Police to turn off body cameras after complaints from BAME MPs

The Metropolitan Police have confirmed that they will reverse their previous policy of requiring police officers to wear body cameras. This follows complaints from a coalition of BAME MPs and Anti-Racist Action Groups that such video evidence is undermining the perception of institutional racism.

The Secretary of State for Diversity, Inclusion and Equity, Perpetua Indignatia MP demanded the change after the move to transparency failed to highlight any racially aggravated behaviour from police officers. In a statement to Parliament, she told MPs:

“After the brutal massacre of George Floyd in another continent, it was obvious that London police officers should wear body cameras so that such racist treatment could be captured on camera in future.

However, after six years of filming police interactions, we have unfortunately accumulated thousands of hours of officers behaving in a disappointingly professional manner."

New Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Anne Arkist, supported the change in a meeting of the Home Affairs Select Committee:

"We introduced body cameras to expose racism in the police. But if anything, police body cameras have shown the opposite. Look at what happened to Henry Nowak. The video showed officers taking racism extremely seriously indeed. This was very inconvenient for everyone involved"

Ray Sista, leading Black Lives Matter campaigner, has accused the Metropolitan Police of undermining anti-racism campaigners by refusing to behave in the racist manner such campaigners always claimed they did:

"After the police personally murdered George Floyd in cold blood, we thought that forcing police to wear video cameras would expose them as the racist brutes we’d spent decades telling people they were. 

Since the cameras show the exact opposite, this has had the effect of undermining trust in anti-racism organisations such as 'Kill Whitey'. This is just a new form of racist behaviour, and a new dark chapter in the long history of police brutality against black people. "

Previously, the Home Office had tried to assuage concerns by proposing a review into how racist incidents caught on camera could be increased. Junior Home Office Minister Anna Key MP had told the OMS in March:

“We have asked officers to be more aware of the consequences of a failure to film racial abuse, and the damage it can cause to community tensions to show videos of police officers behaving appropriately towards members of the global majority."

Today, Ms Key accepted that the government had relented on this approach:

"It appears that the demand for racism is far exceeding supply, but as a government we are committed to rectifying that situation.”