Police Racism
I enjoyed my work as a police officer immensely and I was good at what I did, but there was a downside to what I did and that being that I was resented by some of my fellow officers as my good work tended to show their lack of work effort. It manifested itself at first in seemingly innocuous nicknames that they would assign to me such as ‘Moses’, which although not being in anyway an anti-Semitic barb, when said with other officers or members of the public being present immediately makes me stand out as being Jewish. ‘Moses’ was the name assigned to me by the Spanish civilian garage hand at Chiswick police station and was adopted by one or two other officers. A much nastier name was assigned to me albeit indirectly, by a fellow officer who was a stringent supporter of the Arsenal football team. Tottenham Hotspurs were their north London rivals and were known to have a large Jewish following, their famous chairman also being Jewish, and they were disparagingly referred to as the ‘Yids’ or ‘Yiddo’s’. A ‘Yid’ is a virulent anti-Semitic name originating from Germany during and before the time of the Holocaust, and it refers to those German Jewish citizens who spoke the Yiddish language and is usually spoken by religious Jews and was the language of Jewish communities in Europe and still is to this day amongst those surviving Jewish communities. So a conversation or greeting with this particular Police Arsenal supporter would consist of him telling me that, ‘The ‘Yids’, meaning Tottenham Hotspurs did well on Saturday’ or, ‘I see the ‘Yids’ lost again’, with his spoken emphasis being on the word ‘Yid‘, and it was usually said in a crowded place such as the staff canteen and usually said with a big smirk on his face, and in fact, he never called me this on a one-to-one basis, only if there were other people asround to hear. I was also referred to as ‘The Milky Bar Yid’ and ‘Hymie’ by other police officers. This same police officer had, when I had gone with my wife and son to be awarded a Commendation for Bravery for disarming a man brandishing a loaded gun and who was sitting in front of us, turned around and said with a big smirk on his face ‘Hymie, what are you doing here, this is for us brave boys’!
My late father-in-law after his release from Auschwitz
Concentration Camp
Other ways in which Anti-Semitism would manifest itself would be in the staff canteen at breakfast time when there was always a, ‘Oh come on my boy have some bacon’ said in a heavy Jewish accent and sometimes I actually would have bacon rashers waved in front of my face, again with a smirk on the face of the police officer doing it and usually accompanied by much laughter from the perpetrator and the rest of those present in the canteen, which usually included police Sergeants and Inspectors who did nothing to stop it and in fact their acquiescence to these racist events helped them to continue unabated. It was well known that I had converted from Christianity to Judaism in order to marry my Israeli wife and I didn’t keep it a secret, why should I have, but I was treated like and I felt like I was considered to be a traitor by my fellow ‘Christian’ officers, not that any of them appeared to be in the slightest bit religious, and what I have learnt from the English population and from growing up in England, and I suspect this to be true for the rest of Europe too, is that if you are not a white indigenous Christian then you are not truly classed by them as being a true Englishman, you are different to them, you are an outsider, a foreigner even as someone that can’t really be trusted. I was successful at work although I was being ground down by all of these racist slurs aimed at me by my ‘fellow officers’. I would go out to patrol the streets for 8 solid hours without a break in order to get away from them.
Recording the Abuse
Of course the commendations and awards that I had received did nothing to improve my popularity with my fellow officers who seemed to resent me more because of them as the tirade of anti-Semitic barbs continued unabated, so much so that it was beginning to affect my health and I became depressed and lost a lot of weight (5.5 stone, as recorded by my doctor). It was then that I decided that ‘enough was enough’ and that I would lodge a complaint with the Commission for Racial Equality at their offices in Victoria as there was no-one that I could turn to at Chiswick Police Station for help because they all knew, and were often witness to what was happening but did nothing to stop it.
At the meeting with the C.R.E. in 1993 I was advised that because I was thinking of taking on the might of the Metropolitan Police Force, then I should and must have concrete evidence that would stand up in a court of law. Being an officer fully conversant with the standard of evidence required in legal proceedings, I decided to use my official Police issued notebook which is used on a daily basis by every Police officer to note evidence, as a daily log of the anti-Semitic abuse suffered by me at the hands of my fellow police and civilian work colleagues.
My official Police Notebook
To ensure correct evidence gathering procedures, each entry I made would be date stamped and timed by the tamper proof stamping machine kept in the Custody Suite at Chiswick Police Station which I got to use most days that I was on duty as the racial abuse that I was subjected to continued unabated. It got to the point that I came to work, booked out the Police panda car and went out of the Police station for 8 solid hours just to avoid having to come into contact with my abusers, and when I did have to face them and when they directed their racist comments at me, I would record them in my police notebook, and in fact this became my undisputed evidence at the subsequent court case as it was evidence that was hard to dispute as I had used the correct legal procedures to record my evidence.
The abuse continued and it affected me more and more to the point where I became so thin having lost some 5.5 stones (35 kilos), that the joke going around the station was that I had ‘Aids’. Needless to say, not one officer of any rank enquired as to my health. Upon visiting my family doctor he immediately ordered me to stay away from work as I was undoubtedly suffering from stress and depression (the term PTSD hadn’t been coined then), brought on by all that was happening at work. I’d liken what was happening to me to maybe being bullied at school that continues unabated, but in this case there were no school teachers that you could complain to because all the senior officers at Chiswick Police Station knew what was going on, they witnessed it almost every day but they did nothing to stop it and in fact on a number of occasions even laughed with the others at the racist abuse being directed at me and at my religion, and so who could I complain to?
On 23 November 1993 I went to my family doctor who declared in his prognosis that I ‘was suffering from clearly a depressive illness maifesting itself in Bulemia, insomnia and depression‘. He also noted that I ‘had lost 5.5 stone (35 kilos) in weight’ and that his consultation further established ‘the cause to be Racial/Religious discrimination at work in the Metropolitan Police‘ and that I had taken myself off work by using up my remaining annual leave’. From 18 February 1994 I was officially placed off work through sickness by my doctor after I had used up all of my annual leave. I was put on Prozac that was later changed to Seroxat. My doctor further noted that ‘He remains unwell and unfit for work. This Reactive disease (Reactive to the racial/religious harrassment) has clearly interferred with career to the point of Ruination‘!
This racial discrimination that I suffered at the hands of the Metroplitan Police combined with the trauma I faced in dealing with the brother and sister that had fallen through the ice and drowned as well having faced an armed gunman, all contributed to my injury on duty of ‘Depression and stress’ and that is now days globally recognized by the medical profession as being PTSD.
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