‘Very few causes policing should be attached to,’ Met Commissioner says
T
he Metropolitan Police Commissioner has launched a crackdown on his officers expressing help for causes whereas on responsibility.
Sir Mark Rowley mentioned it’s important that officers are neutral whereas on responsibility, including the one acceptable additions to uniforms are remembrance poppies, Help for Heroes wristbands and the police memorial badge.
He advised The Daily Telegraph: “Wearing a poppy in the autumn is perfectly proper but there is not a lot that we should align to because the danger is that once you say ‘we are going to align ourselves to a cause because 90 per cent of the population support it’, what about the 10 per cent?
Starting to align yourself to causes is not something policing should be doing
“Once you start having environmental and other subjects there are lots of people in the organisation who will personally support those causes and that is OK, but the Metropolitan Police explicitly supporting them is quite tricky.
“I’m fairly narrow minded on this. There are very few causes policing should be attached to.”
Sir Mark mentioned officers “engaging with communities to understand what worries them is not woke”, however added: “Starting to align yourself to causes is not something policing should be doing.”
His feedback come after it was reported that law enforcement officials at London Pride have been advised to not put on a badge commemorating officers killed within the line of responsibility due to issues about its hyperlinks to far-right teams within the US.