Neville Lawrence, the father of murdered 18 year old Stephen Lawrence, has spoken about the abject reputation of the Metropolitan Police. Mr. Lawrence’s son, Stephen, was murdered in 1993 in a racist attack. Since his death, a litany of police failings have, unbearably, compounded the heartbreak, grief, and rage at Stephen’s death.
Now a BBC documentary has caught officers on camera bragging about assaulting suspects, ridiculing rape victims, and calling for immigrants to be shot. However, the documentary is far from the sum of the situation. The Met Police in particular have been in scandal after scandal that tells us one thing: they are institutionally racist and sexist, with corruption and bigotry a fundamental part of the organisation.
Met Police haven’t changed since Stephen Lawrence’s murder
Commenting on the BBC documentary, Mr. Lawrence said:
For many people, including myself, the latest reporting on racism, corruption and misogyny in the Met Police comes as no surprise.
This is a sickness that the force was suffering from when Stephen was murdered 32 years ago and we have spent that time highlighting it but still it goes on. I have seen what the Met Commissioner has said in response, claiming that he is rooting out these officers, but this [documentary] film shows he is only succeeding in encouraging them to hide in the system.
Over 30 years since Stephen Lawrence’s murder but, as his father outlines, the rot in the Met Police is here to stay. And, the murder of his son cannot be understood without facing up to how anti-Black racism is central to how the police function.
Mr. Lawrence continued:
The only way to fix the Met Police is for the leadership to accept its diagnoses and take the medicine. But Mr Rowley will not do that. Even now he is refusing to accept that the Met is institutionally racist. It’s causing resentment in the black community and the community knows that if anything is wrong, or there is a situation involving the police, they can’t call the Met because they’re not going to do anything. This film shows why.
Death is the cost, says Neville Lawrence
Neville Lawrence concluded:
They’re not doing their jobs. They’re supposed to be looking after the interests of everybody, no matter what you look like. This is not just about getting rid of officers, it’s about building a Met that reflects London. But if you don’t take that medicine then you’re going to die. Simple as that.
Anti-Blackness cannot be solved with piecemeal reform where certain officers are replaced. The fact that Met Police bosses are in a decades-long cycle of refuting allegations, promising to change things, and never actually dong so is rooted in wider anti-Black racism in British society.
The police do not exist to keep communities safe. Instead, they exist to terrorise those at the margins of society: working class Black people, immigrants, Muslims. The police in their modern iteration have only ever existed to target non-white people so that the white masses can have an illusion of safety.
What else is the point of the likes of Reform and other assorted fascists, if not to coddle whiteness into believing that safety lies in the boot on the neck of Black people?
Featured image via the Canary
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