So, on a quiet day with everybody doing 19mph in the capital, the Met Commissioner decided there weren’t enough black and brown police officers patrolling the streets. Apparently, minorities prefer to be arrested by their own rather than those awful white people.
But there was a problem for the then Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick (nominative determinism at its best). Plenty of the ethnic groups were applying, but on being vetted, a good number were rejected. Dick thought this was disproportionate, i.e. a suggestion that there was an air of racism rather than the panel just doing their job.
It never occurred to her that it had nothing to do with colour, but everything to do with the fact that these people might be wrong’uns and the Met had enough problems without inviting more in.
One applicant, for instance, failed after an old but serious allegation of child rape against him was raised. Bizarre that somebody with such an allegation hanging around them would want to be a police officer, but there you go.
Anyway, Dick decided the answer was that a new diversity panel should be put together and told basically to look at 505 cases of rejection and to lower the bar to let in as many as possible, no matter what their backgrounds.
And a review by Scotland Yard shows of that 505, 114 were allowed in. And to no surprise, 25 of those turned out to be shocking bad uns, committing misconduct and criminal offences.
Much the worst was a man of colour called Cliff Mitchell. In 2017, He had been arrested for the non-recent rape of a child. In 2019, he was told no further action would be taken.
In 2020, he applied to join the force but was rejected. Then he got the note saying he should reapply and this time the DEI panel allowed him in. Welcome in, Cliff.
The Met's diversity drive let in this rapist. Imagine what HR managers are hiding? - Kelvin MacKenzieMitchell, 26, was a real piece of s**t, and the original panel were quite right to say no. While a Met PC, he was convicted of 13 rapes against two victims, one of whom was a child. He was jailed for 13 years.
Let’s be clear, over the decades, the Met has gone out of its way to hire minorities. But under Dick, and it may be true of today’s Commissioner Mark Rowley, is that there is a DEI drive, meaning non-whites get preferment.
And the effect is that the Mitchells of this world get a career and are able to mask their criminality.
I thought that columnist Stephen Pollard had a good point in The Telegraph in which he said that the Met is the most egregious example of this DEI ideology, but there will be HR managers in both private and state industries no longer acting as personal managers of old but as radical, politicised activists.
You only have to look at Cliff Mitchell to see what the risks are. I’m pleased it was Scotland Yard which published these disturbing numbers.
Let’s hope they have learned their lesson.
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