Panorama docu - Met Police

stufisher

I saw the feature on BBC last night and this morning, highlighting lots of non-compliant and unsavoury behaviours/language within the Metropolitan Police, filmed undercover over a 7 month period. 

I'm not shocked in the slightest and I question whether or not this is even news. T'was ever this and always shall be IMHO.

I'm not advocating or accepting of any such traits in humans ... it's utterly appalling ... I'm just wondering what the collective view is within tFB. 

I haven't watched the Panorama documentary and don't know if I will as I think I know what to expect but for anyone who wishes to then here's the link:

Panorama, Undercover in the Police: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002k7k6 via @bbciplayer

What's your view @BillDL ... are such behaviours still prevalent within other forces? It's so long since I had any dealings with West Yorkshire and Leicestershire. 

Sassafras

In my experience, most cops are macho thugs.

rolls1392

I did 30yrs in Plod and never felt I was a macho thug. However it's been 20yrs since I retired and things were becoming more and more PC as time went on. I agree that things were said and done that are not acceptable. Thankfully the Police had changed since the 70's.

guitartango

rolls1392 said:

I did 30yrs in Plod and never felt I was a macho thug. However it's been 20yrs since I retired and things were becoming more and more PC as time went on. I agree that things were said and done that are not acceptable. Thankfully the Police had changed since the 70's.

Did anyone accidently fall down the Stairs while you were in the force.... he slipped sir !!!  

rolls1392

Not with me. I didn't think that anyone deserved that kind of treatment. Bloke did throw me out of a first floor window cos he said I wasn't big enough to arrest him. He had a point

BillDL

By coincidence I just read a couple of the BBC articles detailing this undercover reporting and watched a couple of the short videos that were clearly cherry picked to prove the point that the surveillance uncovered.  I will not be watching the Panorama documentary though because three things will be guaranteed to infuriate me:

1. The small number of scummy cops that ruin the public's perception of the majority of decent cops doing things properly.

2. The small selection of videos or transcripts that will be weeded out from hours and hours of benign and boring footage.

3. The commentators that will continuously refer to "systemic" when in fact the bad behaviour is limited to a small minority.

I have absolutely no sympathy for cops that display and voice racism, intolerance of gender issues, gratuitous sexism and misogyny, etc, etc. when they are reported and punished.  They are undermining all the hard work that all the other very decent, level headed, unbiased and hard working cops are doing.  It's no wonder that the Police Federation has voiced the discontent of its police members on numerous occasions when an entire police force has been branded as "systemically" racist, homophobic, or whatever other allegations are being made.  A small rotten core is enough to mark the whole apple as inedible, and that's just what it is - a small rotten core.

I've realised that no matter what job is involved, a leader that is rotten can very quickly cause a culture of rot in a group of people, whether it be a senior nurse, a warehouse supervisor, or an office manager.  Realising that they can get away with behaviour that would not be accepted under somebody else's immediate leadership will usually draw a couple more people out and before you know it you have a quarter of a shift behaving badly while the remaining three quarters of the staff feel as though they are pissing into the wind to try and put it right and they just get on with the job as best they can, and it leads to poor morale and continual ripples of discontent.  As long as they identify the cause of the creeping rot and throw it out along with the ones on the cart that have also begun to rot, then that's fine by me, but documentaries of this nature often have a tendency to imply that the whole cart is rotten.

The portly dickhead of a Sergeant that was filmed talking about his sexual exploits in mixed company, paying undue attention to an arrested woman dressed in scanty police uniform fancy dress, and questioning the credibility of a pregnant woman that alleged she had been kicked in the stomach, is the perfect example of such a team leader that can begin to slowly rot some more of the batch unless curtailed.  One video showed him saying "that's what she said" when another cop was talking about how she alleged she had been kicked.  Taken in isolation that could easily be ambiguous and perhaps even an unfair criticism without the context, because cops really need to be sure about whether a statement is corroborated and his comment could easily have been "That's her version. Is there evidence to support that?"  The additional footage of his behaviour does, however, cast a wider light on his attitudes and makes it more clear that his comments were distasteful at the very least.  When investigative journalism ties things like this together that's great, but all too often I've seen footage being deliberately edited and presented in isolation to skew the evidence.

