Two-tier policing claim is nonsense, says Met chief

Complaints that far-right riots over the last week have been dealt with more harshly than other recent unrest amount to “racist gaslighting”, equality campaigners have said.

- NADINE WHITE

Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has rejected accusations of two-tier policing as “complete nonsense”, and said those making the claims were putting officers at risk.

The government has also dismissed suggestions the riots have been dealt with more stringently than other recent disorder and protests. Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, who has been dubbed “two-tier Keir” by US Twitter/X boss Elon Musk, has called the accusations a “non-issue”.

The prime minister has also been accused by Tory leadership contender Robert Jenrick of not being “as clear as he could be” that some of the disorder emanated from “sectarian gangs”. The traction that the phrase “two-tier policing” has gained is “yet another example of mainstream media complicit in racist gaslighting”, the UK’s leading racial justice think tank Runnymede Trust said.

Dr Shabna Begum, the charity’s CEO, told The Independent: “It is insulting to allege that communities of colour face ‘more favourable’ policing. The traction that the phrase ‘two-tier policing’ has gained is yet another example of mainstream media complicit in racist gaslighting.

“It implies that there was an equivalent level of violence at largely peaceful BLM [Black Lives Matter] protests, and that the BLM protests were softly policed; neither are true. The idea that policing has ever favoured communities of colour is a direct insult, given everything we know about the disproportionality of the use of force against them.”