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British police have been criticised after a newspaper revealed evidence of conversations between serving and former officers making ethnic slurs. The comments published in The Independent yesterday were made in a secret Facebook group called I’ve Met the Met, which uses the abbreviated name for Greater London’s Metropolitan Police Service.
Members of the group made jokes and used slurs targeting the UK’s Gypsy and Traveller communities, names given to distinct ethnic groups known for their nomadic lifestyles.
One post said that it could be determined that a Gypsy was lying when their lips moved, and others referred to common stereotypes about the communities’ association with petty crime.
“I never knew a Pikey could be offended. I thought they were devoid of all normal feelings and thoughts,” said one user, referring to a term used to describe Traveller communities, but considered offensive by the community itself.
The incident is not the first in which London’s police service has faced charges of racism. The Met faced criticism from the British media and politicians alike for its handling of the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993.
Meanwhile, the British government has promised that two existing probes would investigate claims that undercover police spied on the family of the victim of Britain’s most notorious racist murder in a bid to smear them.
Home Secretary Theresa May also told parliament recently there should be a “ruthless” purge of corruption from police ranks.
The Guardian newspaper reported that a former undercover officer had told them he was part of an operation to spy on relatives of teenager Lawrence, who was stabbed to death at a London bus stop on April 22, 1993.
Campaigners who were helping the family to push for a wider investigation were also targeted, the report said.
Stephen’s father Neville dismissed as “completely unsatisfactory” May’s announcement that two ongoing probes — one into police corruption and one into undercover police operations in the 1980s and 1990s — would look into the allegations.
He said: “I’m convinced that nothing short of a judge-led public inquiry will suffice and I’ve no confidence that the measures announced today will get to the bottom of this matter.”
Prime Minister David Cameron said he was “deeply concerned” by the claims, while the commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, Bernard Hogan-Howe, said he was “personally shocked” by the allegations.
Hogan-Howe, who was not in charge of the force at the time, said: “If these allegations are true, it’s a disgrace, and the Metropolitan Police Service will apologise.
“It’s imperative that we find out the truth about what happened as quickly as possible.”
An official report found that “institutional racism” had tainted the original investigation of the 18-year-old’s murder, leading to a review and overhaul of police practices.
But in the new claims, the Guardian quoted undercover cop Peter Francis as saying that he had posed as an anti-racist activist in order to try and obtain information which would discredit the campaign for a more thorough investigation.
“I had to get any information on what was happening in the Stephen Lawrence campaign,” Francis said.
“They wanted the campaign to stop. It was felt it was going to turn into an elephant.
“Throughout my deployment there was almost constant pressure on me personally to find out anything I could that would discredit these campaigns.”
Two white men, Gary Dobson and David Norris, were convicted of the murder in January 2012 on the basis of new forensic evidence. They lost an appeal against life sentences in August.
They were among five suspects arrested within days of Lawrence’s murder, and police say that the investigation into possible accomplices remains “live”. — AP
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