Reg Race reports on exposure of police methods The Met is racist

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NO SIR David McNee's decision, when he was Commissioner of Police in the Metropolis, to bring in the independent Policy Studies Institute to undertake a piece of major research on the performance .. of London's police, looks in retrospect like a stunning own goal.

Before publication of the PSI Report, it was the stock in trade of senior Police Officers and successive Home Secretaries to label critics of the Met. as "extremists" whose opinions could not be trusted and whose allegations about the Police stemmed from their own analysis of the Police's relationship with the state rather than any objective view of reality.

This tired argument can now be buried peacetully. The PSI Report indicates that many of the allegations levelled by the left against the Police are true -or at least true of substantial sections of the force. In particular, the Report concludes that:

1. "London Police carry out about 1½ million stops in a year. Some 100,000 offences a year are detected in this way. But stops that do not bring such a result cause hostility to the Police among a substantial proportion of young people, and of Young black people in particu2. ''One-tenth of Londoners think that Police Officers often engage in serious misconduct and more than half of young black people think this. About 20% of people who have been arrested claim that unreasonable threats or unjustified force were used. The researchers considered that excessive force was used in nine of the one hundred arrests they observed."

3. ''Racialist language is pervasive in the Force.

4. 'there is a gap between the formal rules of procedure affecting evidence and the 'working rules of police officers.

In other parts of the Report, the researchers conclude that women are discriminated against in the Met., that the Police are in fact in breach of the Sex Discrimination Act in respect of the treatment of women Police Officers, and that there are widespread sexist assumptions displayed by the Police about the role of women in society.

They further report that, although arrests at "major disturbances" provided only a tiny proportion of the total nuiber of arrests, it was clear that 'when certain kinds of circumsiances arise, the Police habitually exceed their formal powers... people who are known not to have committed an offence would normally be arrested in like circumstances. We also believe that anyone who is in the area where a major disturbance is taking place is liable to be arrested, regardless of what he is actually doing as an individual"

The Report makes this point with some strength - for one of their own researchers was arrested without good cause when simply observing police operations, simply because he was in the vicinity of a "major disturbance"

The picture that emerges of the Met. is one where racialism, sexism, drunkenness, abuse of powers, wrongful arrest, and considerable personal corruption exist. It is also a closed suciety. The Police in London clear up only 16% of reported crime, but criticise those who have the audacity to attack their methods. Complaints against the Police are investigated by the Police themselves, and it is clear that only in a tiny handful of cases are the complaints "proved" - because the incident in question happened to be witnessed by a particularly authoritative member of the community.

But these are criticisms about the organisation of the Metropolitan Police, the methods they use, and the collective attitudes displayed by Police Officers. What is much more fundamental is an aspect of the Police's activities which receives scant attention in the PSI Report: the use of the Police to impose anti-working class laws on the labour movement.

These activities are mentioned only in passing: but they are part of the most fundamental role of the Police - maintaining the authority of the state; and ensuring that the political and industrial elite is above the law because it makes the law. • The PSI Report is not objective as such. It is written from the standpoint of concerned technocrats, disturbed by what they find under the unturned stone in the Police's own backyard. The labour movement, however, has additional concerns. Our campaign is to make the Police accountable for their policy as well as their individual actions.

In the end, however, it will need a fundamental transformaion of society to make the Police behave differently. But even then, under a socialist government, it will be essential to make the Police accountable to the people rather than its bureaucratic controllers.