Growing ‘culture of extremism’ in police forces around Europe, says report

A new report shows that there has been a steady increase in police officers sharing racist and far-right content online all over Europe. According to the report by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), the police forces are suffering from a growing “culture of extremism” and the two most affected countries were the United Kingdom and France. While the right-wing support is quite common in police forces around these two countries, the report also pointed out that Belgium, Germany and Hungary have recently seen high-ranking police officials join extreme-right wing political parties.

The UK police has faced a lot of criticism for being “institutionally racist” after officers were found to be sharing images on WhatsApp of two murdered black sisters. In another case, the investigation found that officers joked about rape, killing black children and beating their wives.

“Our conclusion that the dehumanising mindset and overall sense of impunity and entitlement displayed in police WhatsApp groups is a symptom, not a cause, of authoritarian trends in policing, will no doubt make for uncomfortable reading,” Liz Fekete, director of IRR, said.

“Racism has become entrenched in policing as the rank and file are resituating themselves as society’s victims and organising on an ever more extremist agenda,” she added.

In the aftermath of the George Floyd and Black Live Matter protests in the United States, the “thin blue line” avatar and hashtag became popular in Twitter among police officers. However, in the UK, Fekete warned that it has become a “besieged and misunderstood minority group”.

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