The Police Race Action Plan is really about injecting far-Left theory into policing
IOfficers are right to guard against bigotry, but this project is soused in social justice thinking that will make fighting crime harder
Anti-racism is a vague, endless, and deeply ideological endeavour, rooted in 1970s loony Left antiimperialistic thought and in the philosophy of power of Michel Foucault
n Infidel, her riveting tale of fleeing Kenya to claim asylum in the Netherlands, the Somali activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali recounts the moment she realised that the Dutch police weren’t out to hurt her. They were, she saw with delighted surprise, actually approachable; not corrupt, violent mobsters, pitted by a corrupt, violent state against the people.
It gets to the heart of why the West is different. In stark contrast to police forces in most countries, and notwithstanding some serious problems, ours generally stay within the highly complex – and humane – ethical frameworks that the law and best practice requires, and are generally helpful. European, including British police, are among the most reluctant to use force in the world.
Now, however, I fear they are losing the plot.
Last week’s launch of the Police Race Action Plan was intended to show how enlightened the police service is. Nobody could deny that it is important that forces should take racism within their ranks more seriously. Investigations over the past few years have revealed that there are still rotten eggs, and sometimes baskets of rotten eggs, that have been allowed to remain on the payroll. More should be done to stamp out discriminatory practices. Forces need to command the confidence of the people they are policing.
But that is not what this Police Race Action Plan is seeking to do at all. It is not about ending specific instances of discrimination, but injecting social justice ideology into policing. Indeed, the plan is so soused in the chimeras of that ideology that officers have been explicitly instructed to prepare to be called “woke”.
The answer to racism within the police is not a full-blown, Americanstyle embrace of critical race theory by constables. Yet the goals and the language of the Plan demand that very thing.
Put together by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing – and with unanimous support of all chief constables (imagine what would happen to the chief constable who didn’t back it), the Plan “sets out the commitment of Chief Constables in England and Wales to become an anti-racist police service and to explain or reform race disparities”.
Stop right there. Of course police forces should not be racist, and the goals of stamping out racism, improving relations and building trust with ethnic minority communities are good ones. But to “explain disparities” is a sociologist’s job, and to “become an anti-racist police service”? This is an activist goal, plain and simple.
“Anti-racism” is a clever term. It sounds like it means you are against racism – and who in their right mind wouldn’t be that? But being “antiracist” is different; it is about sniffing out “systemic” and “structural” discrimination – in other words it is a vague, endless, and deeply ideological endeavour, rooted in 1970s loony Left anti-imperialistic thought and in the theories of power of Michel Foucault.
No surprise therefore to see Chief Constable Andy Marsh QPM, head of the College of Policing, admitting that he is not actually interested in whether the police is, in fact, racist. “Being anti-racist means it isn’t enough for an individual or organisation to not be racist,” he explained in the Plan’s press release. “It means a commitment to taking action to challenge racial bias and prejudice where it is seen in practice, people, and policies.”
It should perhaps be noted here that police forces appear to be barely able to cope with the workload they already have, without taking on new amorphous responsibilities like challenging “prejudice”. Just one in 20 rape allegations leads to a charge. Women feel far from safe on the streets. Fraud accounted for 61 per cent of all crimes in 2021, and yet only 0.6 per cent of reported fraud led to a charge or summons. The police’s record of success on all other types of crime is also woeful; conviction rates are pitiful.
It is also not really true that the police takes all forms of racism seriously. The police may not be “institutionally anti-Semitic” – but then it may also be so. We wouldn’t know because there haven’t been any inquiries into it. What we do know is that anti-Semitic violent crime rose by 78 per cent last year in Britain – and the response of the police has been, as usual… inaudible. Perfunctory. And, as frightened Jewish communities in London, who have repeatedly asked for quicker response times and patrols in neighbourhoods such as Stamford Hill, would say, downright neglectful.
Many police officers are good souls, doing hard work with amazing fortitude and sensitivity. But they are spread too thin, and the zest of the leadership for virtue signalling brings it into ideological terrain that is as counter-productive as it is sinister.
We know this from the American example where, in cities such as New York, over-zealous implementation of anti-racist ideology has made the city more dangerous, especially for African Americans. Law enforcement, bending over backwards to make up for truly appalling histories of racist policing, has now effectively disabled officers from doing their jobs. Embracing mandatory unconscious bias training, lessons on the pervasiveness of white privilege, the nature of “systemic” and “structural” racism, and learning revisionist histories, are all conditions of employment.
Legislators have even given the green light to criminals to carry on with a variety of “low-level” crimes (including turnstile jumping and shoplifting) so as to reduce racial “disparities” in arrests and incarceration. Crime of all kinds is soaring, and again, in a grim irony, it is African Americans that are being hurt the worst by it.
Perhaps if the police spent less time writing documents inspired by critical race theory and more time going after actual crimes, everyone – from all communities – would trust them more.