Parm Sandhu on the racism she faced as a senior Met police officer – and on being deserted on a night shift

By Asia Samachar | BRITAIN |

Parm Sandhu on the racism she faced as a senior Met police officer – and on being deserted on a night shift

At the start of her career in the Metropolitan Police, newly trained and eager to put what she had learnt into practice, Parm Sandhu had a stark lesson in how some of her colleagues saw her.

On a night shift in an unlit area of east London, her partner for the shift deserted her, and her uniform made her a target rather than a figure of authority. Two men approached to ask if she was “on the game”. Despite their laughter, Sandhu remembers being “terrified” that she would be assaulted or raped.

The reason why Sandhu, a 25-year-old rookie in 1990, believes she found herself in this situation was because her colleague took issue with the colour of her skin and decided to leave her there.

“My radio didn’t work, we didn’t have mobile phones. I was absolutely terrified,” she says, recalling that night shift.

“I look back and I think: ‘That was such an unfair, horrible thing to do.’ Because whatever you think of an individual… you are putting them in danger. Not because they have upset you, or they’ve been horrible to you… but based on the colour of their skin.”

It is just one of many accounts of racism and sexism that Sandhu, now in her mid-fifties and born in Birmingham to immigrants from Punjab, India, has recounted in her memoir Black and Blue, which has just been published.

After leaving an abusive arranged marriage, she joined the Met in 1989 and eventually became a chief superintendent, one of the highest ranking female Asian officers in its 189-year history.

But discrimination bookended her rise through the UK’s largest police force, her resignation after three decades – and marred the chapters in between.

It’s a wonder that Sandhu, who lives in Kent, did not hand in her badge after her experience in east London. She almost did, until a fellow Asian woman in the force offered her a moment of clarity and they made a pact to support each other in the job. “I like a good fight, a fair fight,” Sandhu tells i.

“I genuinely believe that you are not going to change organisations by standing on the outside… The only way you’re going to do that is by being the voice within.”

Read the full story, ‘Parm Sandhu on the racism she faced as a senior Met police officer – and on being deserted on a night shift'(inews,16 June 2021), here

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