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A story you might have missed this week: accusations that Greater Manchester Police meted out “discriminatory” and “heavy-handed” policing towards children from Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller (GRT) communities at Christmas markets last weekend.
A statement from the force said they were “monitoring and managing a significant increase in footfall”, adding they are “determined” to “engage these communities in Manchester and further afield”.
So why did not a single Gypsy, Roma or Traveller person apply to work for Greater Manchester Police during the three-year Uplift recruitment drive – that was sold as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to “increase diversity in policing” by the then-Conservative government?
Videos on social media and seen by Manchester Evening News appeared to show Romani Gypsies and Irish Traveller children being stopped from attending the Christmas markets by police, and ‘forced’ back onto trains out of the city.
Many of them were girls in dresses, being met at station platforms and ushered by officers onto trains. They can be overheard shouting they don’t know where they are going. One says: “You’d think we killed someone!”
Report Racism GRT, a hate incident reporting site and GRT support forum, claimed some younger children were “separated from their siblings”.
The Traveller Movement, a support and campaign group, said the incident had “left children upset and distressed, with parents deeply concerned about the treatment that their children have faced… these children were simply trying to enjoy the festivities like everyone else, but instead have been unfairly targeted and marginalised.”
A response by Greater Manchester Police Assistant Chief Constable said: “We understand there are feelings of mistreatment and confusion amongst groups of people for being turned away” – but failed to mention quite exactly which ‘groups of people’ they were referring to.
The spiritless statement to “engage these communities” falls flat when you look at the data: Roma people have a relatively high presence in Greater Manchester, yet not a single one responded to the Police Uplift recruitment drive that saw 10,000 new officers employed around England and Wales between 2020 and 2023.
The bleak figure comes from Greater Manchester Police’s own recruitment data, sourced by Media Storm via Freedom of Information.
Rather than ‘engaging’ these communities, the abysmal recruitment efforts support video evidence that British police officers habitually ‘adultify’ GRT children, and stereotype them as threats and criminals. According to community members who spoke on Media Storm, this is mirrored by what the mainstream media tends to do.
Tom Manders, an actor, writer and producer, said there was a shift in coverage of GRT people post the sixties – but it wasn’t necessarily for the better. Pre-60s, “we were portrayed as these kind of magical, otherworldly people, which has its own problems. But when you look at it from a media perspective, since the 60s, the media representation of us in that time has become awful.”