A good opinion piece. A country / society can only be considered successful in integrating immigrants when all of its institutions, private & public, are as diverse as the general public.
However, we see that all the public institutions of the developed Western world are mostly native residents of those countries; judiciary, political, & law enforcement departments of the governments at all levels.
This piece is about British police force & British general public, but we all are well aware of what's going on in US right now with the country-wide protests & violence against this exact same thing what this piece is talking about. Just the other day, I blogged how Portuguese police force in Lisbon brutally controls immigrants from its former African colonies. So, this phenomenon of unnecessary police assaults are not confined to one country alone.
Now, why do these police assaults happen? I believe they happen because this gross discrepancy between the actual demographics of the general public & the demographics of the institutions breeds resentment on both sides against each other, i.e. the government makes laws that are incompatible with what's actually going on with the general public or the police, themselves of being mostly of one race, are usually heavily biased towards their own race.
When the public institutions work towards diversifying their rank & file, then the trust between general public & the public institutions increase on both sides, since both sides now understand each others "language".
If the public institutions don't diversify, then it starts to seem like the age of slavery when the "coloured" slaves were assaulted & ruled over with an iron fist. Only this time around, the "slaves" are seemingly free & not coming from one continent only, but the race of the "owner" has neither changed, & still, nor its mentality.
Is the so-called "modern" world regressing back to the era of slavery?
Yes. Be it international foreign affairs or municipal affairs in a small town in North America or Europe, one race is still trying to control the others, because that pesky "illness of superiority" is still lingering around. Besides, immigrants are never fully accepted by the native residents of the country, so the native residents will always find a way to control the immigrant masses.
No worries, that "illness of superiority" is not confined to one race only. For instance, Arabs, especially Saudis, feel superior than other Muslims (non-Arabs & non-Saudis), even though, Prophet Muhammad specifically forbade Arabs from feeling superior than other non-Arab Muslims. What did it do? It created resentment in non-Arab Muslims towards Arabs in general, & especially, Saudis.
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When confronted with the shocking news that more than 3,000 police officers are being investigated for alleged assault, it is hard not to be nostalgic for the gentler era of law enforcement symbolised by the 1950s TV series Dixon of Dock Green.
Constable George Dixon seemingly needed little more than common sense & a dose of human understanding to keep criminals in line in his patch of London. Fiction this may have been, but how rare & urgently needed both these traits seem in the real-life police forces of Britain today.
The police face great challenges, headed by a mix of budget cuts, fragmented community cohesion & the growth of gang culture. We also recognise the under-reported & under-appreciated fact that Britain is getting safer, the crime rate having largely fallen for 20 years.
But it is 10 years since the Macpherson report first raised the issue of “institutional racism”. Today – in the cases of the 3,000 police officers being investigated for alleged assault – black & Asian citizens are still three times more likely to have made the complaint than their white peers. Old habits, it seems, die hard.
Professor Lee Bridges at the University of Warwick’s School of Law recently analysed the figures disclosed by the Metropolitan Police for its Gangs Matrix, the intelligence database used to combat gang violence.
It showed 85% of the capital’s gang members are believed to be black or Asian. The figure for white Londoners was only 439. This includes anyone engaged on an organised basis in “violence, criminal offending & gang membership” & is meant to feature all those involved in such organised crimes as drug-dealing, fraud, vice & football hooliganism.
The Met’s figure, it must be said, does not capture the entire picture. This matters as it is investigative tools such as the Gangs Matrix which are behind the Met’s new much-hailed “intelligence-led” investigating approach. If, as Professor Bridges’ analysis implies, there remains a racial bias in the statistics being used, then a racial bias is inevitable in its results, & therefore also in the mindset of the officers out on patrol armed with such information.
Greater London & the West Midlands, the UK’s two largest police forces, accounted for almost half of the assault cases under investigation. But in London, black, Asian & minority ethnic officers make up only 11% of the force compared with 40% of the population, while West Midlands Police admitted last month it had recently selected only 1 black officer from 162 recruits.
This newspaper rarely supports positive discrimination, believing it risks blocking the promotion of the ablest & feeding the resentment of those who feel ignored. But a situation can sometimes be so severe & urgent that it turns a bad principle into a necessary practice. Our police force is one such instance.
Last year the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, raised the prospect of half of all new Met police recruits coming in future from a minority ethnic background. The time has come for his successor to take the steps required to implement a similar policy, & for other forces with a similar disconnect between those serving & those communities being served to act likewise.
