Which matters more to the met — young black lives or dawn butler’s pride? | thearticle

Do black lives matter to the Metropolitan Police? Dawn Butler, the Labour MP for Brent Central, apparently doesn’t think so. She has accused the Met of institutional racism after her car was

stopped and searched in Hackney last weekend. Ms Butler told Channel Four News that she and a friend were pulled over “for no other reason” than “the colour of our skin and we were driving

a nice car”. The former Shadow Equalities Minister immediately posted her own footage of the incident. The Police Federation has demanded that the officers involved be allowed to release

their own body cam recordings. Police have admitted that they stopped her car because they mistakenly believed it was from North Yorkshire. No doubt this was an unpleasant experience for Ms

Butler, who was asked to hand over her car keys until the police had checked her registration number. “It’s just tiring and exhausting and mentally draining,” she complained. That is all

true and regrettable. So is the fact that she has been trolled since the incident was reported. She had every right to complain. Yet when she denounced the “arrogance” of these officers, who

were white, for asking whether she lived in London, there is a slight implication that they ought to have known who she was. Her claim that this incident was proof of “institutional racism”

is hardly calculated to improve relations between the black community and the Met: “It is cancerous and it needs to be cut out of the police force and it’s urgent.” Did it occur to Ms

Butler that there are things going on in London that might be even more urgent? So far this year, ten teenagers have been murdered on the streets of the capital. On Saturday, Jeremy

Menesses, a 17-year-old boy from Colombia, was butchered in broad daylight after running down Oxford Street, hunted down by machete-wielding youths in front of terrified shoppers. Three

people have already been arrested in connection with this case, but in many others identification of the suspects is much more difficult. That is why the use of stop and search, including

pulling over vehicles, remains an essential part of the Met’s investigative arsenal in fighting gang crime. A good example is the murder of Alexander Kareem, a black youth who was shot dead

in Askew Road, Shepherds Bush, last June. Alexander, who was 20 and had no known involvement in gangs, was killed in a nocturnal drive-by shooting as he waited at a bus stop. The assailants

were driving a stolen white Range Rover which was later found burnt out and abandoned in Ealing. This horrific murder, unlike the stopping of Ms Butler’s car, was not reported on television

news.   For nearly two months, nothing was heard about the investigation. Then, last week, the police made seven simultaneous arrests all over West London: five men, one woman and a

16-year-old boy. The leader of what was clearly a large-scale operation, Detective Chief Inspector Wayne Jolley, said afterwards: “I believe this murder to have been a case of mistaken

identity, perpetrated recklessly and with no regard whatsoever for human life. Alexander’s death is a tragic reminder that carrying a gun has devastating consequences.” Arrests are not, of

course, the end of the story, but if and when the suspects are put on trial, the case may well turn on the Range Rover, CCTV of which was at first the only evidence the police had to go on.

This case is merely one of hundreds that illustrate why cars matter so much to the police and why they are routinely stopped and searched, particularly in areas where gangs are known to

operate. They are particularly active in Hackney, where Ms Butler was pulled over. Numerous serious gang-related crimes, including murder, have taken place in the borough this year. There

can be no excuse for institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police. Attitudes, training and practices have, however, changed beyond recognition in the two decades since the Macpherson

Report. It is unfair to the Met and unhelpful to the fight against knife crime for an MP to grab headlines in the media with dubious denunciations of discrimination, when in reality the

police are devoting huge effort every day to bringing gangsters to justice. Black lives do indeed matter to the Met. Don’t they matter to Dawn Butler?