PCSO Steve: The Met's uniformed mascot is said to be 'too male and white'
Posted on 11/19/2007 11:36:42 PM PST by Stoat
PCSO Steve: The Met's uniformed mascot is said to be 'too male and white'
Sir Ian Blair's force is spending £15,000 of public money creating "ethnically diverse" police mascots after one officer complained that the original white male model was alienating women and ethnic minority staff.
Scotland Yard approved the cost for creating a cast of four police figures including an Asian female community support officer called Sunita.
The decision has sparked a public row and led to some officers claiming the move is a result of "overbearing political correctness".
PCSO Steve, a uniformed mascot complete with over-sized head and equipment, was created by the Metropolitan Police for visits to primary schools.
But one of the force's sergeants slammed the character for failing to represent the capital's communities.
He said the figure, which is white with blue eyes and blond hair, risked leaving Asian and women officers feeling "isolated".
The sergeant cited an incident where an Asian colleague was not able to wear the short-sleeved outfit because his arms were darker skinned than the costume.
Now senior officers have said they will invest £15,000 in the design and production of three new characters.
In a written response to questions from the London Assembly, the Commissioner said staff from the force's diversity unit were brought in to help create the costumes.
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No expense spared: Sir Ian Blair has said the new mascots will be more representative of London's population
Sir Ian said: "These characters will be more representative of London's population and the diverse range of police personnel.
"The choice of characters will allow the concept of a Safer Neighbourhoods team to be presented to young children as well as delivering an important message about the different roles of PCSOs and constables."
The original PCSO Steve costume was created in 2005 and is based on real-life Sutton borough police community support officer Stephen King.
Paid for by a £1,000 sponsorship deal with a local plumbing firm, the character proved a huge hit at schools and other public events.
Despite its success, one officer criticised the mascot - sparking a force-wide debate.
In a letter to police in-house magazine The Job published yesterday, one officer said the row could damage relations between the police and the public.
Pc Geoff Parker, who works in Islington, said: "One of the things that is damaging our job and our relations with the community is this constant overbearing political correctness.
"We seem to be taking the issue to the extreme, and pandering to every whim and gripe. We need to take a sensible approach to this and stop over-reacting."
Another officer, Wahab Mohammed, wrote: "Being a dark-skinned Asian myself, I think the so-called problem is pathetic.
"What happened to long-sleeved shirts? This is a very good initiative but you always have to have someone criticising the most minute things.
"Honestly, I'm sure people could spend a bit more time trying to deal with matters that actually affect people. PCSO Steve is a good lad."
The project has now been renamed "Police Pals" and police officer versions of the costumes will also be made.
The 12 new costumes - four for each character - include PCSO Steve, an Asian woman PCSO named Sunita, and a man and a woman police constable. They are expected to be ready early next year.
The £15,000 bill includes £600 in design costs and £14,400 for the creation of four suits for each of the three characters.
Sir Ian has striven to make the Met more ethnically diverse.
In the month he started as Commissioner in February 2005, the Oxford English graduate replaced the phrase "visible ethnic minority" with "minority group".
Last year, he asked his officers to declare whether they are homosexual, a first step to setting up quotas for numbers of gay and lesbian officers.
It does indeed seem that they have money to burn.
Not on legitimate, useful, law enforcement equipment mind you, but on this.
By all means, ring them up and give them a proposal. Be sure, however, to tell them that the design firm has an "appropriately representative" number of minorities and homosexuals, or you'll never get past the secretary.
LOL.
In this new PC world, Casper the friendly ghost (white) is in deep sh%T along wiht snow white.
No hope, they’re brainwashed, disarmed and demoralized, past the point of recovery.
And I thought that a breathtakingly inarticulate, drug-addled, flaming homosexual former pop-star with dreadlocks painted on the side of his head would be a huge hit as a mascot for the police there.
Oh well, it was worth a try.
Honestly, I don’t see much of an issue here. So you make a tiny symbolic gesture so folks see a mascot they identify with — it’s like a black Barbie. Big whoop. And £15K is chump change — they’ll make that up in merchandise sales in a month.
Some PR flack will spend a few minutes a day for a month or two exchanging e-mails with some graphic artist, and that will be the end of it. Shouldn’t the cops be focusing on something more important? Sure, they should, and the vast majority are. They’ve got enough people that they can walk and blink at the same time.
My other response to “shouldn’t the police focus on something important” is, shouldn’t we?
There are, no doubt, plenty of cases of over-the-top political correctness. There are also cases of over-the-top backlash against anything that has a whiff of PC about it, and I think this is one of the latter.