It's been a very long time since I was a cop or mingled with cops.  They never really stayed in touch when I started working on the other side of the fence as an investigator for defence agents.  Funny that!  During my time I saw and heard some inappropriate comments being uttered in the heat of the moment and I saw some poor leadership that tolerated and sometimes encouraged poor behaviour by the small number of staff that were so inclined, but in general most of the bad apples showed their rot and were kicked out before their two year probation was up and what I mostly saw were cops trying their best under extreme emotional and physical stress to still abide by the oath / affirmation that they swore when they joined, i.e.

"I will carry out the duties of a police constable within the law and without fear, favour, affection, malice or ill-will".

Funny how I remember this almost verbatim after 45 years, and I will bet that the vast majority of cops can recite this and try to work to it each day.

[ EDIT: Nobody "fell down the stairs" in my charge nor in anybody else's charge while I was present, but I'm sure some criminals are clumsy.  There was a rumour about an old-timer ex-cop that would hang people over a high bridge by the ankles until they admitted to all the outstanding crimes, but most of his type were gone by 1979 ].

I did have a ladder-climbing arsehole of an Inspector sneaking down the cell block while I was upstairs having my break to try and solicit a statement from my prisoner that I had assaulted him. I had arrested him for being in a street fight in a busy shopping mall and he had already declined medical attention.  Several years later I gave evidence against him as a Detective Chief Inspector who was fitting people up.  He would wipe his glass-topped office desk and a mug, invite shady people in for a chat, lift their prints from the mug and glass, and the prints would mysteriously be found at a crime scene.  He got 7 years in jail for those exploits.

guitartango

rolls1392 said:

Not with me. I didn't think that anyone deserved that kind of treatment. Bloke did throw me out of a first floor window cos he said I wasn't big enough to arrest him. He had a point

Your not "Constable Savage" from Not the Nine Oclock News

TimmyO

BillDL said:

By coincidence I just read a couple of the BBC articles detailing this undercover reporting and watched a couple of the short videos that were clearly cherry picked to prove the point that the surveillance uncovered.  I will not be watching the Panorama documentary though because three things will be guaranteed to infuriate me:

1. The small number of scummy cops that ruin the public's perception of the majority of decent cops doing things properly.

2. The small selection of videos or transcripts that will be weeded out from hours and hours of benign and boring footage.

3.

Surely that’s akin to a defendant wanting the focus to be on all the times he DIDN’T murder someone 

BillDL

You missed out No. 3 which was actually more important to what I was saying because it's an assumptive and sweeping conclusion often reached by the makers of such documentaries based on what I said in No. 1 and 2.

Hurling_Fruitmig

The Met has demonstrated time and again during my adult lifetime that it tolerates employees who hold all sorts of abhorrent opinions and behave in obnoxious ways. For whatever reason (usually what appears to be misplaced loyalty) it seems utterly incapable of weeding them out. It doesn't mater if they are a minority or not; how can it be trusted to enforce the law fairly if it can't deal with its so called 'rotten apples'?

TimmyO

I left it because I don’t actually think that happened but I didn’t want to distract from the point I did make by turning it in to a meta argument about imagined slights. 

But to my point - the guy in the cell didn’t get stomped by the 20-odd support staff that weren’t there - he got stomped by the guy that was. 

The idea that it’s ‘systemic’ IS valid though - in that can I as a member of the public be confident that I won’t be policed on a given day by someone who behaves like these guys do or believes the things they themselves say they do. 

The Met seems to not know the extent of the problem they have. 

There are a couple of posts in this thread saying that it’s much improved now or that the bad apples get weeded out early and yet here are people saying that they moderate around newbies because they are basically in hiding, then let it out when they won’t get caught. 

