The Metropolitan Police is irredeemable

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We are outraged by the findings of this evening’s BBC Panorama investigation into the Met Police. It has made clear, once again, the despicable racism, misogyny and homophobia within a police force that is supposedly there with our consent. 

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Met police officers described people of colour as ‘scum’, they expressed violently Islamophobic and racist views; they boasted about their brutality. We cannot divorce the violence exposed in this investigation from dominant political and media narratives, which encourage racism and anti-migrant sentiment.

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This is post-Macpherson, post-Casey, and post-special measures - which Commissioner Rowley claimed to be a signifier of ‘massive progress’. 

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This investigation lays bare persistent failures to reform the police, reforms that reduce concerns to ‘bad apples’ and rogue individuals who can be expelled out of the system. As we have said time and time again, the Met police is institutionally racist to its core. It is beyond reform, and unfit for purpose.

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There can be no other logical conclusion than that the Metropolitan Police is irredeemable.

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