Stop and Search: Racism in Blue

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Black and Asian people are disproportionately targeted by police in a surge of the use of stop and search under counter-terrorism laws in the wake of the failed 2007 London bomb attack, according to official figures published in April 2009.

The Justice Ministry statistics showed that the number of black people being stopped and searched under counter-terrorism laws rose by 322%, compared with 277% for Asian people and 185% for white people.

If you recall, back in late October 2003, the bell rang out on round two of the ongoing battle between the government and the BBC, with the screening of the shocking, and much-talked-about documentary The Secret Policeman.

The BBC promised to show us damning new evidence of racism in the police force that would be impossible to ignore, valiantly bringing the issue into the open, and forcing a fresh public debate. Our man in blue examined the fallout, and while it was certainly as infuriating and sickening to watch as promised, the title of the programme was telling. The Secret Policeman – but secret to whom exactly?

Ballistic Turbans? Is it even possible?

I doubt that there were many black people rubbing their eyes in disbelief as the programme aired, many Asian people fretfully wringing their hands around the water cooler the next morning. Indeed, the satisfaction that many blacks and Asians may have felt at finally seeing the racism, that they have long known still infects the police force, so powerfully attested to on screen, will have been mixed with frustration and anger that only now is mainstream society taking their complaints seriously. Now they have seen it, they believe it. “Well,” some might say, “we have been telling you this for years. Welcome to our world.”

Star of this particular show was North Wales’ PC Rob Pulling, who, with minimal coaxing from undercover BBC report Mark Daly bragged about his fantasy of killing a ‘Paki’, said that Stephen Lawrence ‘deserved to die,’ and branded Lawrence’s parents ‘spongers.’ But Pulling was ably assisted by a strong supportive cast of like-minded heavy-browed knuckle-dragging colleagues, who spoke openly of the hatred of ‘Pakis’ and their and their discretionary application of B.A.T when dishing out on-the-spot-fines to ethnic minorities (Black Added Tax).

No surprises that the report became a national talking point and a tabloid cause celebre. Rarely had police officers been caught on camera being so openly, viciously racist. However, the shock was more profound because so many wanted to believe that, post- Macpherson, racism in the police force wasn’t a problem any more. After the bungled Stephen Lawrence enquiry, society nodded solemnly, learned to speak the language of institutional racism, and put the whole unpleasant incident down as a learning experience. Mr and Mrs Decent of Middle England tutted one last time, thanked God that all that horrid racialism business had been sorted out, and buried their heads safely back in the sand.

But now they have been wakened from their slumber again in the most sensational, and satisfyingly narrative, manner: by a brave, crusading journalist, who put himself on the line to root out the horrible truths that no-one else had the guts to pursue; by astonishing covert camera footage of new police recruits mimicking – in scenes nauseatingly reminiscent of the Stephen Lawrence suspects – the assault of an Asian colleague. PC Pulling provided the headline-grabbing climax by cutting eye-holes in a pillowcase in an approximation of a KKK hood.

The furore was aggravated by the inelegant intervention of the government, with a senior Home Office civil servant allegedly attempting to suppress the film. David Blunkett himself condemned it as a ‘stunt’ days before it was screened, and without any knowledge of its contents, only to backtrack embarrassingly after the broadcast, admitting that his comment had been ‘a mistake.’

However, the willingness of the normally bullish Home Secretary to make such a public U-turn was surprising. Was he forced into it because the contents of the programme were so patently indefensible that it would be suicidal not to? Or did he, with his experienced politician’s nose for an opportunity, sense that he might turn the whole incident to his advantage?

For, disturbing, arresting stuff as The Secret Policeman was, what did it actually reveal to us? Did it provide a genuine insight into the ongoing problem of bigotry in the police force?

Or was it ultimately a sensational grab for the moral high ground that – though well intentioned – will ultimately play into the hands of the ‘few bad apples’ brigade who have sidelined the issue of police racism for decades?

As a gripping good-against-evil narrative, the film was a triumph: the courageous white hero, boldly uncovering wrongdoing, and unmasking the reassuringly, telegenically grotesque villains – the ‘bad apples’ who can quickly be expunged with a quick-fix of purging, public soul-searching, and promises to do better. But, ultimately, doesn’t this just play into the hands of the likes of Blunkett who, with his stance on asylum seekers, has done as little as any Home Secretary in recent memory to further race relations in this country, and for whom the ascendancy of Jean Marie Le-Pen in France was an excuse to cosy up further with the Daily Mail-re a ding classes, and trot out the old line that, unless we take a ‘hard line’ on issues of race and nationality, the doors will be left open to the ‘real’ extremists.

But, regardless of how quickly and cheaply it might placate the masses; a quick fix will never be enough. Regardless of what we might wish, the odious goons caught on camera in The Secret Policeman were unlikely to be the most racist officers in the country. Just the most unlucky. And the most stupid.

You didn’t have to be an investigative reporter to know that none of those featured had turned their backs on promising careers in rocket science or brain surgery in favour of donning the bell-shaped helmet of justice. By focusing their investigation on the most jaw-droppingly vile individuals they could train a camera on, the BBC has allowed society to look outside itself once more for the root causes of racism – to believe that it is a problem caused solely by a handful of skin-headed, Sie-Heiling zealots, rather than by a cancerous, pervasive mistrust and fear of ‘the other’ that lives in the hearts of all of us, white or black.