..someone place call me when they replace the bloodhound with the rabbit
I don't see anything in the backlash against this as being "over the top"....just a natural, healthy and entirely justifiable reaction to the endless focus on race, gender and assorted topics which comes entirely from the Left.
This is merely one more brick in the wall of Socialism, and if we overlook it, and so many others, as "just one more little brick, let it go, we've got bigger things to worry about" then before we know it the wall has grown a hundred feet higher and it's that much harder to break down.
Yes, there are of course bigger things in the world to worry about, but as the old saying goes, Socialism arrives by bicycle, and incrementalism is the Socialist's proscribed methodology.
Just as the frog who is put in a pot with a gradually-rising temperature doesn't know it's being boiled alive until it's too late, so also the West will lose it's identity if it doesn't take a stand and say ENOUGH!
Yes, we can also walk and chew gum and the same time, and fight the major battles as well as the small ones. But just because they are small doesn't mean that they aren't important and worth defending.
I was flamed not too long ago for saying England is lost. The above article is just another in a long line of clear examples as to why that is so.
“Europe slipped into socialism a long time ago. It’s slipping into Islamism right now.”
That’s a fact.
That rabbit’s dynamite!
Not entirely. I made the analogy to the black Barbie -- multicolored Cabbage Patch Kids are another example. GI Joe. Military recruiting posters have featured folks of all kinds of ethnicities since the early days of WWII. Even Bratz dolls, which are loathsome, but not because they're politically correct.
The goal of a toy is to sell. The goal of a mascot is to present a friendly face, and it helps to make it a familiar-looking face. It's not a civil rights issue. It's just pragmatism. If you're going to have a mascot, it just works better that way. If some of your audience responds better to Sunita than to Steve, where's the harm?
This is merely one more brick in the wall of Socialism
You're reading a hell of a lot into this. If this is socialist, then any PR effort by any taxpayer-funded entity is socialist. Otherwise, they're just responding to ths preferences of their audience.
I'll give you a first-hand example. I grew up in the Southeastern US (Atlanta, to be specific). Throughout my childhood, Southerners were depicted in Hollywood as dumb hicks -- even the "positive" depictions of Southerners were usually folks who well-meaning, generous, courageous, even heroic, but not real bright.
Northern heroes were men of industry and science. Southern heroes were Sergeant York and Andy Griffith. Northern wisdom was the cream of Western civilization -- Southern wisdom, when such a thing appeared, was "folksy" or "home-spun."
Then, in my teens, I saw "Broadcast News." The lead character was a smart, competent woman in a fast-paced, high-tech field. And she sounded like my mom. I still love Holly Hunter, not least because she has had a thriving career while refusing to lose her accent. I have a mental image of a meeting in some stidio office "Well, to see, Holly, we just didn't see this character as a Southerner." "Well, why the hell not?"
I know folks, brought up in the North, who love "Moonstruck" and get nothing out of "Steel Magnolias." I am exactly the opposite. Oh, I can appreciate that "Moonstruck" is a good movie with strong performances, but it doesn't speak to me. I watch "Steel Magnolias," and I already now these people. I'm related to a few.
To make a long story short (yeah, way too late, I know), it's one thing to try to convince "them" that "we" are pretty okay people, and another to make everyone "us." If a cartoon Bobby named Sunita helps move in that direction I think it's absurd to object,
Just as the frog who is put in a pot with a gradually-rising temperature doesn't know it's being boiled alive until it's too late, so also the West will lose it's identity if it doesn't take a stand and say ENOUGH!
So the identity of the Bobbies, and of all Western civilization, is based on being exclusively pale-skinned, blonde-haired ad blue-eyed (and for the record, I am all three)? Cultures that base themselves on stuff like that tend not to end well.
Yes, we can also walk and chew gum and the same time, and fight the major battles as well as the small ones. But just because they are small doesn't mean that they aren't important and worth defending.
Nor does it men that they are worth defending. There are actual London cops named Sunita. Having a mascot named Sunita is a travesty because ... I'm at a loss.
Deep in the bowels of hell, Adolf Hitler is kicking himself for not having been born at a time when England would have been ripe for the picking.
I posted “Farewell, England!” once and not only got slammed but lectured to about “your American cowboy gun culture”.
But I think this thread qualifies as “Yet Another Nail in the Coffin”.
;^)
place=please
“Nor does it men that they are worth defending. There are actual London cops named Sunita. Having a mascot named Sunita is a travesty because ... I’m at a loss.”
Nothing wrong with a mascot named Sunita. Retiring the old one because it is “too white” is racist.
When the English is upset that they are English then we’ve lost.
Time to ride off into the canyon and await the arrival of John Wayne.
At least somebody gets it!
“They’re not retiring the old one. They’re adding others.”
Because the old one is too white and too white. Its still racist.
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