Sunday, March 09, 2014

Institutional Corruption.

The report also found that one of the detectives at the heart of the investigation into Stephen's murder was corrupt and had links with the gangster father of one of his killers.
The officer allegedly reported back to his superiors with "personal evidence" about the family and "tactical intelligence" to help brief senior figures in the Metropolitan Police. 

This revelation is  scandalous but it surely undermines the conclusion that William Macpherson's infamous report made- that the police were institutionally racist. If it is the case that one of the officers investigating the murder had links to a suspect's family then there is a more direct explanation for the failures of the initial investigation. One which has nothing to do with race.

Macpherson's methodology was shoddy- he arbitrarily attributed all failings to racism despite a lack of evidence. In doing this he made little or no effort to consider other reasons- like police corruption.

Given the numerous occasions on which police cover ups and crookedness have been uncovered over the last twenty years it seems like corruption is more of an institutional issue for the police than racism.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is hardly a revelation. Private eye said this at the time of the McPherson report. Of course McPherson had to find that the police were racist so had to avoid that evidence.
If I were Stephen Lawrence's parents I would be as concerned about the fact that two of his alleged attackers had been acquitted of a different attack a year before they killed Lawrence(which of course would have stopped him having been murdered) as the fact that they got away with murder.

Ross said...

Very good point.

I'd heard the allegations of corruption before but I didn't realise how strong the case was.

Peter Risdon said...

And because of the emphasis on racism, the corrupt detective at the heart of the case was able to take early retirement on a nice pension and move abroad.