Former Met officer: I’m worried about Braverman’s language
Former Met police chief superintendent Dal Babu says he was “quite shocked” by the home secretary’s comments in an article she published, accusing police officers of political bias, adding that what she said was “factually incorrect”. He goes on to say that he is “quite worried about her language” whilst “in one of the great offices of state”. Report by Rowlandi. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 I was quite shocked, it was very polemic, it's not what you'd expect from one of the great offices of state, the Home Secretary role.
00:08 I expected something more measured, more designed to calm things down.
00:14 I think this is likely to increase tensions as opposed to calm things down.
00:18 What she said was factually incorrect.
00:20 I was the Borough Commander in Harrow when we had the English Defence League marching
00:25 and it was a very, very difficult time for the community because they marched and demonstrated outside the Harrow mosque.
00:32 The only demonstration I'm aware of that was banned was the EDL march in Tower Hamlets.
00:39 So when you have the far right marching into areas where they want to cause tension,
00:45 so when the Home Secretary talks about marches from the far right not being allowed, that's factually incorrect.
00:53 And I think what we need is calm heads, we need calm voices,
00:58 we need to ensure that we don't put police officers who are going to be policing this event,
01:03 and remember we have got an extra thousand police officers coming in to police this event.
01:08 We want to ensure that everybody is safe, that's the police officers and the people who are demonstrating.
01:13 As a woman of colour, some of the comments she makes about people of colour,
01:18 the comment about hate marches, her comments about Pakistani men,
01:22 it's the comments that white people would never make.
01:25 My white friends would never talk like that.
01:28 So I am quite worried about her language and the fact that she's using this while she's in one of the great offices of state.
01:36 Should she be fired? That's a question for politicians, not for people who are commenting about policing operations.
01:42 My expertise is around policing operations. I think that is a matter for the politicians to make a decision.