Police not confronting some criminals for fear of being branded racist - Senior police rep warns

Last month, an officer who was fined for assault after he arrested a woman for bus fare evasion in Croydon, South London, had his conviction quashed.

PC Perry Lathwood was supporting a TFL Revenue Protection operation when he arrested the woman after she refused to show that she had paid her bus fare.

After PC Lathwood’s conviction was quashed, Met Police Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe said the incident had “divided opinions.”

She added: “The impact it had, particularly on black communities in Croydon and further afield, was significant.”

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But Rick Prior said this intervention was insufficient, claiming that senior police leadership were failing to call out bad behaviour from people from minority ethnic backgrounds.

“I call it the racism of low expectations, where for fear of upsetting certain elements of the community they don’t call out bad behaviour.

“This encourages people to behave poorly.”

Prior added: “All she needed to say in reaction to PC Lathwood requesting to see her ticket was yes, but she resisted and that added to the drama of the situation.

“The Met should’ve called out the poor behaviour of the lady.”

Prior pointed out that because of the Croydon bus incident and the community tensions that arose from it, police officers have completely withdrawn from supporting revenue protection teams across the capital.

The federation chair claimed that white police officers are now “hesitating” in any altercation where they are dealing with a black member of the public.

“They will draw away from that because of these vexatious, malicious investigations. They will look at the situation and prefer to go and do something else.

“They are actively not engaging with people they should be engaging with for fear of complaint and suspension.”

Prior’s criticism comes a week after a separate case, where officers won an appeal against an IOPC investigation.

Met PCs Jonathan Clapham and Sam Franks were fired in October 2023 after they conducted a stop and search on Olympians Bianca Williams and Ricardo Dos Santos.

An IOPC disciplinary panel ruled that they had lied about smelling cannabis when they stopped the athletes, but an appeals tribunal found that ruling “irrational” and “inconsistent”.

The appeals chairman said the “dedicated, hard-working and much-respected officers” had their reputations “ruined” by the incorrect original findings.

Prior said that the IOPC’s “default position” is to assume that police officers are being racist.

“They don’t look at the evidence, they just say an incident racist because of the Casey Review’s conclusion that the Met is institutionally racist.”

Prior continued: “The IOPC is almost unregulated, they can do what they like, they can throw allegations of racism around as they see fit.

“There needs to be something done on some middle ground between accountability and officers not being vulnerable to malign, malicious and vexatious complaints where the assumption is that they are racist before any investigation starts.

“This was the opening gambit of the Bianca Williams case. The IOPC was shown that there was no race aspect involved in that case — it was all completely binned — but they kept promoting this narrative.”

Prior suggested that the IOPC’s procedures should be amended to make it harder for them to launch investigations.

“The threshold for police misconduct should be raised. At the moment the watchdog can direct a hearing on the case that a panel could find against the officers, which makes it easier to justify.

“The threshold needs to be a ‘reasonable chance of success’ rather than ‘could’ so the bar is higher and fewer officers face their careers, and their lives, being ruined over nothing.”

Andy George, President of the National Black Police Association, told GB News: "There have been many seminal reports into the racism that Black communities suffer at the hands of Met officers in London over many years.

"It is ridiculous that Rick Prior and others would try to use a small number of high profile cases to de-legitimise the evidence found in many reports, most recently from Baroness Casey.

'The Met Police is in a crisis of its own making and it is disappointing that whilst scrutiny should be rightly applied given the tragic murder of Sarah Everard, people like Rick Prior are pushing back on accountability.

"Wayne Couzens and David Carrick were free to operate with impunity whilst Baroness Casey found Black officers were 81% more likely to face misconduct, which I've never heard Rick or the Federation discuss.

"The Police Federation is crumbling and have again shown they are not fit for purpose nor able to represent all their members views adequately"