Police played 'spot the black officer in the dark', tribunal hears
Racist
police officers were given a "licence to bully" their ethnic minority colleagues by bosses who turned a blind eye to threats of violence and a culture of apartheid that gripped a London police station, it was today alleged.
The allegations are contained in legal documents submitted by Asad Saeed, a Muslim PCSO who is suing the Met for racial discrimination at an employment tribunal that began today.
He says he worked for barely a month at Belgravia station in central London in February 2007, before being suspended after two white racist colleagues who "framed" him. He was sacked from the force, but later reinstated on appeal with CCTV evidence disproving a claim from one of his accusers that Saeed, 35, had assaulted a vagrant while on duty.
The claims from Saeed and other black officers are some of the worst concerning racism to hit Scotland Yard in modern times. But more troubling for the new Met commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson who last week declared the force's racist past was behind it, are the repeated claims from Saeed and his colleagues that when senior officers were told, they tried to silence the whistle blowers.
One ethnic minority officer told of the culture of fear at Belgravia station which was incited by a white boss.
PCSO Peter Campbell said an inspector at the station drew up a hit list of black officers to be got rid of, and shared the list with white officers.
In his witness statement, submitted to the tribunal today, Campbell said: "This is what gave bullies like PCSO Geoff Whitehead and PCSO Royston Upson a licence to bully the ethnic minority PCSOs."
Things were so bad at the station that white officers rode in a separate van to ethnic minority colleagues, barring entry to any black officer who tried to get in, and refused requests to pick them up.
Documents supporting Saeed's claims say the "apartheid" began in 2003.
In June 2006 a white PCSO is alleged to have reported racist remarks by Whitehead to senior management, but no action was taken.
The canteen and television rooms were also subject to "apartheid" with white officers and their black colleagues sitting separately.
Campbell also alleged that at times black officers were "treated like dogs" and that senior officers played a racist game called "spot the PCSO".
Campbell said: "When we were on the beat after dark we would often notice a police car following us. Eventually one of the police constables told me that they were playing a game called 'spot the PCSO'.
"We would look over and see two white police officers gawping at us from the vehicle.
"The joke was that all PCSOs had black or brown skin colour so they were very hard to see in the dark.
"When I found out that police constables and senior police officers played this game I was extremely upset."
Saeed says his race hate ordeal began on his first day at Belgravia when Whitehead refused to shake his hand.
Days later Saeed saw the same white officer bar a black colleague from a vehicle, saying: "You need to get in the black van".
Documents show other officers confirming the black and white van system.
A woman officer was threatened, her chair kicked and sworn at, being called "a ****ing *****".
A senior officer was overheard complaining about "****ing foreigners", two white officers bragged of connections to the BNP, while on duty homeless people sleeping in the street were kicked in the stomach, and smuggled goods were traded in the station.
Saeed says bosses turned a blind eye to this, and after his suspension a senior officer ignored his complaints of racism saying it was "a smokescreen": "At Belgravia, they turned a blind eye to racism,", his witness statement says.
In August 2008, an internal report by sergeant Sarah Cashman, found the claims from the ethnic minority PCSOs had "credibility and consistency".
The investigation found black PCSOs scared to speak because of past threats and assaults by coleagues.
Whitehead and Upson have both left the force.
A document reveals that a Met internal investigation produced enough evidence to bring a disciplinary charge against Whitehead for racism, harassment and bullying of colleagues, and for running the apartheid van system.
He quit before the hearing.
The Met is denying the claim bought by Saeed and the hearing continues.
Source (Guardian)