Aggrieved MP Dawn Butler calls for ‘system change’ after racist incident
The Labor MP who was allegedly racially profiled by the Metropolitan police has called for a “system change” as the only way to make progress on the apparently intractable issue of British racism.
Former shadow secretary of state for women and equalities, Dawn Butler, has accused the Met Police of “racial profiling” after they stopped her car in Hackney yesterday (August 09) as she was going about her business.
Butler, who is the MP for the Brent Central constituency, told BBC Breakfast she had agreed to meet local Met Police “commanders” to discuss “taking the bias out of the system”.
For their part, the Met Police insists the incident was a “mistake” triggered by an “officer incorrectly entering the car’s registration number”.
As part of her complaint Butler has referenced the Macpherson Report – which decried the Met Police as “institutionally racist” following the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993 – to support her claim of intractable institutional racism at the heart of the Met Police.
Butler complained that: “"If you see black people in a car and you automatically assume that they are criminals there is a problem there".
"It's about time we changed the system so it works for everyone and it's effective”, Butler added.
Yesterday’s incident has attracted national attention especially as it comes so soon after nation-wide anti-racism protests.
Even the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has got involved by calling on the Met Police to treat people with “fairness and equality”.
But Johnson’s mild intervention is unlikely to assuage the concerns of black and ethnic minority communities in London – and indeed the rest of the UK – as Butler’s case is only the latest of a string of high-profile non-white individuals being unfairly targeted by the police.
Only last month the Met Police was forced to apologize to British athlete, Bianca Williams (who is black), after she was stopped and handcuffed by the police alongside her partner while her baby son was in the car.
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