Met Police chief Mark Rowley should resign, says antisemitism campaigner called ‘openly Jewish’ by officer

13 comments

1. If the head of an organisation of 45,000 people resigned every time one of their number acted like a knob, you would have a revolving door.

2. I’m tired of the way public communications are “handled” these days. Been going on for decades of course but I just wish people would give a straight response and actually answer a question.

3. sounds like the campaigner has a massively over-inflated sense of self importance

4. An unelected person should not get to decide if the head of police is fired. How big is this guys head?!

5. Some context about Gideon Falter and the CAA

   In January 2015, the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism wrote: “We were somewhat disappointed to note that not all of the messages from that group [CAA] have been in line with CST’s stated approach of seeking to avoid undue panic and alarm.” They added “it is important that the leadership do not conflate concerns about activity legitimately protesting Israel’s actions with antisemitism, as we have seen has been the case on some occasions.”

   That same month, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research said that a CAA survey about antisemitism was “littered with flaws”, and “may even be rather irresponsible”. After criticism by CAA of Shami Chakrabarti over her 2016 report into antisemitism in the UK Labour Party, a number of British Jews wrote to The Guardian dissociating themselves from what they described as “the pro-Israel lobbyists of the Campaign Against Antisemitism”

6. Just saw the video and it’s actually a very reasonable dialogue. Yes in theory a Jew has the right to walk into a demo just as a football fan wearing the colours opposite to a mass parade of fans on the other team do, but then a massive public order dispute can flare up.

   The officer in this case was polite and explained the issue. I suspect the headlines rely on people not watching the video.

7. He stopped the bloke from getting hurt, sounds like good policing to me.

8. If, and this is a very big if, Rowley has told his officers to restrict the movement of ‘openly Jewish’ to placate a mob then yes he should resign. If he’s lost control of the streets of London to the extent that he doesn’t think a Jew can walk openly on the streets then he should resign.

   If this officer has taken it upon himself to threaten to arrest a man simply for being Jewish then he should be placed on restricted duties, not allowed to interact with the public and consider resigning.

   But someone must answer for the fact that a man was prevented from going about his lawful business because he’s ‘openly Jewish’.

9. Can someone please try being ‘openly Catholic’ whilst trying to cross the street at an Orange Order parade and see how much airplay that gets.

10. There are no education requirements to become a Met police officer, and they’re paid £35k. These are not smart people by any means, and of course once in a while one of them will say something stupid.

    Saying the (actually educated and competent) chief should resign because of it is beyond absurd, and in my opinion this has already been blown out of proportion with 2 apologies from the police and a statement from the Home Office.

11. If he ain’t gone yet, with all the evidence of the Met being putting Islamists on committees and advisory boards and the previous examples of bias at protests then he ain’t going to go for this.

12. THE PROBLEM IS NOT WITH THE OFFICER, IT IS WITH THE SYSTEM, HE HAS NO FAITH IN HIS ABILITY TO BE ABLE TO PROTECT THIS TARGET OF VIOLENCE FROM A PART OF THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY THAT WILL ATTACK. 

    FOR FUCK SAKE, WAKE UP.

13. The person the policeman spoke to was knowingly protesting against the demo, but you can’t really tell someone not to be Jewish. I doubt if it’s a met policy. I don’t think anyone should be punished