Police adviser wants to slash forces’ cash

New panel to combat racism includes Labour backers with arresting aims

THE chairman of a new panel that will scrutinise the police on race issues is a criminal defence barrister who has said her ‘ultimate aim’ is to end funding for forces.

Award-winning lawyer Abimbola Johnson, 34, has previously called for crime to be ‘reclassified’ until you ‘no longer need to fund a police force’.

She is one of three Labour supporters among six members on the new Independent Scrutiny and Oversight Board (ISOB) set up by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing.

It is part of a new action plan launched yesterday to tackle racism and racial disparity in policing – with the ultimate aim of ‘creating an anti-racist police service’.

The board announced its six members this week, including Labour councillor Katrina Ffrench, 37, and Jeremy Corbyn supporter Nick Glynn, 54.

It also includes communications expert Colin Douglas, senior civil servant Ram Joshi and data scientist Rachael Grant.

‘Create a system that no longer needs police’

Miss Johnson, who helped put together the team, previously defended her calls to change police funding on Twitter in June 2020 during Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests that summer.

She said at the time that people needed to ‘engage and not react in knee-jerk fashion’, and suggested funds be diverted to other areas such as mental health services, after-school programmes and shelters.

‘Divert funds into other methods to tackle the causes of crime and even rethink what we classify as criminality in the first place. Until you no longer need to fund a police force,’ the barrister posted.

Miss Johnson, who said in her post that she is a Labour Party member, argued that people had the ‘wrong impression’ of the BLM movement.

In the Twitter conversation on June 29, 2020, she said the movement ‘is meant to make us think harder about how we could run a safe and fair society without the for a police force’. In another tweet in response to a now-deleted post, she wrote: ‘Yes, the ultimate aim is to create a societal system that no longer needs the police. Or at least doesn’t need police forces in the sizes we have now.’

Meanwhile, fellow board member Miss Ffrench has used her online profile to promote protests against ‘police impunity’.

She shared a BLM protest on her Facebook that stated ‘no justice, no peace, get the Met’s knee off our neck’.

Mr Glynn has praised Jeremy Corbyn and attended events supporting the former Labour leader. He has also openly criticised the Conservatives on his social media.

He said in a tweet in 2019: ‘Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party. Lying, Cheating. Misleading. Dishonest. Johnson leads, the Tory Party follows.’

The tweet was linked to an article reporting allegations that the Tory party was using ‘dirty tricks’ in a campaign against Labour.

At the launch of the police’s race action plan yesterday, Miss Johnson said: ‘Speaking completely frankly, policing has never got this right, in terms of dealing with racial disparity.

‘They either have made progress but not at a rate that they expected or they haven’t made any progress at all. The police need to do this themselves. ‘If they really do want to become an anti-racist organisation they need to put the work in, they need to develop these plans, and they need to make sure they implement them on a regional as well as a national scale.’

Kevin Hurley, a former Metropolitan Police officer and independent police and crime commissioner for Surrey Police, said calls to end funding for the police were ‘naive, ignorant or stupid’ and the estab-need

lishment of the new board’s was a ‘cop-out’. Mr Hurley said: ‘If police chiefs actually led with the correct values and standards and cascaded that down so it was embraced by the whole organisation, there would be no requirement or case to be made for having such bodies.’

He added: ‘For the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council to set this up is, in fact, a cop-out for them failing to discharge their own responsibilities as leaders, setting and maintaining the correct values and standards.’

A National Police Chiefs’ Council spokesman said the board for the Police Race Action Plan ‘were selected for their skills, expertise and experience in an open selection and recruitment process. Board members have committed to approach their roles in an impartial and non-partisan way.’

THERE’S no doubt the leadership of the police service is in dire need of a reset.

Scandals from the VIP paedophile fiasco to the grotesque murder of Sarah Everard by a serving officer whose work nickname was ‘the rapist’ show just how rudderless it has become.

As a result, trust and confidence has plunged to an all-time low.

However, the new ‘oversight’ board set up by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and College of Policing to make the service ‘continually aware of issues of race’ verges on the farcical.

Yes, the police must listen and be sensitive to the concerns of all communities. But this panel – composed largely of Toryhating, anti-police activists – will widen divisions rather than heal them.

Its chair, lawyer Abimbola Johnson, wants to ‘rethink’ what we classify as criminality and eventually defund the police.

Then there’s Labour councillor Katrina Ffrench, who co-organised a rally with Black Lives matter using the slogan ‘Get the met’s knee off our neck!’

meanwhile a third member, Nick Glynn has described Conservatives as ‘pure evil’, railed against structural racism in the police and royal Family and, of course, wants to decriminalise cannabis.

Are these really the kind of measured, independent observers from whom chief constables should be taking their lead? or is this just a pathetic attempt to pacify the race lobby? We all know the answer to that.

Instead of pandering to shrill, one-eyed political campaigners, they should ask the public what they believe police priorities should be.

The answer – from black as well as white – will be more officers on the streets, more effective crime prevention and a detection rate high enough to be a real deterrent.

If chief constables put the same effort into crime-fighting as virtue-signalling, Britain would be an infinitely safer place.