improvement that he, and the rest of us, wanted to see.  This is from this morning https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-62839529

I can't see why on earth he would want to chip away at confidence in the Met amongst Londoners.  It serves him no benefit at all. 

I think that was the correct decision for the scale of the problems. We still shouldn't pander to those who tar all the police with failings in their senior management (that the referral is designed to help overcome) or the individual officers who break the law (or the rules of conduct).

In the Everard vigil prosecutions, as well as making the mistakes in prosecution the management response to the CPS dropping the case at appeal was dishonest:

In response to the CPS’s decision, Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe said:

“We know how important it was for people to remember Sarah Everard and voice their anger."

"Officers took very seriously their duty to safeguard the public during the pandemic and to balance this with the rights of individuals."

“The decision to pursue a prosecution in these circumstances is entirely a matter for the CPS.”

Yet the action was initiated under the Single Justice Procedure with no CPS involvement. At the first instance where the CPS was involved it brought the prosecution to an end.”

I agree with that. There is too much misinformation on both sides of this debate but Khan seems to me to have played things pretty straight. That doesn't stop the tories and their press attack dogs still trying to pin blame on him.

OffDuty has already given his response to this charge.

In summary, the Met will struggle to command confidence or improve it's image in the face of such noisy hostility.

Whilst the great-and-the-good continue to trumpet the bad (such as the murder of Sarah Everard), ignore the good (the investigation of Wayne Couzens), refuse to accept the finding of enquiries into their conduct (JC DeMenzes) and jump to unsupported anti-police conclusions over works-in-progress (the shooting of Chris Kabba), the Met are on a high road to nowhere.

Could they do better? Yes.

Could the press, public and politicians be more balanced and less sensationalist in their coverage of police matters? Also yes.

Would it make any difference to their image if they did? I suspect not. There are simply too make people who sell papers, achieve clicks, gain votes and get paid on the back of Met-bashing.

If you can identify a better, equivalent police force elsewhere in the worlds, I'd like to hear about it.

Straight other than demanding Cressida Dick literally break the law and sack officers. 

See links above. Most other UK forces do much better with public perception, and PSNI are clearly hugely better regarded the the RUC were, so change is possible.

But we live in a social and cultural context much wider than the news we consume. What other UK profession is glorified and valorised as much as the police in drama series, movies and novels? Last week I binge watched the first season of The Capture, rather silly in some ways but quite good fun and well done. The only bad copper in it isn't completely bad, thinks he is trying to do something good, and has only become dodgy by hanging around too much with spooks, in particular American spooks (the worst type obviously). The normal non-spooky cops are all honest salt-of-the-earth types trying to do a difficult job - which is pretty much the norm for TV police isn't it? Even line of duty is good cops trying to root out the bad cops to protect the integrity of the CJS.

I finished a book the other night sort of a detective novel, but the main character is an ex con forced to play the role by his boss. It's set in the S Asian communities of Southall, deals with honour violence, tensions between Sikhs and Muslims etc etc. The police are in the background, and while not loved by the good guys in the story they are a predictable and helpful force that can be relied on to help out when needed. I just started another detective novel over the weekend, although in that case it's Swedish police - but still... 

Should add, both books were grabbed from our local ex-phone box now pop-up lending library, so perhaps indicates the type of paper backs people buy and read - before passing on.

Agreed. 

It's really not in his interest to have a failing, or even perceived, to be failing police force. 

Every time there's a stabbing, some kind of civil unrest or shocking lawlessness the right wing press, and associated belligerent commentators, trumpet it as "another example Khan's broken London".

If the Met failures and affairs are being used as a stick to beat him with, then of course he wants to see an improvement in the service.

Equivalent police force.

No other uk police force comes close to the Met in terms of size, risk, scrutiny etc

Except that's all rather 'he said, she said' and the report on it was hardly anything like as independent as it should have been.

