Britian’s police: unprofessional conduct

Carol HowardFor once the BBC News’s editorial priority seemed to be spot on. Top story on the 7am Radio 4 news was an astonishing case of discrimination involving a black police officer, Carol Howard. Amongst other things, it showed that the Metropolitan Police were systematically manipulating evidence. Alas by 1pm the story had dropped right out of the bulletin. Instead the channel carried a story about a potential paedophilia scandal in the 1980s, based on some very thin evidence. But this story should not be allowed to drop from our attention. Indeed it raises many questions that should be very worrying both for Londoners and the whole country.

Ms Howard joined the Met’s elite Diplomatic Protection Group in 2012. She was quickly victimised by her boss, Acting Inspector Dave Kelly. Mr Kelly appears to have assumed that Ms Howard’s behaviour was dishonest, and instead of handling this in a professional manner, he is accused of hounding her with unreasonable complaints, and he then become “hostile and aggressive” when she invoked a grievance complaint. Ms Howard then went on to bring a complaint of sex and race discrimination. The tribunal hearing this complaint asked to see a report on the original grievance complaint – but the Met’s management edited out all references to discrimination, saying that they were not relevant to the tribunal. They then claimed such deletions were a matter of policy to protect the Force.

The tribunal found in favour of Ms Howard, and was understandably very critical of the Met. All the Met has done so far is to offer this very weak statement:

We are aware of the decision of the tribunal. We are disappointed at the tribunal’s finding in favour of PC Howard.

The tribunal’s decision will now to be given full and careful consideration. We will review the findings, take legal advice and take forward any learning or actions as appropriate.

In other words: zero leadership, but we’ll ask our lawyers how to fiddle with our procedures. They are clearly hoping the story will go away. To judge by the speed with which the BBC has dropped the story, their hopes appear to be well-founded. It is now up to our politicians to on their case. This is one area were the London Assembly can really show its worth. Here’s hoping.

But evidently no major politician has seen fit to take the case on so far – perhaps the reluctance has something to do with the rise of Ukip, and the backlash against political correctness, by older white males in particular. If so our politicians will be letting the majority of people in London down – of all ethnic groups.

Here are the questions I would like to ask:

  1. How is it, 30 years after Lord Scarman first identified problems in the police, that this kind of behaviour seems to be tolerated by middle management in the police force?
  2. There seems pretty good evidence that Mr Kelly’s conduct was unprofessional as well as discriminatory. He has brought the service into disrepute. Has any action been taken by the Met against this officer?
  3. How was it that an attempt was made to manipulate the evidence from the grievance complaint. Is it legal? Is any disciplinary action warranted against any officer? Or should a more senior officer take responsibility for unethical conduct?
  4. Have such deletions affected other complaints? Have they affected statistics produced to the public about the number and resolution of complaints of discrimination?

And then there are the wider issues. The Police are a public service, funded by us as taxpayers. A quid pro quo is that they should be accountable, with a culture of public disclosure and truthfulness. Instead they seem to have a defensive culture, where the public seem to be treated as the enemy, and openness as a threat. Furthermore, proper professional standards seem to be lacking, and the application of discipline highly selective. If officers are unprofessional, they should fear the reaction of their own superiors; instead these superiors seem to rally round. After each scandal, I hear that police morale has been hit, and I hope that this is at last evidence that they have got past of the denial stage of the grieving process for their old ways. But I may be underestimating their resilience.

I am going to leave the last word to Ruwan Uderwerage-Perera, a former policeman and now a Liberal Democrat councillor. Here is what he said in a Facebook post earlier today (quoted with his permission) (and please allow for the informality of that medium):

“The ‘Canteen Culture'” states Prof PAJ Waddington (himself a former police officer) “is often portrayed as a pervasive, malign and potent influence on the behaviour of officers. The grounds for this portrayal are, however, insubstantial and appear to rely more upon the condemnatory potential of the concept than its explanatory power.”

As a former officer myself I believe this aggressive and macho sub-culture that further stamps the belief of ‘them & us’ between the police and the policed is not only still very much alive and well, but has proven resilient to the three plus decades of criticism since is existence was acknowledged by the police service following the Scarman Report of 1981.

The ‘Canteen Culture’ as a result of its very existence is exclusionary and as such Women, BME and Gay (sworn) Officers (for support staff and PCSOs and the like are never fully accepted) either have to acquiesce to the egotistical, male dominated, heavy drinking, womanising and otherwise hedonistic culture which is supported by the ‘work hard, play hard’ mythology or they are cast aside and will be subjected to further abuse.

I add ‘further abuse’, for even perceived membership of the group means that if one is different e.g not white male and straight then one will be the butt of the so called humour anyway, but at least the victim is ‘one of us’ for the time being.

In my opinion the continuance of this sub-culture holds back the service from becoming a professional body, and means that the service will remain believing that it is not part of society, but somehow is on some ‘crusade’ to save society from itself.

Update: 3 July 10.40am

As I hoped, some traction is being made by London Assembly members on this issue, pressing London’s Mayor, Boris Johnson. Mr Johnson, to his credit, does seem to be taking the matter a bit more seriously than the Met’s senior management. He has said he will review 34 other cases.

According to yesterday’s Standard, the Met have denied that the deletions were a matter of policy. That always did sound like a bit of a middle management excuse to me. Also Ms Howard’s lawyers have called for a public enquiry. I don’t agree with that. What is needed is proper accountability, up to the Chief Constable. A public enquiry will merely drape the matter in more evasion, obfuscation over evidence, legalese, and lost time. The answer starts with leadership, and if no leadership is forthcoming from the incumbents, we need new leaders. Quickly.

And just to be clear. This story is about London’s Metropolitan Police. But the problems uncovered are typical other British police forces.

 

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