Met Police cracks down on officers wearing rainbow badges

Britain’s top police chief has warned officers that they must remain impartial on duty by not expressing support for particular causes.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley explained that while “engaging with communities to understand what worries them is not ‘woke'”, starting to “align yourself to causes is not something policing should be doing”.

The police force’s dress code prevents officers from wearing “badges advertising causes, beliefs or charities”, except Help for Heroes. The Police Memorial Day badge and The Royal British Legion’s poppy are also permitted at specified times.

Stonewall

Sir Mark said: “Wearing a poppy in the autumn is perfectly proper, but there is not a lot that we should align to because the danger is that once you say ‘we are going to align ourselves to a cause because 90 per cent of the population support it’, what about the 10 per cent?

The police are there to enforce the law not proselytise on behalf of campaign organisations like Stonewall.

“Once you start having environmental and other subjects there are lots of people in the organisation who will personally support those causes and that is OK, but the Metropolitan Police explicitly supporting them is quite tricky. I’m fairly narrow minded on this. There are very few causes policing should be attached to.”

In a separate editorial, The Daily Telegraph commented: “The police are there to enforce the law not proselytise on behalf of campaign organisations like Stonewall. Sir Mark Rowley’s promise to stop Met officers waving rainbow flags or wearing pride badges is at least a start.

“Police say they have too much to do looking into hate speech and acting as glorified social workers and lack time to investigate thefts. But if they stopped intruding into areas that the great majority would not consider criminal acts, they might restore public faith in a policing service once rightly regarded as the world’s best.”

Pride march

Last month, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) announced that uniformed police officers would not be allowed to march in this year’s Belfast Pride parade.

Marking a significant change in policy, the PSNI said officers and staff may participate in the pro-LGBT event in a “personal capacity” but must not “identify as members of the Police Service”.

In reaching its decision, Assistant Chief Constable Bobby Singleton explained that the leadership team had to consider  “the stated purposes” of the event and the PSNI’s “statutory obligations to act with fairness, integrity and impartiality”.

Mid and East Antrim Councillor Timothy Gaston welcomed the volte-face, saying the PSNI had “no business” supporting a “political campaign”.