I really welcome your input on these debates but it would help if you comment on what you know (the Port case had significant public pressure on the police that the cases looked to be linked) and don't use dodgy sources (sure it's complicated but it seems ridiculous to me to defend, without hard data, that crime levels could be overall 8 times higher in London"s black communities and 4 times more likely in all ethnic minorities to try and justify those differential stop and search stats).

In your post above, you seemed to have reached pro-police conclusions over this works-in-progress, so it seems we all have our crosses (and biases) to bear.

Not quite the population size, although at 5.5 million it is not insignificant, but Police Scotland is in a political context I would say that is more complicated than the Met's. 

Are you seriously suggesting that a police force that has such failings as to have been placed in special measures as the MPS is among the highest functioning police forces around the world? 

Genuinely, FFS. What dodgy sources have I used? I linked quite openly to a Spectator opinion piece which made reference to a home office report that I subsequently referenced.  I also linked to an analyst who has done a lot of work on the ss stats.

I think it's quite reasonable to highlight - as a matter partly of my own opinion and partly supported by data, that elements of crime/the CJS and the involvement of the BAME community might feasibly impact on SS rates -  which does not translate into some simplistic "crime rate must equal stop search rate" claim that you are trying to make.

And I don't know much about the Port case as I have repeatedly said. 

I simply don't believe the analyst in the Spectator article until the data is made public. If it's that clear in such a highly politicised matter why wouldn't it be public? Similar claims were made about black police shootings in the US being proportionate to crime levels, which turned out to be incorrect (and irrelevant in cases where excessive and often illegal police action leading to a death was filmed).

I too would expect the stop and search rates to be a bit higher given crime rates are higher in some communities  but the 8 times and the 4 times just don't seem credible to me given overall stats; and given the importance to the police of rebuilding trust in those communities (it looks very bad and shouldn't be defended by what amounts to unsubstantiated information).

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/ethnicity-and-the-criminal-justice-sys...

Stop and search data is counted, recounted and analysed by numerous people, quite understandably.

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/profiling-populations-a...

In the first line of the abstract:

"there is ethnic bias in officer decision making on the street about who to stop and search"

"Ethnic bias" eh?   

If that ethnic bias results in BAME people being more likely to be stopped and searched, is that not just racism?

JFC. You might want to think about that, reread the abstract, think about it some more and then delete that post. 

I think you're reading the text incorrectly. The phrase you cite is part of a suggested hypothesis regarding disproportionality. If you read to the end of the abstract, it concludes:

'Overall, across the five sites, the findings of this research did not suggest any general pattern of bias against people from minority ethnic groups. But, findings do suggest that disproportionality is, to some extent, a product of structural factors beyond the police control. Police forces must increase their efforts to minimize the bad feeling that stops and searches cause, particularly among those from minority ethnic groups. '

What does not appear to be questioned is that there a degree of disproportionality in the application of stop-and-search. That in itself would seem to me to be a bad thing. It is also the case that without knowing the sites analysed, it is impossible to draw any wider conclusions from the study. 

I would also wonder what other research has been done to analyse the acknowledged disproportionality. It is not impossible that analysis at other sites would produce different results. 

Finally, I note that the paper referenced was published in 2002, so its relevance 20 years later may be questionable. 

That's from 2000 and it acknowledged in the abstract that racial bias is sometimes a factor in the police officer decision to stop and search. I no longer have access to my University library to find if other research papers or reviews criticised the methodology or conclusions of that paper (but when I was looking a decade back there were plenty of them for home office outputs on the subject).

Back to the present, numerous articles have complained about unpublished research used as backing for recent home office decisions on stop and search. Just one example:

https://theconversation.com/stop-and-search-disproportionately-affects-blac...

There is a long campaign by the Spectator on stop and search having no racial motivation (they claim matching local crime ethnicity stats... but how do we check?).

These are important decisions causing massive community strains and it's disgusting that such decisions don't have a clear public evidence base. As it is they stink of dirty politics.

It was more the wording that I was questioning rather than the findings.

And as Harry has already pointed out, this study is 20 years out of date, and is only one study with no replications or peer reviews.  It proves nothing.

