Police still struggling with racism
The police service is still struggling with racism in its ranks, according to a new report from the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE).
It concluded that although senior officers had shown a willingness to embrace change, there was still “a long way to go” before institutional racism would be eradicated from its ranks.
Announcing the final findings of the CRE’s investigation, Sir David Calvert-Smith said that reforms had brought improvements but had so far failed to melt the “ice at the heart of the police service”.
“There is still a long way to go before we have a service where every officer treats the public and their colleagues with fairness and respect, regardless of their ethnic origin,” the chief investigator said.
Sir David said middle managers were not properly supported or fully trained in dealing with race grievances, “so relatively minor issues are often unnecessarily escalated”.
He found that compliance with racial discrimination laws was haphazard and recommended that the Home Office be put in overall charge of dealing with race equality issues.
The report also recommended that racial misconduct be made a separate and potentially sackable offence.
CRE chairman Sir Trevor Phillips welcomed the improvements made since Stephen Lawrence’s murder and the BBC’s Secret Policeman programme, which showed officers dressing up as members of the Klu Klux Klan.
“But the fact remains that every time you drill down you find that ice, and unless more is done, it won’t melt any time soon,” he said.
Sir Trevor added: “The investigation found an atmosphere of overwhelming fear of reporting racist incidents; this has to be extinguished and racist behaviour dealt with effectively.”
In response, the Association of Chief Police Officers said that the police service had made “real progress” on investigating racist crime, strengthening community relations and improving the recruitment and training of officers.
But ACPO racism spokesman Peter Fahy admitted that progress on increasing the proportion of ethnic minority officers was “still too slow”.
He said current recruitment targets, which call on the police to employ the same percentage of ethnic minority officers as the overall ethnic profile of the community they serve, were “unachievable”, as race relations guidelines do not allow them to prioritise ethnic minority applications and the percentage of ethnic minorities in the population is growing rapidly.
Mr Fahy instead suggested that the focus should be on increasing the percentage of new recruits from ethnic minority backgrounds.
