Met Police union defends officers in MP racism row
POLICE officers did “absolutely nothing wrong” when stopping a car in which Labour MP Dawn Butler was a passenger, according to the Metropolitan Police Federation chairman.
Ken Marsh urged bosses at the force to release body-worn camera footage from the officers involved, insisting: “We’ve got nothing to hide.”
Ms Butler accused police of racial profiling after the BMW she was travelling in was pulled over in Hackney, east London.
The car was driven by a friend, who is also black.
Ms Butler, the MP for Brent Central, filmed the incident.
Scotland Yard said the stop was a result of an officer having “incorrectly entered” the car’s registration plate into a computer to wrongly identify it as a vehicle registered to Yorkshire, but did not explain why the search was carried out in the first place.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the police must act with “fairness and equality”.
Mr Johnson said: “The police have made a statement saying that they made a mistake.
“They have spoken to the occupants of the car but it’s obviously very, very important that the Met continue to do everything that they can, as indeed they do, to show that they are serving every part of our country, every part of our community, with fairness and equality.”
Downing Street said Mr Johnson did not share Ms Butler’s view that the Met was “institutionally racist”.
Responding to Mr Johnson’s comments, she said: “The problem is that currently every part of the community is not being served with fairness and equality.
“The police are policing not on intelligence or reasonable suspicions, they are using bias and they are stereotyping and they are making assumptions.
“That is not helping society and it is also not helping communities that we need to engage with.”
Mr Marsh said: “We are fed up with individuals being allowed to film my colleagues with impunity and put it out on every social media strand within five seconds, wherever they want, but we’re not allowed under legal grounds... to do the same, to put my colleagues’ body-worn camera out immediately.
“Now, that sounds a bit perverse, don’t you think, because we’ve got nothing to hide.
“I’m talking about transparency here.
“I, as the chair of 30,000 officers, am saying: put it out there.
“We have no issues because all the time you will see by watching it that the officers have done absolutely nothing wrong.
“If you think they’re that stupid in this day and age that they would act in an inappropriate or unlawful way knowing they’re filming themselves, I mean, come on, let’s have some logic.”