Reform UK police chief's 'dark heart of wokeness' claim under fire

Reform UK’s new police and crime commissioner is under fire for calling the police’splan to tackle racism an “abomination”.

Rupert Matthews, who has defected from the Tory Party to Nigel Farage’s rightwing outfit, claimed the UK needs “to cut the dark heart of wokeness out of our criminal justice system”. And he branded the Police Race Action Plan (PRAP) "the very epitome of two tier policing”.

But experts slapped down his comments for “fundamentally misrepresenting” the plan, which was created to address evidence that minority communities are treated differently by police. It comes after Nigel Farage came under pressure to distance himself from 'racist' Ant Middleton rant.

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In a Reform UK press conference on Monday, Mr Matthews, the Leicestershire and Rutland PCC, said: "The National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) recently sponsored the abomination that is the Police Race Action Plan. That concluded that people should be treated differently depending on which ethnic group they came from.

“That is a disgrace and the very epitome of two tier policing. We need to cut the dark heart of wokeness out of our criminal justice system and allow the police and courts to get back to what they're supposed to be doing, which is keeping our communities safe."

Abimbola Johnson, the head of the police racism watchdog, told The Mirror : “The suggestion that the Police Race Action Plan asks for people to be treated differently depending on their ethnicity fundamentally misrepresents the purpose and findings of the programme.

“The uncomfortable truth is that racially minoritised communities, particularly Black people, are already treated differently by our policing system. The intention of PRAP is to deal with those disparities.

“Unfortunately, there are people in power, like Mr Matthews, who use their position to undermine progress rather than push policing towards improvement in key areas such as anti-racism.”

Last year, Black people were more than five times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white counterparts, while Black children remain six and a half times more likely to be strip-searched than white children.

PRAP was first established in 2020, against the backdrop of George Floyd's murder by a US police officer and the worldwide Black Lives Matter protests that followed.

But policing has long had a difficult history with black communities. In 1999, the Macpherson Report found that institutional racism contributed to the police's botched investigation into Stephen Lawrence's 1993 murder in London. It was a watershed moment in facing up to racism in the police.

But progress has been slow. In 2023, Baroness Louise Casey's report after the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Metropolitan police officer again found the force was institutionally racist.

The Independent Scrutiny and Oversight Board, of which Ms Johnson is the chair, last month(JUL) found some improvements in its latest assessment of PRAP, including reforms to data collection of vehicle stops. But it warned issues still remain elsewhere, including serious data gaps when it comes to body-worn video cameras.

Chief Constable Gavin Stephens, chairman of the NPCC, said: “It remains the fact that Black communities have the lowest levels of confidence in the police, are three times more likely to be subject to police use of force, while Black children are disproportionately likely to be reported missing to the police.

“If communities don’t trust the police, they won’t come forward when they need help or support us with things like information to support our investigations. This then has implications for everybody. Improving confidence in the police benefits policing for everyone, and that is the driving force behind everything we are trying to do.”

When contacted by The Mirror, Mr Matthews said: “I believe that if you want to restore trust and confidence in the police then you need to treat everyone the same, no ifs, no buts.

"The same rules should apply across the board. Background or indeed any other so-called difference should have absolutely no effect on the implementation of those rules. It should not take a national Plan and associated budget of millions in order to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

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