If I was you I'd think about the sources you've quoted on this thread more than my reaction to them.  

Thks is getting ridiculous.

"Quote the sources, it's all unreliable"

I did. Here you go.

"It's all unpublished, quote published sources "

Ok. Here you go 

"Well, it says this ...."

No it doesn't.

"Anyway not those sources, they are irrelevant ".

So, ladies and gentlemen, I refer you back to my original post. How about looking at the Twitter thread I published by Gavin Hales, who faithfully references his conclusions in numerous analyses of SS data, using more recent data on SS and statistics.

And we wonder why the Met struggles to publicise it's positive news. FFS.

Wait, what....?

"Ethnic bias" eh?   

If that ethnic bias results in BAME people being more likely to be stopped and searched, is that not just racism?"

Just accept you misread it and move on.

Oh right, so one lengthy research paper with a clear and reviewable methodology and results, proves nothing. Cool, cool. Better let the many science graduates of UKC know that their published scientific papers are worthless unless corroborated.

If you've got an issue with the methodology and the lack of peer review - Google the goddamn thing and analyse it yourself. You appear to be expert enough to dismiss it as worthless.

Yeah. I should probably refer to yours instead, oh hang on a minute....

I did not say it proves nothing. However, I would question what it does prove. As I said earlier, without knowing the sites studied, it is impossible to know how widely applicable its findings may be. Similarly, the fact that it is 20 years out of date makes its relevance to current practice somewhat questionable. 

That you appear unwilling to accept it may not provide the definitive proofs you are seeking is troubling. 

Go on then, give me an example of an equivalent force that performs better.

If the Met is as bad as is claimed, there must be dozens of 'em...

Really, what were my conclusions?

I have not made any claims as to the qualities of the MPS. I have pointed out that it has been placed in special measures by the official body responsible for oversight of our police forces. This is not a  question of politics. The fact that it may be better or worse than equivalent forces elsewhere is neither here nor there. Residents of London do not have recourse to any other police force, so it is the performance of the MPS which is of interest. The fact that it has been recognised to be failing should be of concern to all who wish to see successful policing in our capital. 

I'm not suggesting you said "it proves nothing" because you didn't - I was replying to iamgrep, who did.

I have never said it provides any definitive proofs, and it's getting tiresome that, as usual I am being criticised for a position I have not put forward.

This paper presents an evidence based example of why the bald data of stop search ethnicity, and the very blunt claims of "because stop search is disproportionate it is because police are racist" - may not actually reflect the reality.

It is one piece of work, out of several, that try to dive in to the data and make some sort of sense out of it. It actually cautions against complacency and includes some caveats about the potential that racism in stop search might exist and be involved in these figures.

My only point is that the stop search debate is considerably more nuanced than the general commentary that is found in most articles and in most activist campaigns.

I am well aware of the danger and risks of stereotyping and racist targeting of stop search, it's a matter of considerable work and continual focus by policing. 

I am one of the science graduates of UKC thanks.  

And yes, that's how scientific research works.  A single study supports can suggest the hypothesis is correct/incorrect.  Further research, replications and studies will confirm.  That's basically the closing sentence on every paper I ever wrote.

If you like I can find you a scientific paper that proves the Earth is flat.  Does that mean the earth is flat?

Also re. the sources I have or haven't referenced on this page.  I haven't offered any as a) it's not my area of expertise and b) I'm here to offer opinion and hold discussion.   You're the one who has offered weak evidence to support your views and been criticised for doing so.  Don't have a go at me because I haven't been silly enough to do the same.

20 years out date. 

As I said, that you seem unable to concede any weaknesses in the use of out-of-date material is troubling. 

The problem with the HMICFRS going outside their reporting schedule to say that the Met is going in to special measures is that it isn't accompanied by any of the normal published documentation to explain why, what areas are required for improvement and where any work needs to focus.

I have not heard of this happening to any other force.

...well, Police Scotland has hardly been immune from criticism.

