En knelende britisk politimann utenfor Downing Street 3. juni 2020 ved en BLM-demonstrasjon. REUTERS/Toby Melville

Londons politisjef Cressida Dick har bestemt at hennes politibetjenter ikke skal knele for Black Lives Matter. Hun sier også at hun ikke vil knele selv.

‘I wouldn’t, I’m a professional police officer and I don’t think we should in operational procedures.’

Cressida Dick forsvarte de to politibetjentene som knelte ved en Black Lives Matter demonstrasjon i London i juni, men sa at hun etter dette hadde gitt instruks om at kneling skulle unngås.

Hun sa:

‘Taking the knee, I think some of my officers took the knee.

‘I haven’t spoken to them personally but I believe they did that because the crowd that was in front of them, they’d endured all of them a long hard day, hours of protest, they were being abused, being shouted at by all kinds of people, not least I have to say my black and ethnic minority officers suffering racial abuse.

‘They are police officers so they get on with their job but that section of the crowd were saying again and again and again ‘take the knee, take the knee, take knee’ and I imagine that they thought in order to keep that bit of the crowd a bit quieter and to show some respect and some humility and some respect to what happened to George Floyd they took the knee.

‘That evening I said we are not going to do that in a public order or operational situation and every briefing after that for the protests included we will not be taking the knee.’

Daily Mail