The London Met: Not Racist, Apparently

The past few years haven't been the best for London's Metropolitan police. There was the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station, the shooting of Mark Duggan that sparked the 2011 London riots, illegal phone hacking, allegations of abuse of power and excessive force and often legitimate allegations of racism.

In fact, the police recently admitted that only five percent of street searches in London lead to an arrest, and that black people are 28 times more likely to be stopped in certain areas, which aren't the kind of statistics I'd imagine they really want in the public forum. To round it all off, the Metropolitan Black Police Association – the biggest group representing minority officers in the force – declared this weekend that the Met is still institutionally racist, two decades after the death of Stephen Lawrence.

But despite all that racism, head-kicking and itchy trigger fingers, is it time to give the boys in blue a bit of a break? After all, while you're hungover, they're the ones scooping dead bodies out of canals, strip-searching aggressive crack addicts and working longer hours for less pay to make sure your lives are safer.

To get some insight into life as a London copper – and find out whether they really are angry, racist megalomaniacs – I spoke to Henry (not his real name, obviously), who left his job as a constable in a south London borough last month.

"Henry". Photo by Alex Chitty.

VICE: Hi Henry. What’s it like being a policeman in London?
Henry: Exciting, sometimes scary, occasionally boring. There’s a lot of paperwork, but that’s not too bad, and you can understand why it’s needed. You see some crazy things.

Like what?
There was a guy who’d covered himself in petrol and set himself on fire, so we had to wrap him up in cling film. And dead bodies. The first I saw was in this small, hot flat and the guy was just lying there naked; it was awful. Anyway, as I flipped the body to check for knife wounds or anything that would suggest a crime, this dead body let out a huge fart, right in my face. There were a couple of CID detectives there giggling at me, which didn’t help. Then you have crackheads’ houses, which aren’t nice. It’s south London, so you see something disgusting every other day.

Gross. But south London isn't all junkies and dead people.
Sure, but you get a fucked up view of the place because you're only dealing with the worst of society, so you start to think everyone in that area must be a scumbag. You keep telling yourself it's not, but you never see Nice People, which is what we call people who aren’t involved with us. A lot of the time you’re dealing with these idiots who seem to suck everything out of society. People will call you scum on the streets, then call you next day because their boyfriend won’t give them the TV remote or let them use the PlayStation. You spend a lot of time dealing with people who can't manage their own lives.

Why did you join then?
I was bored in my desk job and I thought it would be more fun to drive fast cars, chase people, catch criminals and bully the bullies. Not some sense of civic duty or any other bullshit, it just sounded like a really fun job. Like the army, but without the war.

Did you come across many gangs?
Yeah, there were Triads in the area. I was in a response team once and we arrived 30 seconds after a big fight over pirate DVD-selling turf, right on the high street. One guy had been hit with a meat cleaver and you could see his brains. There’s not much you can do in that situation except help him – he could have just been a victim. And these aren’t cool Triads with Ferraris and coke and hot girls, these are poor kids in trackies selling DVDs. It’s sad.

What other gangs were there?
There are about 200 or so identifiable gangs in London and they tend to be run by men in their thirties in charge of “youngers”, who are foot soldiers aged 13 to 20. They copy all the LA gang colours and bandana stuff from the 90s, but they basically just exist to sell drugs and take your iPhone and wallet. We were dealing with the Peckham Boys and the Peckham Young Guns, who were the cunts who killed Damilola Taylor. But also the Ghetto Boys and even some all-female gangs, like the Shower Chicks. Most of the ones you actually catch are just kids, so you can grab hold of them, chuck them in the van and tell them to shut the fuck up or you’ll beat the shit out of them.

Is the Met winning or losing the battle against gangs?
I always felt that you couldn’t really make a huge difference. You can’t expect the government to give you billion and billions of pounds, which would sort out the problem. But if they gave the police any less money it really would tip over into serious shit. Every policeman is busy all the time, especially with the cuts. With gangs, it’s not getting worse, but I don’t think it’s getting better. Gang injunctions have made a difference, but mostly they’re impossible to catch. They do this thing called "starbursting" – running in all directions when you run up on them – so out of a massive group, you might catch one.

I see. Were you aware of any corruption?
No. Some guys would sift through bags of porn and take a couple of DVDs, like in that Triad case [laughs]. You’d hear about the bosses finding crack or weed in officers’ lockers at the station, but that would be carelessness after street searches. I wasn’t aware of any corruption in the Met. I didn't necessarily like all the other cops, but I could trust them.

How much do police enjoy the power trip?
Some people like the authority and the violence, yeah. It’s hard not to. When you’re off duty and someone gives you shit, for example, you just show them your warrant card and tell them to fuck off – that gets rid of them. The power goes to some people's heads, but that won't get them far in the police.

