Dear All,
This is probably only of real interest to people in London but I guess it has ramifications for police forces across the country.
I have been following this and am very interested in the composition of the new ‘London Policing Board’
The 12 board members’ backgrounds include community work, academia and policing.
Membership of the London Policing Board, which is to monitor the Met, will include the brother of Stephen Lawrence, the Mayor has announced.
I am curious to know if there are any disabled / mental health / blind / etc charities or representatives that will be included.
I will not go into details but I have an ongoing complaint to the Met Police via the IOPC (independent office for police complaints) at the moment because an officer refused to believe that I am partially sighted and threatened to taser me. He did not. I have never ever been arrested (in this country and the one time was in Liberia but I digress).
I am concerned that the board is not properly balance to take into account the needs of the 15-16% of Londoners who are registered as disabled. Even though this is actually one of the lowest in the country.
To put this into perspective - whilst I fully agree that Stephen Lawrence’s brother should be on the board the black community in London is about 13.5%…
I can find lots and lots of articles about met police and disabled people I won’t bore you with too many links but this one - not in london I know is just ridiculous!!
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-stungun-blind-idINBRE89G1SI20121017
Would welcome anyone’s thoughts!!
I will try and send some communications to the mayor but I’ve got a lot on at the moment.
Perhaps @Alex_Moderator you could advise if the SA has thought about this or whether you know of other charities etc as above who have?
Thanks and stay cool
Kieran