Saturday 7 April 2012

Will the Met ever get over racism?


It is more than a decade since the Metropolitan Police was branded as institutionally racist by the MacPherson Inquiry. Yet there are still accusations of racism within the Met, currently there are 21 people under investigation for alleged racist incidents and this is just the ones we know about.

To be fair to the police officers, the vast majority are not racist and the Met has made significant improvements since it was branded institutionally racist, yet it still has a long way to go. The Met admitted that after the summer’s riots it needed to work with ethnic minorities to build bridges between police and minorities. It is believed that distrust of the police by ethnic minorities as having aggravated the riots in the summer and helping to spark them in the first place.

The Met must try and work better with other communities, but the fact that in 2012 there are still serious problems with racism worries me. Indeed racism in the Met is declining, maybe some day the Met will have no more racists than any other organisation. 

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