Protecting the Israeli embassy
Today's big story is that apparently a Muslim policemen got excused protecting the Israeli Embassy in Kensington. The Sun says it was on grounds of political views, the Muslim Police Association (MPA) on grounds of 'personal safety'.Assuming, perhaps in the face of historical evidence, that the Sun is right, as I said in the comments box on Harry's Place, you do get cases like this in the US (and I'm sure other countries, but they don't tend to put nice clear English rulings on the internet as much) over abortion clinics, such as here. . In this case a Policeman, a Catholic, wished to be excused from policing abortion clinics. The Police seemed to do their best, saying they wouldn't use him except in emergencies and offered to transfer him to a district that had no abortion clinics. He sued on grounds of religious discrimination, and the court found against him on quite narrow grounds, citing the evidence the Police had done their best to accomodate him. The Chief Justice, concurring, added a plea for a wider finding, that:
The public knows that its protectors have a private agenda; everyone does. But it would like to think that they leave that agenda at home when they are on duty-- that Jewish policemen protect neo-Nazi demonstrators, that Roman Catholic policemen protect abortion clinics, that Black Muslim policemen protect Christians and Jews, that fundamentalist Christian policemen protect noisy atheists and white-hating Rastafarians, that Mormon policemen protect Scientologists, and that Greek-Orthodox policemen of Serbian ethnicity protect Roman Catholic Croats. We judges certainly want to think that U.S. Marshals protect us from assaults and threats without regard to whether, for example, we vote for or against the pro-life position in abortion cases.
And that this alone would be enough to win the case, for:
The importance of public confidence in the neutrality of its protectors is so great that a police department or fire department or equivalent public-safety agency that decides not to allow recusal by its employees should be able to plead "undue hardship" and thus escape any duty of accommodation.
He also cite the case of an FBI Agent who refused to carry a gun or investigate peace groups after he became a pacifist.
Of course assuming the Sun is right, these cases are somewhat different. First, the Police Officer in Britain is not suing the Met; the issue is whether he should have been reassigned. But the principle noted by the Judge abovee seems sound, though I suspect informal tranfers are more common than one might have expected.
posted by Matthew @ 10/05/2006 07:38:00 AM
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