Cops and robbers back the officer silenced for speaking out

Prior spoke out against what he described as the “racism of low expectations” in the Met’s senior leadership, where top cops were failing to stand up for their police officers by shying away from “calling out bad behaviour” by ethnic minority Londoners who generated altercations with officers.

Prior also told me that white officers were “hesitating” when dealing with ethnic minorities for fear of malicious and vexatious racism investigations by the IOPC that could derail their careers, mortgages, and marriages. Sometimes, he said, some officers were looking at precarious situations and concluding that it just wasn’t worth intervening and that they’d rather go back to the station for some paperwork.

He made this stark intervention after recent high-profile cases of police officers being investigated and even taken to courts and tribunals in the lawful execution of their duties. In one particularly egregious case, an officer was convicted of assault after he arrested a woman who refused to show her bus fare when asked to do so by ticket inspectors.

As a consequence of that incident in Croydon, the Met is no longer supporting TfL’s revenue protection teams.

That is a clear case of criminals gaining the upper hand because of a ludicrous investigation into a copper.

The officer involved was charged with racially aggravated assault and eventually convicted, but last month that conviction was quashed.

But in their statement about the event, the Met said the incident had “divided opinion” but, Prior said, failed to call out the bad behaviour of the woman involved, who is black.

GB News understands that Prior is being investigated due to his comments being “discriminatory”.

When I learned of this suspension, I sought reaction from serving and former police federation chairs. Their responses were swift and bold. Richard Cooke (West Midlands) said he was shocked and saddened by the move, Lee Broadbent (Greater Manchester) said it was a perverse decision. Leading policing communities lept online to say that their federation had proved Rick’s point via the suspension and that he was being silenced for telling the truth.

And then I had the most curious reaction of them all. I phoned up Sidarius McGrath, a former gangland extortionist who ran an illegal gun factory, who told me that Rick Prior’s comments were spot on.

McGrath had a colourful career as a criminal in the northwest, but he’s now solely focused on rehabilitating past offenders and supporting gang members into a life away from crime.

WATCH Charlie Peters’ sit down interview with Met Police Federation Chariman Rick Prior

He told me that he’d had many mixed-race and black partners who had used vexatious racism complaints in order to force police investigations away from him. Even more troublingly, he said that active gang members he’d spoken to recently said they were hiring young black boys to run drugs for them because they were less likely to be stopped by police officers, who feared race investigations.

And McGrath is no right-wing partisan political commentator. In his work rehabilitating former offenders, he told me that non-white offenders often receive worse punishments for the same crimes as white criminals, but that it’s still the case that white cops fear arresting them for life-ruining investigations.

Rick Prior is a bold man who was elected in April to represent some 30,000 officers under the command of Scotland Yard. He was chosen for that role by those officers who pay their subs so that he could best represent their concerns, their views, and ultimately their fears. That they might be hauled in front of a court for lawfully exercising their duties as a police officer due to a false racism charge is a major and growing fear felt by officers, he told me.

But rather than engaging with Rick’s revelation, the federation has instead chosen to investigate him for it.

As far as I can tell, he’s been silenced for doing his job and for telling the truth.