It is the common-sense approach, one that also shows a human understanding of the reality of modern Britain.
However, we see that all the public institutions of the developed Western world are mostly native residents of those countries; judiciary, political, & law enforcement departments of the governments at all levels.
This piece is about British police force & British general public, but we all are well aware of what's going on in US right now with the country-wide protests & violence against this exact same thing what this piece is talking about. Just the other day, I blogged how Portuguese police force in Lisbon brutally controls immigrants from its former African colonies. So, this phenomenon of unnecessary police assaults are not confined to one country alone.
Now, why do these police assaults happen? I believe they happen because this gross discrepancy between the actual demographics of the general public & the demographics of the institutions breeds resentment on both sides against each other, i.e. the government makes laws that are incompatible with what's actually going on with the general public or the police, themselves of being mostly of one race, are usually heavily biased towards their own race.
When the public institutions work towards diversifying their rank & file, then the trust between general public & the public institutions increase on both sides, since both sides now understand each others "language".
If the public institutions don't diversify, then it starts to seem like the age of slavery when the "coloured" slaves were assaulted & ruled over with an iron fist. Only this time around, the "slaves" are seemingly free & not coming from one continent only, but the race of the "owner" has neither changed, & still, nor its mentality.
Is the so-called "modern" world regressing back to the era of slavery?
Yes. Be it international foreign affairs or municipal affairs in a small town in North America or Europe, one race is still trying to control the others, because that pesky "illness of superiority" is still lingering around. Besides, immigrants are never fully accepted by the native residents of the country, so the native residents will always find a way to control the immigrant masses.
No worries, that "illness of superiority" is not confined to one race only. For instance, Arabs, especially Saudis, feel superior than other Muslims (non-Arabs & non-Saudis), even though, Prophet Muhammad specifically forbade Arabs from feeling superior than other non-Arab Muslims. What did it do? It created resentment in non-Arab Muslims towards Arabs in general, & especially, Saudis.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When confronted with the shocking news that more than 3,000 police officers are being investigated for alleged assault, it is hard not to be nostalgic for the gentler era of law enforcement symbolised by the 1950s TV series Dixon of Dock Green.
Constable George Dixon seemingly needed little more than common sense & a dose of human understanding to keep criminals in line in his patch of London. Fiction this may have been, but how rare & urgently needed both these traits seem in the real-life police forces of Britain today.
The police face great challenges, headed by a mix of budget cuts, fragmented community cohesion & the growth of gang culture. We also recognise the under-reported & under-appreciated fact that Britain is getting safer, the crime rate having largely fallen for 20 years.
But it is 10 years since the Macpherson report first raised the issue of “institutional racism”. Today – in the cases of the 3,000 police officers being investigated for alleged assault – black & Asian citizens are still three times more likely to have made the complaint than their white peers. Old habits, it seems, die hard.
Professor Lee Bridges at the University of Warwick’s School of Law recently analysed the figures disclosed by the Metropolitan Police for its Gangs Matrix, the intelligence database used to combat gang violence.
It showed 85% of the capital’s gang members are believed to be black or Asian. The figure for white Londoners was only 439. This includes anyone engaged on an organised basis in “violence, criminal offending & gang membership” & is meant to feature all those involved in such organised crimes as drug-dealing, fraud, vice & football hooliganism.
The Met’s figure, it must be said, does not capture the entire picture. This matters as it is investigative tools such as the Gangs Matrix which are behind the Met’s new much-hailed “intelligence-led” investigating approach. If, as Professor Bridges’ analysis implies, there remains a racial bias in the statistics being used, then a racial bias is inevitable in its results, & therefore also in the mindset of the officers out on patrol armed with such information.
Greater London & the West Midlands, the UK’s two largest police forces, accounted for almost half of the assault cases under investigation. But in London, black, Asian & minority ethnic officers make up only 11% of the force compared with 40% of the population, while West Midlands Police admitted last month it had recently selected only 1 black officer from 162 recruits.
This newspaper rarely supports positive discrimination, believing it risks blocking the promotion of the ablest & feeding the resentment of those who feel ignored. But a situation can sometimes be so severe & urgent that it turns a bad principle into a necessary practice. Our police force is one such instance.
Last year the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, raised the prospect of half of all new Met police recruits coming in future from a minority ethnic background. The time has come for his successor to take the steps required to implement a similar policy, & for other forces with a similar disconnect between those serving & those communities being served to act likewise.
It is the common-sense approach, one that also shows a human understanding of the reality of modern Britain.
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