Racist and sexist police ‘use Whatsapp as a hiding place’

POLICE are using Whatsapp as a “hiding place” to be racist and misogynistic, a watchdog has warned.

Sal Naseem, London regional director for the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), said the openly misogynistic canteen culture from the 1960s and 70s had now transferred to the “psychological safety” of Whatsapp groups.

However, Mr Naseem, who led an investigation into the “shocking” misogynistic and racist messages shared by some officers at London’s Charing Cross police station, said too many serving officers were failing to call it out.

He warned that more cases would be exposed by the IOPC in coming months.

“Largely, we don’t see serving officers calling out other serving officers, when they’re seeing these discriminatory things, or where there are officers who are victims,” he told the Policing TV online platform.

Mr Naseem said that although the rules on such behaviour were clearly set out in an ethics code for police, they were “just words on a paper” and needed to be acted upon. He said: “We need serving officers to demonstrate what they do on duty on the front line, and be there for their colleagues and start calling out this behaviour.

“The culture needs to be one where there’s just basically no hiding place for it. And we’ve seen sadly, that with these Whatsapp groups, officers feel emboldened and safe.”

Mr Naseem said he took the decision to publish Charing Cross officers’ Whatsapp and text messages so the public and serving officers could understand what colleagues had to suffer.

They included one sent by a male officer to a female colleague saying: “I would happily rape you.” Officers joked about attending a festival dressed as known sex offenders; racist texts were also sent about Muslim “fanatics” and “Somalian rats”, and other messages made reference to Auschwitz.

He said that although he had received racist abuse on social media after publishing the report, he had also been heartened by the “amount of support” he got from other serving officers.

“I received private messages from serving officers saying, ‘Thank you. I’m shocked. I didn’t know this’,” he said.