A study of racism and impunity in European policing

By Liz Fekete, Director, Institute of Race Relations

How do we account for repeated cases of unlawful police violence in multicultural neighbourhoods of Europe? Is the police explanation that these are isolated incidents, a few ‘rotten apples’ in an otherwise perfect barrel, adequate? As head of the Institute of Race Relations’ European Research Programme, monitoring cases involving excessive police force is part of my everyday brief. But over the last eighteen months, an added issue has surfaced. On multiple occasions and in a number of European countries, police officers have been caught expressing extreme racism in WhatsApp and other private chat rooms, mocking black people who have died in custody, describing young people from a migrant background as ‘rats’ and vermin’, and sharing tips as how to make ‘alternative arrests’. As I began to collate information on all these cases, whilst carrying out a literature review of academic (and NGO) studies on racism in modern policing, another research questioned surfaced. What role, if any, do police trade unions and related pressure groups, play in upholding rank and file police officers sense of impunity and entitlement? Now, the findings of these different strands of my research, Racism, radicalisation and Europe’s ‘Thin Blue Line’, have been published in Race & Class. (July 2022)   

I wanted to pinpoint the casus belli of the dehumanising racism expressed by police officers in those private chat rooms.  The key, I learnt, was to situate extreme police attitudes in the way modern policing is organised around data collection, data harvesting and network mapping (the use of a range of technologies to build a picture of social interactions and relations), artificial intelligence, biometrics and surveillance. What is different about policing today, than even ten years ago, is the extent to which police operations are data-driven. Mathematical models are used to assess risk, predict crime and identify ‘high risk’ locations, with vast databases also created on young people, assessing alleged ‘gang affiliation’ or propensity for ‘radicalisation’. It is these mathematical models that provide justification for racial profiling, justifying also the deployment of quasi-paramilitary rapid response units in ‘high-risk’ locations. The police may believe that they are just following the data when they trigger a rapid aggressive response in a targeted neighbourhood but as academics have shown, racial bias, which is often the result of long-standing police practices such as ethnic profiling, is inherent in the way data is collected, and is hardwired too into police algorithms.

But while I found data-driven policing and the distance it creates between police and policed to be a strong factor in a steady uptick in police violence and deaths in police custody, it does not entirely explain the culture of contempt that has developed in policing towards the inhabitants of neighbourhoods deemed ‘high risk’. These are neighbourhoods that have suffered greatly from austerity-driven cuts to youth provision and social care, where low pay, precarious work, unemployment, poverty, homelessness, racial discrimination, social misery are all high.  In many respects, these communities have been abandoned by the state but, instead of acknowledging that, a populist political culture blames poverty and social problems on the culture of the poor, with black urban youth sub-cultures singled out and (wrongly) equated with criminality. With the media and politicians adopting stigmatising frameworks about young people, or those on benefits, and turning them into objects of fear, disgust or ridicule, the police may feel they have additional license to act aggressively on the streets. Too often, police seem to be operating within a colonial-style of  policing in the multicultural neighbourhoods of Europe.

But in order to understand this more fully we have to first look at the impact of neoliberal and technological changes on police organisation and, second, build into the critique an understanding of the way in which neoliberal attitudes about surplus populations have been internalised in the police psyche. This study on racism in policing concludes that the latter has created an elevated sense of police superiority, and a policing culture of impunity, which then justifies the use of dehumanising processes and lethal weaponry against the undeserving poor.

Article details
Racism, radicalisation and Europe’s ‘Thin Blue Line’
Liz Fekete
First Published June 28, 2022 Research Article
DOI: 10.1177/03063968221103063

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