Former chief constable of Kent Police, UK - Michael Fuller
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2019
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is UK policing fit for purpose? Stephen Sackur speaks to Michael Fuller, former chief constable of Kent police, and the only black Briton to have run one of the country’s regional forces. There has been an alarming rise in knife crime in the UK and this prompted a bout of soul searching about the causes and responses. Many of the questions focus on the police. Are they doing an effective job? How well do they handle the challenges of policing in disadvantaged and minority communities?
(Photo: Michael Fuller, former chief constable of Kent police
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker. |
| 0:06.8 | Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it. |
| 0:11.6 | My guest today is a groundbreaker, the first Black Britain to run one of the country's regional police forces. |
| 0:18.9 | Michael Fuller served a total of three and a half decades as a police |
| 0:22.2 | officer, mostly in London. He's been a beat officer, detective, lead officer in operations |
| 0:28.2 | against armed gangs, and a long-time advocate of making the police service more diverse |
| 0:33.9 | and more rooted in its communities. While fighting crime, he's also had to overcome systemic |
| 0:40.5 | racism inside his own organisation and accusations from within the black community that he was a |
| 0:47.9 | sellout and a traitor. He's now retired from the police and had time to reflect on four decades in which attitudes |
| 0:55.6 | to policing, to race, and to community cohesion have undergone significant change. |
| 1:01.8 | He's written a memoir titled, Kill the Black One First. To what extent has race defined |
| 1:07.8 | his remarkable career? Well, Michael Fuller joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. |
| 1:13.7 | Thank you. I want to begin with a personal question, a character question. It seems to me, |
| 1:18.3 | in all of your life, from childhood through to adulthood and your many decades of service in the |
| 1:24.1 | police force, you are a man who is used to swimming against the tide. Would you |
| 1:30.9 | agree with that? I would agree with that. That's partly being in the minority. So at the time I started |
| 1:38.1 | in the police, there were only six black officers. This was back in 1977 when I joined. And it was something I always wanted to do. And my book |
| 1:47.8 | describes my passion for joining the police. But I was very much in a minority. And it was very |
| 1:53.6 | unusual to see a black officer in London. You mentioned the book. It's a fascinating, honest |
| 1:59.4 | memoir. Kill the black One First, it's rather |
| 2:02.6 | ominously called. But you forensically go through your own childhood as well as your policing |
| 2:07.4 | career. And what we learn is that your ambition in childhood to be a policeman was something |
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