Indeed, their Chief resigned a few years ago, following the death of a motorist who was left to die in a ditch for 3 days after contacting Police Scotland to report that she had been involved in an RTC (Lamara Bell).

Their firearms department is currently under review following allegations (proven) of sexism and misogyny...and, along the same lines, their policy of allowing rapist to identify as women to avoid being charged with rape (incredible but true), is also the source of much criticism.

Not to mention BAME deaths in police custody and following police contact, the standard arguments over stop-and-search (exasperated by Police Scotlands use of armed officers to carry it out), and all the rest of it.

Are you holding Police Scotland up as a shining light for The Met to follow, really?

Perhaps, the conclusion we can draw from this is that huge governmental organisations such as the police, by their very nature, will never live up to the standards that some people demand of them...

JFC. I would expect better of you then.

The prime characteristic of good scientific debate should be accepting when you have misinterpreted the information. As you did when you misread the abstract.

You continue to dismiss a paper that you haven't read as "weak" - presumably based on the date it was published and nothing else.

Criticism of a scientific paper generally involves a little bit more than whining about the date it was published.

Would I like to see more work to corroborate or negate the findings - yes definitely. Does the fact it hasn't been done mean the findings do as you said "prove nothing" ? Absolutely not.

If this is the standard of scientific analysis and debate these days I am tempted to rip up my various scientific degrees and throw them in the bin.

The selective nature of reply is awe inspiring.

Yes, the study is 20 years old. Yes it would be much better to get some more current data. Yes this might not reflect the current picture.

Perhaps you could at least open your mind to the concept that some researchers have attempted to address one of the thorny issues around race and stop search and produced some findings that at the very least demonstrate that these statistics might be worth considering with a little bit more caution and nuance.

I think one of the problems in this thread is that the argument “high crime in an area drives stop and search” might not necessarily be true. We don’t have any statistics for “actual crimes”, ie behaviour that would result in punishment if it was detected and went through the CJS, just estimates. What we have is data for crimes detected and different types of action taken by the CJS - and this is dependent on how the CJS acts. If stop and search delivers arrests and convictions then it may well be to some extent driving the crime stats for a particular area, ie there is a degree of reverse causality involved. Note that I have no idea as to how big this effect is, I’m merely saying we have to consider it and to say “the data shows there’s a match between crime rates and stop and search rate” might not be entirely accurate.
 

This is fairly obvious social science so you’d hope the Home Office took this into account when doing its analysis, but without seeing the studies we can’t be sure. 

Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realise I was dealing with someone who was such an intellectual heavyweight who is able to draw upon such weighty tomes as... a vague article in The Spectator, the abstract of a single paper published over 20 years ago, and the Twitter feed of someone I've never heard of who apparently used to work for the Met.

When I said weak I was referring to all the "sources" you've cited on here, and they are. Undeniably so.  

So far in this thread you have dismissed the opinions of:

-50+% of Londoners

-The view of HMICFRS

-A large proportion of the press

-The mayor of London

-review finding the MPS institutionally corrupt and racist

They could all be wrong, I suppose, but perhaps time to take a step back and review your own opinions?

Now that's a really valid criticism - certainly with respect of any assessment of high crime Vs high stop search, probably less relevant for any element looking at profile of population on the street Vs profile of those stop searched.

Where have I done that?

Where have I done that?

Yep. No issue there.

Yep. No issue there.

Two separate reviews. I've made no comment on the review around corruption I have highlighted that the McPherson report was published in 1999 - which by the argument of many others in this thread (not me) would appear to render it utterly irrelevant as far too old.

(Edit to add - I've also tried to explain what it actually found - ie institutional racism, and the fact it found that that existed in other institutions, not just policing)

Or perhaps you could review what I have actually written.

Implicitly by dismissing the idea that MPS aren't doing a good job

Just above - apparently out cycle or something.

So police should be unaccountable in your view?

Ditto

Well that's fine then, no problem at all.

Excellent, we are agreed that using a 20-year old piece of literature may not be the best way of supporting a case related to present-day policing in London. 

