In a former life I used to be a solicitor in East London, working with largely black clients, in and out of its police stations in the early hours of the morning, dealing with mostly white police officers. Yes, many of them were racist; but that was not because the institution was racist - in fact it had tried strenously at management level to do the right thing - it was because Met police officers tended to come from lower middle or working class backgrounds, often outside London, and thus tended to be from the social class most likely to be overtly racist and to have least personal experience of living and working alongside black people. Moreover, because the areas in which they worked were largely black, most of the criminals were black too. So it's not hard to see how the black = criminal equation grew up in the minds of these officers. Not that that's any excuse, mind.
I thought of this today because an independent report has looked into the death of Stuart Lubbock in Michael Barrymore's swimming pool. And guess what? It says that the police failed to secure the site and failed to secure crucial items which might have been used to assault Lubbock and which later "disappeared". In all, six complaints by Lubbock's father were upheld.
For anyone used to seeing the way the police work from the inside, the real lesson of both these cases is that the police are very often mediocre at what they do. The Met were probably never institutionally racist, but they were certainly institutionally rubbish.
PS This post was originally put up in February 2009. I've posted it again in its entirety because of news yesterday that the Met have had to apologise for failing to nick the rapist and robber Delroy Grant, aka the Night Stalker, on one of many previous opportunities. After the most egregious lapse - witness sees Grant's car leaving crime scene, Grant's wife confirms that it's his, lead then not followed up - Grant is estimated to have committed over 140 further offences.
