Race Relations and the Police

Following the conviction of Commander Ali Dizaei, Auntie is asking how this affects race relations and the police.

The sentencing of Metropolitan Police Commander and Black Police Association president Ali Dizaei for corruption has prompted commentators to consider the implications for race relations in the police.

The obvious question should be; what has race got to do with anything? The man broke the law, his race is irrelevant. Or, it should be. Still there’s hand wringing to be done.

Former Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard Andy Hayman says in the Times the Police Service can move on from an age of political correctness after the Stephen Lawrence inquiry:

“The police can afford to be less frightened about dealing with racially sensitive issues: it is no longer the case that the default position of a jury is to assume that the police are racist.”

Well, about time, too. The institutional racism bollocks should never have been allowed  to get a grip in the first place. From recent stories, the police are equal opportunities offenders when it comes to control freakery.

Ex-deputy assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick describes in the Independent his time working with Ali Dizaei in the Metropolitan Police and calls it a bad day for race relations:

“Many at Scotland Yard, and those who have since retired like Andy Hayman and Sir Ian Blair who oversaw the original Dizaei investigation, will be celebrating his demise. For me it’s an ill-wind that blows no one any good, with both the Met and the Black Police Association having been damaged in the process.
The actions of Dizaei and his imprisonment will do little to improve race relations in the police service or improve public confidence in the police.”

The man broke the law, what’s his race got to do with it?

The chairman of the Metropolitan Black Police Association Sergeant Alfred John tells the BBC Today Programme the police force is “without a doubt” still racist and so there is still a need for the BPA:

Sigh… The whole idea of a “Black Police Association” is racist.

“Black people are still are still disproportionately disciplined, they are still disproportionately asked to resign and there is still a lack of progression for black people.”

I don’t know about the former, but Mr Dizaei was doing fairly well until he blew it.

In general, the comments express a healthy scepticism for the diversity agenda that allowed someone like Dizaei to go unchallenged for so long. I have to say, that the final comment from the Groan says it all for me:

Finally, the Guardian editorial calls this the most corrupt case for forty years:

“Forty years ago, when the most influential British police chief of the postwar era, Robert Mark, took over as the Metropolitan police commissioner, he made a celebrated and shocking remark. ‘The basic test of a decent police force is that it catches more criminals than it employs,’ Mark said. Then he added: ‘And the Met is failing that test.'”

When the police return to the peelean principles I’ll have a bit of respect for them. In the meantime, I don’t give a fig about racism. A man rose to become a high ranking police officer and abused that position, his ethnicity is irrelevant. He was, correctly, convicted. Good. Let it be a lesson to the others.