It might have been useful if you had cited something more recent, such as the 2021 Williams report. 

If someone tried to cite the McPherson report as being relevant to the situation now, I would make exactly the same criticism. It was important at the time, but 23 years on, its relevance has greatly diminished. That is a completely different situation to your citation of a 20-year old paper to inform actions taken today. 

Ah, right, "implicitly", by saying something that I haven't said about MPS doing a good job.

If you don't understand what I've said, you can ask.

Huh? Disagreeing with media representations is saying policing should be unaccountable? Wow.

The mayor told the commissioner to break the law. But I guess that's cool cos he's the mayor.

Also, not something I've said.

Jeez this site is crazy.

But it may at least present an evidence based view on the fact that the reality is much more nuanced than the bald data.

Which is what I've said. Repeatedly. Though I note you have chosen to ignore that part in your frenzy to focus on the date.

Cool. Maybe someone will cite it.

Upthread off-duty criticised the film makers for not taking into account that changes have taken place in the force since the McPherson report was published.

Later he cites a report from the same time....And then has a go at me for criticising him for doing so.  [shrugs]

The reality as it was then. Which may or may not have any bearing on the reality as it is now. I'm not sure why this is such a difficult concept to understand. 

The accusation of institutional racism was thrown in at the start of this, and I was then accused of ignoring the report - in the post that your quote is literally answering.

I agree caution should be taken with old data and reports.

I'm not sure I've ever said anything different.

Genuinely a science student?  [Bangs head against the wall repeatedly]

Absolutely. But it is an interesting piece of work that demonstrates that it did in fact find that the population on the ground available for SS did in fact reflect the proportions of SS figures. Which seems an obvious thing when you think about it, and they were able to demonstrate it.

There isn't any particular reason why that general idea wouldn't still have some merit, and it would be great to see it repeated.

And, as I have repeatedly said, I reference it to demonstrate that there is a whole lot more nuance and complexity about SS and disproportionality than some of the bare data might suggest.

I'm not sure why this is such a difficult concept to understand.

No, graduate.  

Your lack of self awareness is worrying mate.

Congrats.

Likewise.

You have moved from being someone who offered insightful comment on policing to seemingly being unable to accept any criticism of the police and being an apologist for anything they do, which is a pity.

Obviously apart from the criticism I've levelled at the police myself.

In this thread.

I'm assuming that doesn't count, rather than the alternative which is that you haven't actually read what I've written.

I love the part when one of the key protagonist flaunts his academic qualifications…then chucks his toys out of the cot when his arguments are bested by a humble copper! 
 

Classic UKC! 

I've only just clocked this reply in the flurry of posts, that appear to have tailed off for some reason.

I appreciate that you are dismissing the (various) detailed Twitter threads by Gavin Hales that reference all their source material as that is apparently "undeniably weak" - in part because you point out, quite rightly that as a science graduate with no knowledge of policing issues he is "someone you've never heard of" so clearly irrelevant.

Here is some of his back catalogue sourced through the magic of Google.

https://www.lse.ac.uk/social-policy/research/Research-clusters/Mannheim/peo...

Go on, where?  As far as I can see agree de Menezes shouldn't have been shot is as close as you have got.

And that, kids, is why there is no point writing stuff on this site, because people don't actually read it.

So you can't point to anything?

That on the basis of the factors you mention, the shooting could well be justified. Which it may well be. But as you said, we don't know yet.

The only conclusions that can be drawn are that the likes of Dianne Abbot should avoid making public statements, which imply that the police have acted unlawfully, until the facts are known.

Of the many issues debated on this thread, one was The Met's poor public image....this kind of thing contributes unfairly towards that perception.

" Diane Abbott said: ‘I support Chris Kaba. I don’t know what I would feel if it was my son killed in cold blood. This is not the only black man killed in this way. It is happening too often.

‘The police need to know how strongly we feel. We have to fight for justice for this family and all the other families of those who have been killed by police."

...chuck The Met under a bus, in the quest for a few more votes. Pathetic.