Danny1969

My step daughters a detective in the Met in one of the worse parts of London. It's a difficult, dangerous job in it's own right but these dangers you have to constantly be on your guard not to offend anyone by misgendering or similar. The hours are brutal and the pay is not great considering the cost of living in London. 

I have 2 mates in the force locally. they have a dogs life as well. It's not the job it was. 

I have nothing but respect for the vast majority of officers in the police force. Sure there's always the odd bad apple like in every profession. Don't taint the whole force over it!

I have no respect for the BBC or any confidence in their ( or more likely) their subcontractor reporting. 

 

Sporky

The problem is that 95% of the Met gives the other 5% a bad name. 

hollywoodrox

guitartango said:

rolls1392 said:

Not with me. I didn't think that anyone deserved that kind of treatment. Bloke did throw me out of a first floor window cos he said I wasn't big enough to arrest him. He had a point

Your not "Constable Savage" from Not the Nine Oclock News

Didn’t they do the one with Hazell (Nicholas Ball)  with cockney Rhyming slang too  & the phrase  concrete mattress lol 

Revolutions

I'm currently working with a client where there was a suicide after harassment was repeatedly reported but not acted upon. It's heartbreaking, and it's not just the Met where this is a problem with awful behaviour being tolerated.

rolls1392

hollywoodrox said:

guitartango said:

rolls1392 said:

Not with me. I didn't think that anyone deserved that kind of treatment. Bloke did throw me out of a first floor window cos he said I wasn't big enough to arrest him. He had a point

Your not "Constable Savage" from Not the Nine Oclock News

Didn’t they do the one with Hazell (Nicholas Ball)  with cockney Rhyming slang too  & the phrase  concrete mattress lol 

Damn. You've found me out

Dominic

Sassafras said:

In my experience, most cops are macho thugs.

That's an unfair and imprecise statement .
I think there is a majority of very decent policemen ...maybe not quite Dixon of Dock Green local Bobby types but we're not living in the days of " OK,it's a fair cop ,Guv " .
However , there is definately a licensed thug ,Jack the lad element that has become more prevalent ...and it's certainly not confined to a few bad apples .....it's pretty entrenched .Ironic ,but in my experience it's been some of the women who are actually quite guilty of this ......
These people are a type ....if they hadn't made it into the Police they would be Prison Officers , Bailiffs , Security Guards etc
 Essentially cowardly bullies that are looking for a uniform and an excuse to wear boots and a utility belt .
 Usually thick as a Whale Omelette !

Emp_Fab

I think it's inevitable that cops are going to behave like people sometimes.  They do a very tough job, dealing with the scum of society so we don't have to.  To expect an entire force of tens of thousands to all behave perfectly is breathtakingly naive.  It's particularly galling coming from the fucking BBC - who knowingly harboured, protected and paid paedophiles for decades!

As for the pricks getting on their high-horses about the behaviour of some officers, I'd love to see them show the incredible restraint 95% of police manage when faced with arresting a violent drunk who's just spat in your face, a paedo that's just raped a little girl or a drunk-driver that's just caused a horrific crash and you have to go and break it to some poor woman that her husband and children are all dead.

Until the reporters and the BBC can show they hold themselves to a higher standard, I suggest they shut the fuck up and be thankful that when the shit hits the fan and they're running away from danger, some are running towards it.

TimmyO

Jesus Christ 

swiller

I have had generally good experiences with cops, both when i have been naughty and when coming to my rescue or reporting cocks. I have always spoken to them like human beings. When you do that you get honesty back.
They are law enforcers limited to their powers and some laws are real crap.
Just turned the programme off, nothing balls. Arseholes are everywhere. You could make the same programme going undercover with gingers, nurses, car salesmen, tarot card readers , plumbers.

snowblind

Police are just humans. Sticking them in uniform doesn't make them any better or worse than the rest of the population. As a career police work is bound to attract those of a type prone to bullying and intimidation, in the same way certain professions attract paedophiles. You only have to look at how well recruitment is going for ICE in the US so see this. 

If the documentary serves a purpose it is only to spur on efforts to reduce the prevalence of bad behavior but it can never be eradicated.