Dawn Butler "carried on as if the world is going to end": Met Police Federation Chair
10 August 2020, 15:56 | Updated: 10 August 2020, 16:15
Ken Marsh on Dawn Butler MP's traffic stop
The Chair of the Met Police Federation told LBC that Dawn Butler's traffic stop in Hackney was "clearly not" evidence of institutional racism.
Ken Marsh has "no objections," to the actions of officers that stopped Dawn Butler MP in Hackney on Sunday afternoon, and maintained that officers have "the right to ask any person any question," after the MP for Brent criticised the line of questioning of officers.
Andrew Castle asked the Chair of the Met Police Federation what he thought of Dawn Butler's assertions that her stop is evidence of systemic racism in the police force.
"What disappoints me more than anything else is this is an individual who holds a position of power and prestige above people," said Mr Marsh.
"She took this simple stop and has carried on as if the world has come to an end."
He added that the Labour MP was "treated very fairly," and she even admitted that herself. He wondered "how is this institutional racism what my colleagues did and the actions they took? It's not, it's clearly not."
Labour MP Dawn Butler accuses Met Police of racial profiling after they stopped her driving through Hackney
Andrew argued with Mr Marsh that they both "don't know what it is to be black," adding that they "don't know what it's like to be stopped 15, 20, 30 times a year."
He asked the Chair of the Met Federation what the police can do to prevent the resentment felt by many towards the force.
Mr Marsh suggested that the police can simply stop doing their job and then we will see the consequences. He reminded Andrew that when Theresa May curbed stop and search "knife crime went up 71%, young males were being stabbed to death," telling Andrew that we cant have this happen again.
"If you want us to do our job in terms of policing, then the community has to make decisions around what we should do," he said, maintaining that "there was nothing wrong in that incident, it was dealt with properly by the police."
