Dear Katherine Birbalsingh,

I have only just started to reason and comprehend your articles. Many times in your works you mention the strain between the police and the community, specifically the black race. However the content included in your pieces indicates to your audience quite clearly that your beliefs are biased towards the police.

You feel that police are not the problem in this “mutual divide”. You portray that the police brutality, that has been brought up regularly by the community, is an over-exaggeration. Then how can you explain the 333 people that have been killed in police custody since 1998? Not one conviction or accusation has been made against a single officer, leading me to believe that there is some sort of corruption between the IPCC, the police and the courts. For you to support the police, even though harmless, innocent victims are being slaughtered by the so called “law enforcers”, gives the impression that you are deluded.

Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Met Commissioner, has claimed that there are still sections of the police force that are institutionally racist. He believes that young black men are more likely to be stopped and searched compared to young white men. If someone of his stature is questioning his own police force, then I feel that it triggers a cause for concern. Racial animosity against the black race still lurks in the hearts of some officers. Also, I whole-heartedly deem you to be one of the contributors to this hatred against blacks. In your Guardian article you come across as if you believe that to be black is to be a gangster. I feel that I speak for the majority of black people that are law abiding citizens. Of course there are blacks that are criminals or gang affiliated, however the minority that decide to live the unlawful way should not be allowed to stereotype all the black race as being gangsters. For you, crime is a constant theme for blacks. You seem to constantly imply that there is a magnetic force bringing the blacks and criminal activity together. There is a number of black people that are lawyers, doctors, teachers and active in other advanced professions. The black race are not the only contributors to crimes in the U.K.

Moreover, there are many innocent black people that are being stopped and searched on the streets and being harassed because of the complexion of their skin. A 21 year old black male was stopped, removed from his car, arrested and bundled into a police vehicle. This incident occurred a day after the riots and tensions were running high. The man had taken the initiative to record the stop and search process on his phone. This epitomizes the tension between the police and the community: the man felt that he needed to take it upon himself to record the process as his protection in case he was attacked verbally by the police officer. The policeman during the one and a half minute recording said, “The problem with you is you will always be a nigger… You’ll always have black skin. Don’t hide behind your colour.” This is just one of many appalling racist incidents from a police officer towards a fellow citizen of the public. The officer was only given was only given a suspension with pay, which ignites my belief that there is a biased aroma between the IPCC and the police.

We only have to evaluate the murder of the Stephen Lawrence in 1993 to gain an insight into the institutional racism that is still ripe on the streets of London. The 18 year old of Jamaican decent was stabbed and killed by five white youths as he waited for a bus with friend Duwayne Brooks. Eltham was notorious for being a racist area. However the police failed to identify that the murder had a racist agenda. Eye-witnesses and the locals in Eltham pointed the police towards the direction of Gary Dobson, brothers Neil and Jamie Acourt, Luke Knight and David Norris. All of the individuals had previously been involved in racist attacks. However, the police delayed the arrest of the suspects. The police’s inability to arrest the group meant that vital evidence could have been slipping away from the grasp of police, making it harder to find justice for Stephen Lawrence. There had been intense speculation that the reason the arrests were conducted at a lethargic pace was because Stephen was a black teenager and the police did not prioritize finding the culprits due to his race. It was only in 2012, 19 years after the murder, when two of the perpetrators, Gary Dobson and David Norris were convicted of murder. The other three suspects are free to roam the streets of our country to this day…