This is the everyday reality of racism; a reality that made Tony Blair’s claim, in the days after the documentary was screened, that, “the vast bulk of police officers are…not in any shape or form racist,” at best naive, and at worst wilfully dishonest. As is his wont, Blair was re-iterating the comforting illusion that racism is defined by calling Asians ‘Pakis’, blacks ‘niggers’, and enjoying the work of Jim Davidson. The truth is that the real agents of racism are nice/decent people, who, unlike PC Tony Lewin, would never smilingly confess, “I’m a racist bastard.”

Given that the police draw their ranks from a racist society; can we really expect them to be better than the rest of us, no matter how much we need them to be? The answer is no. But, what we cannot tolerate is for them to be worse than the society they are charged with protecting. And the worrying truth is that they are. People often speak of a ‘police culture’ – it is a handy label, often glibly and lazily applied. But the ‘police culture’ does exist. I know, because I have been a part of it.

For just under 18 months, I worked as a civilian, but in an operational role, for a large regional police force, and in that time, I met no one even remotely as contemptible as the likes of PCs Pulling and Lewin. I met a lot of deeply pleasant, civilized people, and can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I heard racial epithets being used. And yet, I still came away disappointed, believing that the police force is a racist institution.

One thing that was illustrated by The Secret Policeman is that, for all their faults, those at the top of the policing hierarchy seem to be doing their best to drive out racism. The problem is amongst the rank and file, who are a fiercely protective, inward looking unit, overwhelmingly comprised white males. They are supported by a union – the Police Federation – that has learnt the language of ‘political correctness’, and uses it to their advantage, while simultaneously muttering darkly about how it hampers them in their work.

Political correctness is the modern bête-noire of the police force. I soon lost count of the number of times I spotted a disgruntled officer shaking the pages of his Daily Mail in disgust, and repeating their dreary, charmless mantra: ‘It’s political correctness gone mad!’ The overwhelming feeling was that the drive to eliminate racial profiling in every d a y policing (with the monitoring of Stop and Search records etc) and to be transparent and accountable in all they do, flew in the face of ‘common sense’, and stopped the officers from doing their jobs effectively. On a more general level, the sense was that the imposition of supposedly ‘PC’ values in language and so on, represented a ‘sissification’ of an institution that needed men to be men.

The irony, of course, was that politically correct language actually hampered the quest to root out racist practice. It was notable from the BBC film, and from my own experience of the training received by officers, that the overwhelming emphasis was on what you could and couldn’t say. While it goes without saying that a police officer who uses words like ‘coon’ or ‘Paki’ is unfit for the job and it is made abundantly clear that use of such language is a sacking offence, the overwhelming emphasis on language is turning the pursuit of racism into a phoney war. All that is being taught is a new, safe vocabulary, such that the political correctness that causes so much consternation amongst the rank and file ends up acting as a safety blanket.

stop and search london Stop and Search: Racism in Blue

Justice Ministry statistics for 2009 shows that black people stopped and searched rose by 322% under counter-terrorism laws, compared with 277% for Asian people and 185% for white people.

I witnessed first-hand how the language of political correctness ends up becoming a parody of itself, ultimately serving only to sugar-coat the same boorish, racist sentiments. One thing the police are great at is inventing jargon. In this spirit, they have created a number of alphanumeric codes to represent different ethnic groupings. Naturally, white people are IC1, while black people are labelled IC3. But what use is a dispassionate, alphanumeric moniker, when it is used in the kind of ways I heard when I was a ‘civvie’: When two known black offenders from another area are rumoured to be local: “If you see any IC3s walking down the street or driving about, you fucking pull ‘em”. Or, quite simply, when talking about a black suspect for a robbery: “Fucking IC3s!”

Are we meant to feel better that officers can be advised – formally or informally – to target ‘IC3s’ or ‘African- Caribbeans’ for Stop and Search? That some officers sit around wearily discussing IC3s and their love for ‘wacky backy’? What has changed except the language?

All the same, while overt racist attitudes exist in the police force, as they do in every sphere, the idea that it is no more than a uniformed arm of the BNP is dead wrong. The real toxicity of the ‘police culture’ is its overwhelming emphasis on machismo and conformity. In truth, the problem of racism in the police is a mere corollary of these two things.

While some people might be attracted to the police force out of some unpleasant authoritarian impulse, I still believe that most do so out of a desire to serve the public, and that the vast majority of these people are decent, honest folk. However, so strong is the ‘police culture’, that all but the strongest recruits inevitably finds themselves swayed by it. Ultimately, you have to conform to survive, and almost everyone ends up reverting to a default position of macho, no-bullshit, boys’ club posturing. Unfortunately, what might be termed as ‘traditional’ attitudes on race and colour are as much a part of this as ‘traditional’ attitudes on gender, sexuality, religion, and countless other issues, and it takes a brave individual to rock the boat.

So, in a way, Tony Blair was right. The overt, loutish racists, like those captured on The Secret Policeman are in a tiny minority in the police force. But, it has a far larger problem on its hands, in the poisonously macho, conformist culture that holds sway amongst the rank and file – a culture that stifles progress and dissent, that wilfully and crassly shuts out that which doesn’t fit in with its white, male-dominated credo, and which encourages potentially good officers to do nothing in the face of bad practice. And that is a problem for which there is no quick fix.

Stop and Search: Racism in Blue

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