What were the 2011 London riots like?
Scary and exhausting at times, but also exciting. There was a feeling of being alone – the bosses would be on the radio asking for support from riot police, but the response would be, "Nope, you're on your own." That wasn't nice. We couldn't respond to most of the 999 calls because we were too busy stopping looting or escorting ambulances and the fire brigade because people were attacking them – who does that?

Did you get attacked personally?
There was one point where I was on a cordon with a female police officer and we were told to "hold the station". Basically, our nick was under siege, and I remember telling her, "If it kicks off, we'll just run away." Then people were lobbing bricks at us when we were on patrol in the car later that night. About half the cars got trashed.

When did you start to feel like you were turning it around?
By the fourth night, every cop in the world seemed to be in London. We felt like the biggest gang in town and we were taking the streets back. We were told to police “robustly” and we did. We were all pissed off and knackered, so we just laid into people. We might have bent up people a bit too hard, but that’s “robust policing”. I remember pressing down quite hard on one guy’s legs, but I figured he was OK as he wasn't screaming. It was only afterwards I realised I’d had my arm over his throat. It felt good to be actually catching people and we fucking nailed the lot of them.

A man very gracefully throwing a brick at a police car during the London riots.

After the riots, did you get the feeling it could kick off again at any time?
No, but it could at some point. These parts of London are full of people who really hate the police – they see someone getting shot and it makes their blood boil to the point where they want to go and burn a car.

If a riot happened now, would it get shut down quicker?
I suspect it would. The police are good at learning lessons, which is why there hasn’t been another Hillsborough Disaster, for example. So I imagine next time it’ll be stubbed out pretty quickly.

What did the cops think of the rioters?
You really hate them. Who wouldn't when you’ve seen all these shops and houses get burned down? They weren’t protesting anything, except that the police shot an armed, drug-dealing scumbag, which almost never happens and isn’t an excuse for burning houses down. Mark Duggan was a big time gangster, a criminal, armed and was shot by the police. People are stupid and they jump onto a bandwagon.

But Duggan’s gun was in a sock in his pocket – you can’t shoot him for that.
Of course, but no one knows for sure what happened; the official report isn’t out yet. We know he had a gun, which makes him a much better candidate for being shot than Jean Charles de Menezes, for example. People don’t realise how bad it is out there; the media just doesn't report on the levels of violence in London. In my borough, someone would get shot or stabbed every week at least. You’ve got kids getting killed and the papers are talking about whatever celebrity crap or attacking the Met.

"Robust policing" at the student demos.

Did you use racial profiling when you stop-and-search people?
No, and the police aren’t racist. You get 20 street robberies a night in one borough, mostly committed by young black men, which isn't racist to say. There were a lot of poor black people in my borough, and that’s society’s fault, not the police’s. You have to record everyone's racial background, so you’re actually on the lookout for white kids to search to even out the numbers.

Did you search people for no real reason?
Yes. If you don’t like the look of them, you search them.

But that’s illegal.
Yeah. They train you to follow a tip from the public or some other evidence, but that never, ever happens. If you see someone that looks like a criminal, they usually are, so you want to turn them over for knives or drugs. You can give the reason that they looked uncomfortable or were in a high street crime area, or other generic stuff. You don’t lie, you just got a few sentences to cover yourself. If you weren’t doing at least three stop-and-searches per shift, you had to explain yourself.

Did you ever worry about alienating the community?
Yeah, some people do. I did. But I think as you get older you stop thinking that way. You do your best, you talk to the kids and you act nice. Some officers would rile people up to start shit, but that was unusual. That said, you don't always have to be nice if they’re not – you can tell someone to shut the fuck up if that’s what’s needed.

Did you ever have a complaint against you?
Not really. One kid whinged to his mum about me but that was as far as it got. To get complaints you have to piss people off, and if you’re not pissing people off you’re not doing the job properly. That’s not abuse of power, but you have to get in people’s faces and annoy them. You have to bully the bullies.

Most complaints come from career criminals, but at Hendon you were told to watch for the “Three Ps”: property and prisoners. You had to make sure your schizophrenic, suicidal, crack addict prisoner doesn’t die on you, because a death in custody is the ultimate bad day at the office. You also have to make sure they get their property back when they leave the cells.

And the third P?
[Laughs] Prostitutes. Apparently some will touch their fanny then wipe it on your hand, then make an allegation of sexual assault against you. It doesn’t look good when you get a positive result from the DNA swab following the investigation. They’d do that just to get you in trouble. When they say prostitutes, they really mean all female prisoners. Basically, you never allow yourself to be alone with a female prisoner.

Cheers, Henry.

Follow Alex on Twitter: @alexchitty

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