Neil Basu, Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner, its most senior black and minority ethnic (BAME) police officer, said it was time to “stand up to racists, to inequality and injustice.”
“FLOYD WILL FOREVER BE A TOTEMIC IMAGE OF RACIAL INJUSTICE IN AMERICA”
Basu’s remarks came in a guest column for The Guardian daily. When he joined the force in 1992, he had “doubts about the organization,” he wrote, and it was “particularly hard” to be from a minority ethnic background at the time of the inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence murder.
He underlined that it has been a “particularly shattering week” for BAME colleagues during protests and violence sparked by the death of George Floyd in the US. “The way George [Floyd] died represented the worst of policing and will forever be a totemic image of racial injustice in America,” Basu wrote. “His last words … ‘I can’t breathe’ … have become an anthem.”
He wrote: “So let us view the legitimate anger, manifesting itself now in different ways, with nuance and care.”
