A FORMER Metropolitan Police officer claims that she was singled out by the force for raising concerns about alleged racism.
Parm Sandhu claims it happened after she was threatened with legal action for writing a memoir about her unpleasant service experience.
She asserted that she didn’t regret writing the book despite the obstacles she faced legally and elsewhere.
After the Met Police threatened her with legal action for her tell-all, which she doesn’t regret penning, Sandhu, who joined the Met in 1989 and worked for 30 years, claimed she has been targeted.
According to The Times, Sandhu was threatened with legal action if she didn’t begin returning half of the money she received as part of a settlement from the Met. Her payment totaled £120,000.
The Met alleged that Sandhu violated a confidentiality agreement that forbade her from speaking negatively about the Met or Cressida Dick, a former Met commissioner, in any way.
They entered into the agreement after the former police officer’s discrimination claim was resolved in front of an employment tribunal in 2020.
According to Sandhu’s book “Black and Blue” published in 2021, she faced “regular episodes” of discrimination in a group she referred to as “institutionally racist” for three decades. She claimed that attempts to prevent promotion and “commonplace” low-level sexual and racial abuse were rife and affected her and many other women and people of colour serving in the Met.
According to the Times report, Sandhu agreed to return half of the money so that the Met would not submit a last-minute court application to prevent the publication of her book. She had consented to give the department back £60,000. But in 2022, it became clear that Sandhu had declined to pay, and the Met then took legal action as a result.
In response, Sandhu began making payments in installments after encountering the difficulty of paying for expensive legal processes. The distinguished former officer claimed that she had suffered harm as a result of blowing the whistle.
“I lost 60k for the privilege of speaking out. And if I could get it back, I would. But I don’t regret writing the book,” she was quoted as saying by The Times.
According to Sandhu’s attorney Lawrence Davies, it shouldn’t be acceptable to include confidentiality clauses or non-disclosure agreements in tribunal settlements.
“The public has a right to know about racism and sexism in the Met Police,” he told The Times.
“An agreement was reached with Ms Sandhu to settle an employment tribunal claim. To be clear, the Met has made no admissions of liability in respect of the allegations made. The agreement was signed voluntarily by Ms Sandhu and part of that agreement was a clause against publication of derogatory statements,” Scotland Yard was quoted as saying by the news outlet.
Sandhu was honoured in 2006 with an Asian Women of Achievement public sector award for her work in the aftermath of the 2005 London bombings.
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