Met Police chief to BAN officers from backing woke causes: Sir Mark Rowley won’t allow cops to take the knee, fly the rainbow flag or tack eco badges on uniforms – but wearing poppies for Remembrance is ‘perfectly proper’

Met Police officers will be banned from supporting ‘woke‘ causes while on duty, Britain’s most senior policeman has warned.

Sir Mark Rowley says officers won’t be allowed to take the knee, fly rainbow flags or wear badges that support environmental causes, The Telegraph reported.

However, the police commissioner said it is ‘perfectly proper’ for officers to wear remembrance poppies, Help for Heroes wristbands and the police memorial badge. 

Sir Mark told the newspaper he is ‘fairly narrow-minded’ on the issue, adding that there are ‘very few causes policing should be attached to’.

He argued that while many officers may ‘personally support’ the so-called woke causes, the force ‘explicitly supporting’ any of the causes is ‘quite tricky’ because officers need to be impartial.

 Sir Mark told the Telegraph that there are ‘not a lot’ of causes the force should align with because of the ‘danger’ doing so poses.

The police chief argued that it is ‘not woke’ to engage with community members to ‘understand what worries them’ but claims policing as a whole should not align itself with causes. 

‘The danger is that once you say, “we are going to align ourselves to a cause because 90 per cent of the population support it”, what about the 10 per cent?’ he said. 

Sir Mark said that modern activism is challenging because of the differing directions that protest groups can take.

Many groups have ‘very sensible majority membership’, he argued, but says that there are also members with extremist views and ‘you can’t legislate that from outside it’. 

He warned that it could be ‘pretty fatal’ for the force if people if don’t believe that officers operate ‘without fear or favour’.

Sir Mark’s latest ruling comes after he recently banned officers from sporting the ‘thin blue line’ badge which had been created as a way to honour and remember those who died in the line of duty.

The ban came after the symbol was linked to white nationalism in the US. According to the newspaper, Sir Mark defended the band by saying if he did not ‘take a firm line’ on what officers could and could not wear.

His view on the issue differs significantly from that of his predecessor, Dame Cressida Dick, who had said it was at each individual officer’s discretion if they wanted to take a knee in support of Black Lives Matter.

Under her command officers were initially allowed to take a knee even when they were policing protests – however Dame Cressida later claimed she ordered officers not do so.

She also allowed a police vehicle to be decorated in a rainbow colour scheme to show support for the LGBTQ community. 

The Met was also criticised in 2019 after officers were seen dancing and skateboarding with Extinction Rebellion demonstrators at a protest they were meant to be policing. The behavior was later branded as ‘unacceptable’.