Young, uniformed and racist

When BBC journalist Mark Daly joined the Greater Manchester Police as an undercover recruit in 2003, he helped uncover racism within policing that the Macpherson Inquiry four years earlier had exposed within the Metropolitan Police.

It was enough to shake up Home Affairs for good. The OSCE’s human rights directorate has studied hate crime in the EU and produced a curriculum that helps officers detect the elements of such crime. This training is disseminated among police forces, Malta included. The irony is that it applies equally well to police officers perpetrating the same crime.

There are elements of prejudice that this curriculum calls “bias indicators” or behaviours flagging the potential existence of a race-related crime. Among the elements listed are the location and timing of the crime, frequency, the nature of the violence and the organisation of the perpetrators into a hate group. In other words, the predation of victims, their active selection and pursuit in a context of exertion of power and dominion over such victims. This cluster of behaviour is also called a “message crime”, because it sends out a message of fear in the community.

Therefore, picking up migrants from a well-known area where such persons converge, taking them to a secluded spot, paying attention to the timing of the day, the frequent occurrence and creating a pattern, cannot be simply dismissed as an academic exercise of trying to force the bias indicators onto the situation.

Prima facie, it doesn’t look like a legitimate albeit overzealous use of excessive force in response to a threat. It’s not patrolling gone wrong. The offending pattern emerges right down to commanding potential witnesses to switch off their bodycams. And it’s three against one, whether it’s against the migrant-victim or the colleague-witness, which is a show of force and “ganging”. It’s hardly accidental.

It is executed without fail: the tasering and pepper-spraying of victims, not just with standard police issue but with equipment purchased outside of the force, right up to stranding the victim in need of medical help. Isn’t this criminal will and understanding?

One expects bent officers to be older, with more service mileage and callouses. But with such young officers this begs the question: is this a Bandura type of imitation? Were they directed by other/s? Are there parallels to the Lassane Cisse Souleymane predation? It does not happen in a vacuum. And the group chat supporting the video of an officer threatening a migrant smells like a violation of Art. 135A of the Criminal Code: the creation of a racial hatred police group. I’m not sure if this was included in the charges or whether the emphasis was only on physical abuse.

Kudos to the officers who spoke up and lived their sworn oath. At least the mentoring system produced results, although it needs more tweaking, with the benefit of hindsight.

I’m not impressed by the Home Affairs Minister’s reaction in

Parliament. His shock was more aimed at the PR disaster at hand. Wasn’t he equally disgusted back in May when an Academy leader, in charge of police training, suggested taking to the streets and pelting PN MPs when they returned to Parliament? At the time, there were two courses in progress: the constable and inspector cohorts. How’s that for exemplary leadership? Or maybe the Minister was not yet aware of the “resit of the resit” mismanagement, in violation of all the MFHEA accreditation standards?

I’m not saying this because it is easy for me to sit behind a keyboard. In my uniformed police PR days, I had to navigate the aftermath of the 1990s human rights violations perpetrated by police officers. It was like cleaning up a cave full of sharp-edged stalagmites and stalactites with a hand shovel and a smile, but it was backed up by tangible political will to clean up the Force. All this helped make the PR machine something that the public could identify with. It was more than the current organisation of press conferences or posting news items.

Let’s promote zero tolerance. As recent as four months ago, the College of Policing in the UK published a Police Race Action Plan advocating this and promising compulsory anti-hatred training at all levels. Elsewhere, prejudice in general is nipped in the bud by applying implicit bias screening at the recruitment stage. Let’s emulate this. Surely there are EU funds that can be tapped.

It’s obviously time to go back to the drawing board. Start by moving the Academy to the Ministry of Education, where professional educators can administer it and truly uphold the MFHEA accreditation. Amend Chapter 559 to set up an open call for applications replacing the arbitrary ministerial power of hand-picking the top brass.

And clean up the Force. It’s the best PR exercise ever.