Sir Mark Rowley has said claims of “two-tier” policing are “absolute nonsense” and are putting police officers in danger. The Telegraph has more.
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner said the suggestion that some groups were being treated more harshly than others was putting his officers in danger as they policed the violence that has erupted in the wake of the Southport killings.
It comes after Sir Mark was caught on camera grabbing a reporter’s microphone following a question about two-tier policing.
The Government has insisted there is no “two-tier” system – whereby far-Right groups are supposedly dealt with more harshly than protesters on the Left – in Britain.
But some have continued to question the policing of the riots, with Robert Jenrick, the Tory leadership contender, accusing Sir Keir Starmer of not being “as clear as he could be” that some of the disorder on Britain’s streets emanated from “sectarian gangs”.
On Wednesday, responding to allegations that far-Right riots have been dealt with more severely than other recent unrest, Sir Mark told broadcasters: “It’s complete nonsense.
“We have commentators from either end of the political spectrum who like to throw accusations of bias at the police because we stand in the middle, we operate independently under the law without fear or favour.
“And if you’ve got crazy views over there, you don’t like it, and if you’ve got crazy views over there, you don’t like it. We will continue to do that.
“The serious voices who echo those are of more concern to me, because the risk is they legitimise it, and they legitimise the violence that the officers I’m sending on mutual aid today will face on the streets.
“They are putting them at risk by suggesting that any of those officers are going out with any intent other than to operate without fear or favour in protecting communities.”
Worth reading in full.
Those who think the police treat disorder by white people and minorities differently are “crazy”, apparently.
Among the crazies is Times columnist Melanie Phillips, who in a blog post yesterday on ‘Britain’s multicultural disaster‘ (also definitely worth reading in full) summarised some of the “egregious” double standards that are “driving people absolutely wild”:
The Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, speaks as if the only problem is “Right-wing” thuggery. Certainly, that problem has been shockingly evident and should be dealt with. But so too should Muslim and Left-wing thuggery. There have been numerous examples during these riots of Muslim mobs gratuitously attacking white people. Yet Starmer never calls these people “thugs”.
One of the incidents that sparked the current disorder took place at Manchester airport, where a police officer was filmed kicking the head of a Muslim man who was lying prone on the ground. That created understandable outrage and the officer was rightly pulled up on a disciplinary charge. But it took nearly a day before the rest of the video footage was released, revealing that the police had just been viciously attacked, and a female officer’s nose was broken, by a group of Muslim thugs of whom the kicked man was one.
It is the profound sense of injustice and double standards that has finally ignited the already combustible public resentment over race and immigration, and enabled neo-fascist and other agitators to exploit this situation.
Starmer’s strictures against “Right-wing thugs” are in stark contrast to the solidarity he expressed with the Black Lives Matter anti-police, anti-West, anti-white rioters in 2020 who destroyed poor neighbourhoods in Portland, Oregon and elsewhere — and to whom he actually ‘took the knee’ and proudly tweeted the picture.
The double standards go wider and deeper. During those violent BLM riots, liberal commentators earnestly asked what lay behind such black anger. Yet those liberals wouldn’t dream of asking what lies behind the anger of today’s white rioters.
Liberal commentators have claimed that demonstrators screaming for jihad, the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews on the weekly pro-Gaza hate marches are just a few extremists who shouldn’t tarnish the majority of those demonstrators who are all decent people marching for a worthy cause. Yet the same liberals claim that if any decent people are on the anti-immigrant riots, these are utterly compromised by the participation alongside them of the tattooed thugs performing Nazi salutes.
On those pro-Gaza hate marches, police arrested Jewish counter-demonstrators simply because their very presence was said to be a provocation to the Gaza supporters. Yet in the current disorders, Muslims aren’t being arrested on the grounds that their very presence is a provocation to the anti-immigrant mobs.
But since, according to Rowley, accusing the police of a two-tier response puts officers at risk, such accusations will presumably now need to be banned as dangerous misinformation. Which I imagine would suit Sir Mark Rowley just fine.
Stop Press: John Hayes, the businessman who bravely tackled the Southport knife attacker, has told the BBC that he doesn’t think the rioting has “got anything at all to do with the Southport stabbings” but rather stems from a “strong under-current of discontent for some time about the levels of immigration” which Starmer needs to address as “the cause rather than the symptoms”.
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