Two officers have been sacked for gross misconduct, but an inquiry found the police were not guilty of racially profiling the two athletes.
news.sky.com
I am more sympathetic to the police officers after watching this.
I am sure the Met is a racist organisation, but I am not sure this is a good example of that.
I watched this while on public transport, so I might have missed something. But didn’t they fail to stop initially?
Re: Didn't they fail to stop
initially?
We need to rewind a bit.
The first thing to happen in the sequence of events is that the cop van started following what was described to be a Mercedes car. The cops claim not to have seen who was driving, ie they're saying we didn't know there was a black person driving the car, ergo, we can't be accused of racism on that score.
Which begs the question: if they were supposed to be hanging out in that particular area because of reports of 'youth crime,' why did they seemingly randomly choose to follow that car?
Anyone who knows anything about policing in this country knows that black men are often pulled over while driving a nice car while being guilty of nothing more than driving while black. Fancy car? Must be a drug dealer or into some other crimes.
Given how the Met is known - proven, in fact - to be institutionally racist, why do you think they chose to follow that car? Do you think that on the balance of probabilities it's more likely that they did see the driver was a black man, and given that he was driving an expensive car, they decided to follow and see where that led them?
Of course, the cops aren't going to admit that, like, Yeah, my bad, we were being racist, you got us. Often, they spout bullshit, when they stop and search, about how the person they stop answers the description of someone who's committed a crime, when basically that amounts to being a black male. Cops stop people all the time for nothing more than being a black person existing and going about their (totally innocent) daily lives.
In that context - and also bearing in mind that the Met and other police forces - have killed numerous black people, isn't it more understandable that a black driver might be reluctant to stop for the police?
