Dawn Butler targeted by racist trolls after revealing she got stopped by police
Labour MP Dawn Butler says she has been targeted by racist trolls and conspiracy theorists after accusing the Metropolitan Police of racially profiling black drivers.
Twitter users claimed that she ‘flipped’ her phone camera and that her friend, who was driving, is in fact white. But Ms Butler insisting this morning that was not the case and that her friend is black.
It comes after the former shadow equalities secretary was stopped while being driven through Hackney on Sunday afternoon, when she claimed the ‘institutionally racist’ force stopped the pair for ‘no other reason’ than the colour of their skin. She explained that officers told them that they thought the car was addressed to North Yorkshire, before admitting they had made a mistake.
Ms Butler — who wrote an opinion piece for Metro.co.uk on Saturday about previously feeling terrified and mistrustful of calling the police — said she was now working with the Met to ‘make the system better’ but had been attacked by conspiracy theorists online.
In a tweet this morning, Ms Butler wrote: ‘Good morning twitter I see the racist trolls are going crazy with conspiracy theories. Someone who claims to be an ex police officer is challenging me to a debate. No need waste my time as I’m speaking to current police officers. Working together to make the system better.’
The Labour MP, who has spoken out about her experiences of racism in parliament, on social media and in her constituency — where threats and violence have forced her to close her office — called for the Commissioner of the Met Cressida Dick to resign in her column, suggesting she had failed to tackle racism in the force.
Twitter users also accused Ms Butler of ‘playing the race card’ and attention seeking.
The Brent Central MP yesterday called on officers to ‘stop associating being black and driving a nice car with crime’ after the BMW she was travelling in was pulled over for questioning.
The car was stopped by officers on blue lights in east London at around midday.
Ms Butler, a vocal critic of stop and search, recorded a video of the incident, with police under heightened scrutiny over incidents of alleged racial profiling.
Scotland Yard said the stop was a result of an officer having ‘incorrectly entered’ the car’s registration plate into a computer to wrongly identify it as a vehicle registered to Yorkshire, but did not explain why the search was carried out in the first place.
The MP for Brent Central, in north-west London, said in an interview with the PA news agency: ‘It’s obviously racial profiling.
‘We know that the police is institutionally racist and what we have to do is weed that out. We have to stop seeing black with crime. We have to stop associating being black and driving a nice car with crime.’
Her footage of the stop showed an officer saying police were carrying out searches because of ‘gang and knife crime’.
Scotland Yard’s statement said: ‘Prior to stopping the vehicle, an officer incorrectly entered the registration into a police computer which identified the car as registered to an address in Yorkshire.
‘Upon stopping the vehicle and speaking with the driver, it quickly became apparent that the registration had been entered incorrectly and was registered to the driver in London.
‘Once the mistake was realised the officer sought to explain this to the occupants, they were then allowed on their way.’
The Conservative candidate to be London Mayor, Shaun Bailey, who is also black, wrote on Twitter last night: ‘I’ve been stopped and searched, Dawn. Yes, police make mistakes. But they’re not racist.
‘Instead of political attacks, let’s improve relations between police and the communities they serve.’
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