The arrest of the Home Office immigration official and former officer of the Metropolitan Police, Rob Lewis, for setting up a WhatsApp group circulating racist messages described by the Home Office as "vile and deplorable" has been noted by BSWN as alarming but not surprising. Those in the WhatsApp group were, according to reports, principally Lewis’s former colleagues in the Metropolitan Police where he had worked as a member of the elite Diplomatic Protection Group (DPG). Lewis was a member of the Metropolitan Police which in itself has a distressing record of racism and misogyny stretching back to and beyond the Stephen Lawrence affair to the more recent horrific murder of Susan Everard and the reporting of a racist and misogynist culture at Charing Cross Police Station only means that such conduct is the more deplorable since the Met patrols Britain’s capital city which is notable for its diverse population – only 43.4% of the population of Greater London is white British as opposed to 78.4% for England and Wales as a whole.

BSWN asks if the police in England’s most diverse city are accused of being riddled with racism can such conduct be limited to London’s police force? Bristol is estimated to have a population consisting of 16% Black and Minoritised people (Census 2011) and is distinctive from other major cities in the UK in that its Black community consists of a majority of people from an African or African-Caribbean background. The indications are that racism is not absent from Avon & Somerset Police. A noteworthy example is the case of Bijan Ebrahimi who was killed in 2013 due to racially-charged mob violence – with the primary perpetrator subsequently jailed for life. Ebrahimi had, over a period of years, complained to the police and the local authority about racial harassment, but the police and local authority regarded him as a tiresome attention-seeker. An enquiry after his death found that Bristol City Council and Avon & Somerset Police were equally to blame for blind insensitivity and apathy towards the series of events leading to his death. Consequently, two police officers and two community support officers were fired and the two police officers were jailed.

Another case is that of Judah Adunbi, a Black community activist, who served on the police’s own community advisory panel. In 2017, while returning home, he was stopped by the police who attacked him with a stun gun as they mistook him for a ‘wanted man.’ Shockingly, the officer who handled the stun gun was absolved of any wrongdoing by the relevant authorities because they accept that the officer made a ‘genuine mistake.’ Adumbi believes that the incident would have never happened had he been racialised as white. Resultingly, Adumbi is pursuing a civil case against the relevant officer. The subsequent uproar that arose from Judah Adunbi’s unjust assault has led to the creation of ‘I Am Judah’, a film dedicated to a deep exploration of the nuances of identity from the perspective of a community activist – such as Adunbi himself.

In 2018 Councillor Afzal Shah, a prominent Bristol councillor, interacted with a local police station on official business but was wrongfully arrested and charged by officers who mistakenly identified him as a ‘wanted man.’ It is difficult to believe that a prominent local citizen of blameless character would have been so treated had he been racialised as white.

BSWN has strengthened its role as an organization promoting good race relations across the entire South West region by setting up the South West Race Equality Action group (SWREAG), a collective forum of organisations working in the field of race relations from Gloucestershire to Cornwall. In this context, it would be dishonest to place blame solely on the Avon and Somerset Police who have made it clear through their (then) Chief Constable, Andy Marsh, that they have taken the lessons learnt from the Judah Adunbi affair to heart.

So our focus switches to Dorset Police. The EHRC report ‘Stop and Think’ (2010) disclosed that Dorset, a county with a noticeably low number of Black and Minoritised people, had a Stop-and-Search rate of Black people that is far higher proportionately than any other county in England & Wales. According to The Dorset Echo (December 2021):

‘In Dorset[,] a Black person is almost 20 times more likely to be subject to a stop and search while the national average chance of that happening if you are black is seven times more likely than a white person.

The last time the figures were produced the multiplier was 25 times with the county said to have been a national outlier on the measurement for at least a decade.

Dorset’s police and crime panel were noticeably silent on the issue when it was raised at Thursday’s meeting, all but three declining to ask any questions, or make a comment.’

The truth is that the ‘hostile environment’ towards inward migrants entering the UK had been introduced by the government in recent years, being interpreted by those of a xenophobic mindset as a license to express racist points of view and propagate them – as in the case of Rob Lewis. The recent speech at the Tory Party Conference by Home Secretary Suella Braverman (emphasizing her determination to implement the policy of processing claims for asylum in the UK by sending applicants to Rwanda and also questioning the efficacy of the Modern Slavery Act 2015) reinforces the belief that such speeches by politicians contain a subtext for some that discriminating against minorities is tolerable action.

BSWN supports the legal action taken by Liberty and other organizations challenging the legality of the government’s Rwanda policy as a breach of the Geneva Convention and the European Charter of Human Rights.

Liz Fekete, the author and Chief Executive of the Institute of Race Relations has published a paper (‘Racism, Radicalization and Europe’s Thin Blue Line’) in which she argues that the restrictions brought about by COVID-19 and the rise of populism have encouraged policies that encourage aggressive and restrictive policing. Fekete rightly argues that such policies have disproportionately impacted more economically and socially deprived sections of the population – inevitably impacting those racialised as Black.

Moreover, numerous pro-’Cop’ movies and series tend to glorify the rogue officer who willingly bends protective regulations in order to seize the ‘villain,’ a conscious directorial decision to condition the acceptance of such conduct. Criticisms of the police inevitably result, she argues, in police forces complaining that people don’t understand the realities of fighting crime so that the police increasingly become instruments of the state rather than a people’s police force.

We must strenuously defend Britain’s tradition of policing by consent.

Written by Alexandra MacRae on the 7th Oct 2022.