Someone up-thread mentioned that, as ever, Sadiq Khan has been tweeting much the same nonsense. Presumably, with the same motivation.

Absolutely. That's why along with the size of the population they serve, they seem like the only roughly comparable service to the Met in the UK.

I know all this. I'm not sure what your point is beyond maybe defending the Met by pointing to the fact that other UK police forces are also a mess?

No, which is why I never said anything like that. I was replying to your claim that "No other uk police force comes close to the Met in terms of size, risk, scrutiny etc".

It's not really Hales I'm dismissing - I note he's done some work for my Alma Mater so he must be decent (tongue firmly in cheek!) - but quote or link to his work; not to his twitter feed (not even a verified account btw).

You of course appreciate that Twitter is subjected to none of the rigorous interrogation that papers and published works are, and, in short, twitter posts are worth paper they are printed on.

Could I have googled him and sought out his papers to find out more about him and his work?  Sure.  But why am I doing your research for you?  

Secondly re. Hales, despite my misgivings I had a scan through his feed and if I'm honest with you I didn't really understand the point you were trying to make?  That LMP uses SS disproportionately but then so do other forces even more so?   

That doesn't make it ok, and it doesn't mean they're not guilty of racial bias.

If I turn up half an hour late to work, I wouldn't tell my boss it's not an issue as one of my colleagues was an hour late.  

Look, you're clearly an intelligent man, and despite what you might think, I do respect you and I appreciate your input and insight on these matters.  

Some of the debate we had yesterday was excellent - things have taken a slide today and I'd hold my hands up and say I bear some responsibility for that too (had some bad news , it's not been an easy day). 

So I want to make it clear that I don't think you, or the vast majority of police officers are racist in any way, shape or form.  I think the way the system has been set up is, the structures and the decisions officers on the ground are made to make because of those systems do result in discriminatory action.  That's institutional racism and I think we all can agree that's not something we want.

Every incoming met police commissioner has promised change, it's clear it something that is wanted by many Londoners, the Mayor and beyond.  They've all promised it, none of them have delivered on that promise. 

My feeling is that it's time to try something different to make that reform happen, yours (I think?) is that they keep going and it'll come.

I hope you're right, as as I've detailed upthread, I've just got no confidence at all in them right now, and as a resident of this city with a baby daughter, I'm going to be honest - that scares me when I think about it.

I also looked through Hales' tweets on nitter for an hour or so yesterday. I agree he seems genuine ( despite the usual issues of potential conflicts of interest) but I found nothing showing that relatively recent racial crime demographics match stop and search demographics. I'd read and ignored his linked tweet earlier as it just showed the same racial bias problem in forces elsewhere, which is just whataboutery (I was being kind to offduty on that, whom I think is very informative and gets an unfair level of flack on here). I guess I too could have dialed down my disappointment, but the comments on the Port case riled me, as it was massive news, and it was incredibly clear investigative failures had occurred after friends and families were begging them to look at connections in the earlier deaths. The misuse of statistics by right wing news sources (to deny racial bias in the police) is much harder to unpick.

I certainly don't expect a police officer to understand how academic research works (plenty of academics need help in that!) but I did hope he might realise that it is important that the home office release research for wider scrutiny (that they are using to make policy changes). If nothing else it's the police who are stuck in the middle of the needless political rows that ensue, as well as facing continuing ire from some communities they police. I have little hope of improvement with Braverman replacing Patel and Truss replacing Boris (her first major acts include senior civil service sackings, and an effective removal of scrutiny,  during a response to a national emergency, by closing Parliament). The papers for the emergency energy measure announcement in the debate last week were being copied in the middle of the debate.... yet again the Speaker was pathetic...like a grumpy uncle everyone ignores until told off and forced to feign contrition).

Yes, absolutely agree with all of your post.

The Port case, and to an extent the discussion around it is something that gets me a bit riled up too.  The investigation was so jaw droppingly poor it's clear that something went very wrong here. 

All of this happened less than a mile from my house, so I'm keen that action is taken so something like this can never happen again.