Some of Britain’s police chiefs are in a total pickle when it comes to race, not least as a result of them rushing to embrace critical race theory and anti-racist ideology in the wake of George Floyd’s death in the United States in 2020. Whether actually captured, or simply pretending to be, they have committed policing to a political course that risks ending very badly.

The latest development has seen a police force agreeing to fund a bursary for a law student, but only if they are ‘British African’. At a time when many of our public institutions are happy for you to identify however you like, something tells me that a more traditional interpretation will be applied to this term.

The BTP’s bursary idea was originally suggested by activists

It will come as no surprise to many that it was the British Transport Police (BTP) that thought this was a grand idea. A week ago, they were criticised for acting like private security for a group of flag-waving Chinese tourists who demanded a man stop filming in London’s St Pancras station.

The BTP’s bursary idea was originally suggested by activists who had understandably been calling for convictions based on the evidence of a corrupt, criminal, and racist BTP officer in the 1970s to be quashed. Last week, the Court of Appeal delivered their verdict and quashed the convictions.

In the accompanying statement to the press, the BTP’s chief constable, Lucy D’Orsi, rightly described the actions of the corrupt racist officer – Derek Ridgewell – as ‘simply inexcusable’. But she also went much further, agreeing to fund a bursary and talking about ‘systemic racism’ and ‘Afriphobia’. She offered her ‘sincere apology for the trauma caused to the British African community’.

Combating racism is an important cause, of course – but the BTP’s response is no solution: seeing everything as racist is dumb, and embracing a new -phobia that has been fermenting in activist councils like Bristol and Hackney is unlikely to be helpful.

This misjudged declaration is just the latest from police chiefs. Following George Floyd’s death – several thousand miles away on a different continent – the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council in the UK decided to commit policing to being ‘anti-racist’.

They were seemingly indifferent to, or ignorant of, the fact that in doing so they were committing policing to the idea – held dear by the anti-racist ideologues – that past discrimination can only be tackled by current discrimination. This is a divisive and dangerous nonsense: a supposedly impartial police force should not be signing up to such divisive ideology.

While crime-fighting police officers learn to accept nothing, believe nobody, and check everything – the ‘ABC’ of serious investigation – some of the managers and leaders in policing seem either to have forgotten that lesson, or never learned it.

When she was home secretary, Suella Braverman rightly ordered a review of political activism in policing. The extent of policing’s blindness to its own capture will be made clear when His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary publishes its findings this year. They ought to conclude that critical race theory, anti-racism, and gender ideology should have no place in policing.

But if their interim update is anything to go by, they seem more likely to turn their fire on those raising concerns about political activism rather than confronting the activism. All the while, the proliferation of words and ideas like ‘anti-racist’, ‘harm’ instead of crime, ‘minoritised’, ‘Islamophobia’ – and now ‘Afriphobia’ metastasise across policing and reveal the continued march towards ever-more-complete capture.

The words are welcomed by the politicised actors and staff networks within policing – and by the activists who suggested them. But like this latest misguided deed from BTP, they only serve to signal that police chiefs have a tendency to value their relationships with stakeholders and activists over the rest of us and our deplorable ideas of how we want to be policed.

Privately many chiefs – and lots of cops – recognise the madness that some of their colleagues have enabled. Police and Crime Commissioners can – and should – support them to end the madness. Their forthcoming elections in May provide an opportunity to secure a local democratic mandate to restore common sense, to banish the political activism, and ensure that all hands are on deck to fight crime. They would also be wise to explicitly head-off the madness that a Labour government may seek to impose, such as enabling positive discrimination in recruitment.

One thing is clear, if those leading or overseeing policing don’t make concrete progress on turning the ship around soon, they can all expect to be washed away when the tide inevitably turns – as it certainly will.