Investigation into police secret Facebook ‘pikey’ group a ‘whitewash’ says Traveller Movement

A Gypsy and Traveller campaign charity has reacted with fury and called an investigation by the Metropolitan Police into a secret Facebook group for serving and retired police officers a “whitewash” after their complaint about the page – which included the use of the derogatory term ‘pikey’ - was dismissed by the force and no action taken.

The complaint by the Traveller Movement was lodged after screen-shots of three threads on the Facebook group ‘I’ve met the Met’ – which is open to invite only to serving and retired Metropolitan police officers – came to light in June last year.

The threads received widespread publicity, after the story was broken by the Independent Newspaper, because of the racist and shocking nature of the comments.

In the three separate threads – one of which discusses Ofcom’s dismissal of a Traveller Movement complaint about the use of ‘pikey’ on the TV show ‘Top Gear’ - the group members discuss their hatred of “f*****g pikeys” and “low life gypsies”.

One comment reads: “I never knew a pikey could be offended, I thought they were devoid of all normal feelings and thoughts … just my opinion based on many years of dealing with these despicable people.” 

Another said: “There is not a small minority of criminals from the GT [Gypsy and Traveller] community – to all intents and purposes they all depend on crime.”

The complaint was initially investigated internally by the Metropolitan Police, but was closed after the investigators decided to take no formal action and instead told the Traveller Movement that they were unable to access the Facebook group, could only identify two serving police officers from the screen-shots provided by the Traveller Movement and that these officers had been “spoken to”.

The Traveller Movement say that the investigation was a ‘whitewash’ and in an appeal to the Independent Police Complaints Commission – seen by the Travellers Times – say that they “are left with many unanswered questions and no confidence in the Metropolitan Polices relationship with the Gypsy and Traveller communities.”

The Traveller Movement appeal papers go on to say:

“We believe the investigating officer and his superiors have failed to grasp the gravity of our complaint. We believe they have failed to acknowledge and appreciate Gypsies and Travellers are recognised ethnic minority group and fall within the protected characteristics of the Equalities Act 2010. The investigation has not received the due care; attention and necessary skill set required to undertake a complaint of this nature.

“We also believe that all serving police officers that liked or viewed the offending face book page posts are equally liable and should have been part of the investigation. We do not accept the reasons stated in the report why this aspect of the investigation was not possible.”  

Yvonne MacNamara, CEO of the Traveller Movement said:

“We are very disappointed with the outcome of our complaint; it’s been a complete whitewash.”

“We accept there may not be much that can be done about racist comments from retired Metropolitan police officers, but we expect serving officers to be held accountable.”

“We are also astounded that the investigation did not even bother to access the Facebook page and was therefore unable to ascertain the identity of the numerous members who ‘liked’ some of the most offensive and racist comments.”

“We have therefore appealed to the IPCC and are confident that our appeal will be successful. “

The Metropolitan Police have responded to The Independent Newspaper, saying that they are planning a “review” into how the force treats Gypsy and Traveller people.