Fury at 'gobsmacking' fundraiser for cops sacked after stopping Black athletes
A former Metropolitan Police cop has blasted the support for two officers fired after the stop and search of two Black athletes calling it "gobsmacking".
Alice Vinten has spoken out after PC Jonathan Clapham and PC Sam Franks were found guilty of misconduct and sacked on Wednesday. A disciplinary hearing had concluded the pair had lied when they claimed to have smelt cannabis when they pulled over Olympic competitors Ricardo dos Santos and his partner Bianca Williams.
The mum-of-two, who served for nearly 11 years with the London force, said she carried out countless stop and searches and believes Mr dos Santos and Ms Williams were targeted 'on a whim'. The couple were in their Mercedes with their three-month baby son outside their home in Maida Vale, west London, on July 4, 2020.
Ms Vinten, now an author and a media consultant in policing, left the force in 2015 after losing faith with the profession and said support for the sacked cops "makes police officers look like they believe they should be above the law". A JustGiving fundraiser set up to "financially help" the sacked officers has raised more than £72,000 in just two days sparking outrage.
Ricardo Dos Santos and Bianca Williams addressed the media after the gross misconduct hearing (PA)More than 4,000 people have donated to the fundraiser which says it intends to support the families "at a time of great austerity". Ms Vinten told the Mirror: "I just think it is a bit ridiculous. I think there are lots of worthy cause causes that people should be raising money for, and I don't think two police officers that have been caught in a lie, and that's what the misconduct hearing found, are the most worthy cause.
Tragedy as 13-month-old boy dies after the stolen car he was in crashed
"I just think it's also it's also giving a really bad kind of image to it's making police officers look like they believe they should be above the law a little bit, and they believe these police officers shouldn't have been sacked, even though they were caught in a lie.
"We want police officers who aren't going to be making things up and use stop and searches to get an excuse to search people. I just was a bit gobsmacked really. I understand they've been sacked, but they can go on and get other jobs, they're not going to be destitute."
Alice Vinten, who was a police constable for over a decade, has slammed a Just Giving page in support of the officers (Supplied)
Ms Vinten, pictured in her police uniform, has told Mirror officers must always be honest and integral (Alice Vinten)And Ms Vinten said when she served as police constable until 2015, Met Police had targets it wanted its officers to hit, including the numbers of stop and searches. It is unclear if these remain but Ms Vinten recalls the targets used to "affect the black community massively".
"It affects the black community massively because obviously they get kind of disproportionately targeted.," she said. "I would only stop people if I genuinely thought they were suspicious. I certainly wouldn't look at people based on skin colour or ethnicity but I do think that people's subconscious biases do lead them to do that.
"The misconduct hearing did actually kind of say that they couldn't have seen the ethnicity of the people in the car before they pulled them over because it was tinted windows, and I think they didn't actually find any kind of racial prejudice as such, but they did find that they lied.
"I think what happened or I have imagined happened with this is they didn't stop immediately. They they kind of took a little while to stop the car. This probably wound the officers up, they (Mr dos Santos and Ms Williams) were across it being stopped, quite rightly, because they weren't doing anything wrong. The police were probably like, 'well, they failed the attitude test now'.
"That is a very real test, that everybody knows exists. If you're not polite, when you get stopped, great and this then pi**ed the police officers off and I think that these people just thought, 'right f**k them, we're going to search their car now because they've failed the attitude test'. Instead of what should have happened - You pull them over, you realise that they're a law-abiding family with a baby in the car."
The athletes were stopped in July 2020 and the hearing was this week (COPYRIGHT UNKNOWN)Mr dos Santos and Ms Williams were held for around 45 minutes but nothing illegal was found in their car or in their possession. Following an investigation and this week's hearing, The Independent Office For Police Conduct (IOPC) brought the case against PC Clapham and PC Franks and three other officers - cleared of wrongdoing - and said the detention of Mr dos Santos and Ms Williams was "because they were black" and was "excessive, unreasonable and unjustified".
Ms Vinten, who lives in Essex, added: "For me, the biggest thing is they've lied, because you've got to be honest. If you're a police officer, you cannot lie. You cannot make things up because it affects people's lives. It's real. It's not just you making a point, as it affects people and they did it to the wrong people...I never saw any outward, institutional racism [during my time at Met Police]. Nobody would ever be that obvious. I think that people have their own subconscious biases. I think most police officers are good though, and I'm supportive of police."
Miss Williams and Mr Dos Santos had nothing illegal in their possession (PA)Since leaving the force, Ms Vinten has lifted the lid on the shocking extent of sexism and misogyny within Met Police. Speaking in the wake of extreme criticism Met Police faced in 2021, Ms Vinten said: "I think the police force attracts bullies. I know of many men in the police who commit domestic abuse." She told us of male officers passing around porn on shift and making sick comments about passing women while on street patrol.
Outrage as abandoned baby found in pram on beach, with mum off for a coffee
She's also become an author and her new book, The Real Happy Valley, is out on November 23. It tells the tales of true stories about police women across Yorkshire. Her time as an officer has helped inspire her novel, which has no official link to the BBC TV series of a similar name.
A spokesperson for JustGiving said: “We operate and enforce very strict processes and where pages are in breach of our community guidelines they are removed. In this instance, the crowdfunding page does not violate these terms."
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
