Police must stop engaging in “woke” culture wars and “preferencing certain groups” and focus instead on catching criminals, a major Government-backed review has concluded. The Telegraph has more.
The damning report into failings in police leadership said bosses must be “resolute” in “refusing to take sides” and not be diverted from “focusing entirely on the prevention, detection and prosecution of crime”.
Amid renewed scrutiny over ‘two-tier policing‘, police leaders are accused of “preferencing certain groups” in the review, which is one of the most thorough examinations of the force ever undertaken.
Lord Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary who co-chaired the report, said there was “no room for culture wars or woke” causes in policing. “The idea that people should be diverted onto other issues is entirely wrong,” he said.
A commission was set up by the College of Policing with the support of the Home Office, in the wake of a series of scandals, including the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by serving Metropolitan Pc Wayne Couzens.
Its report, published on Monday, called for a “reset” of police culture after finding evidence of ineffective and corrupt leadership, nepotism, poor training and a lack of support for front-line officers.
The murder of Henry Nowak, a student who was handcuffed by police as he lay dying because his killer, Vickrum Digwa, who is Sikh, lied about being racially abused by the teenager, has renewed the debate around two-tier policing in Britain.
Amid the public outcry over the treatment of Nowak, police chiefs announced a review of their guidance that suggested “racial equity” did not mean “treating everyone the same or being colour blind”.
Asked whether there was a problem with “two-tier” policing, Lord Blunkett said: “We make it clear in the report that there’s no room for culture wars or woke. … In fact, I have quite a record on this myself. I wrote back in June six years ago, just at the beginning of Covid, when people were talking about the controversy of taking the knee, that it isn’t the job of the police in our country to take sides of any sort.
“It’s the job of the police to deliver.”
Sir Stephen Watson, one of Britain’s most senior officers, made similar warnings, stating that policing in Britain had “adopted the language of activism” and official guidance had “over-corrected” to combat accusations of racism.
Sir Stephen said police had allowed the perception of two-tier policing to take hold in part as a result of the anti-racism guidance that advised officers to treat suspects differently depending on their ethnicity.
The report said policing by consent – a fundamental tenet of the UK approach – required officers to act “without fear or favour”.
“The background or identity of any perpetrator or victim of crime should have absolutely no bearing on the quality of treatment or respect which is given to them by the police service,” it said.
The report warned that not a single force in England and Wales had been judged by inspectors to be outstanding for leadership. It also revealed there had been 47 investigations into alleged misconduct by chief officers since 2018, including for cronyism, nepotism, abuse of power for sexual purposes and corruption.
Eight chief constables or former chief constables are either under investigation or are awaiting disciplinary proceedings.
“The quality of police leadership today is not consistently effective enough, and is undermining the ability of the whole workforce to meet public expectations,” said the review.
Just 13% of the constables and 17% of the sergeants surveyed for the report agreed they worked in a “well-led and managed organisation”.
Worth reading in full.
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A fine example of Uniparty strategy – recognising that Reform and other critics have a point about two-tier law and policing and tacking to the centre to blunt the challenge they are faced with. Goes well with hot air from Mahmood about reducing immigration, replacing Starmer with a new messiah and with the campaign to denigrate Farage.
“The quality of police leadership today is not consistently effective enough, “
No. But it IS consistently dire.
Surely it’s time for the College of Policing to be shut down.
Slightly O/T: re double jeopardy and jury intimidation.Should a licensing panel who adjudicate on further sanctions against a convicted criminal be liable to dismissal if they vote the “wrong” way? Follow-on: should a public sector employee who feels bullied by her manager into falsifying evidence resist that bullying, even if she knows she will lose her job and professional registration if she does not vote according to her manager’s instruction, rather than the evidence.
That’s like the Management of a company ordering all Staff to take DEI training courses, forcing them to “Wallow in Wokery” for years, then suddenly the Management blames the Staff for doing exactly what Management forced them to do!!!
So let’s give Lifelong Leftist Lord Blunkett the “Hypocrite of the Week” award, and start blaming the Politicians & Judiciary, instead of the Police who act as a kind of Punching Bag for everything, rather like White Men.
“It’s the job of the police to deliver.”
No, it isn’t. Current policing practice resembles colonial policing where the police treat awkward groups better than ones that usually behave well in the service of “peace”. In the long run this will cause a civil war, but in the short run this will work.
Meanwhile the Law and police guidance (which amounts to quango made law) requires the police to act with two tier values. One for British whites and another for others. One for those who oppose Hanas and IRGC and another for those who support them.
I think I believe that Blunkett opposes all this but he is a member of a party which has done as much as any other to bring us here. He was a senior figure when the groundwork was done.
That a police officer, who serves by public consent and is also a member of the public, should never be at the beck and call of any individual or special interest should not need stating. Here’s a suggestion, read the basic principles of policing and revert to them. Not hard.
Yes, they should all go back to read about Sir Robert Peel, and also about Sir William Henry Sleeman:
When Sir William Sleeman’s Thugee Map Saved 40,000 Lives in 1840 | Empire Untold
“Sleeman’s war against the Thugs pioneered investigative techniques that remain relevant today. He was among the first law enforcement officials to use systematic data collection to combat organized crime. His use of turned informants, protected witnesses, and coordinated operations across multiple jurisdictions created a template that modern police forces still follow when dismantling criminal networks.”
“Perhaps most remarkably, Sleeman achieved his success without modern communication technology. His intelligence network relied entirely on human messengers, yet he managed to coordinate operations across an area larger than modern-day Germany. His detailed records, preserved in the British archives, provide one of history’s most complete portraits of how organized crime operates at scale.”
“The Thug investigation also demonstrated something that seems obvious today but was revolutionary in the 1830s: that patterns in criminal behaviour could be used to predict future crimes. Sleeman’s map wasn’t just a historical document—it was an early form of predictive policing that anticipated where criminal activity would occur next.”
He would have been horrified that the descendants of Sikh Thuggees, every Sikh man, woman & child, are now allowed to carry their Sikh Daggers in Britain, while British Citizens are forbidden by British law to carry any kind of weapon for Self-Defence. This outrageous and dangerous injustice must be abolished.
Hear, hear!