Commission calls for procedures to tackle police racism

The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) has called for a new disciplinary offence to be introduced to tackle bigotry in the police force.

A report by the CRE into police forces in England and Wales made 125 recommendations on how diversity could be improved in the police service, including making racial misconduct a separate and potentially sackable offence.

Sir David Calvert-Smith, who led the investigation, said: "There is no doubt that the Police Service has made significant progress in the area of race equality in recent years. However, 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 CRE said that none of the organisations it worked with complied fully with the race equality duty. The Committee said that two-thirds of the forces approached to provide discipline statistics for ethnic minority officers were unable to provide them in the requested format. The CRE said that this was because they were either not recording the data as required or were not properly monitoring them.

The report said that a specific category should be created for racial miscondct offences, in order to make them easier to identify and record. At present, these cases come under a number of different sections, which means they can easily be recorded incorrectly.

The report also found that few forces appeared to be carrying out full race impact assessments of their new policies and said that managers were often not properly supported or fully trained on how to handle racial complaints.

The CRE also called for police forces to establish "a core ethic of respect and consideration" for ethnic minority groups. It also recommended that the way in which ethnic minorities are recruited into the force should change - the CRE said that forces should recruit a certain number of black and Asian recruits each year, in addition to meeting an overall target percentage.

Responding to the report, CRE Chair Trevor Philips said: "Sir David Calvert-Smith's findings tell us we are making progress, but the 'police family' clearly still isn't up to the mark on the race equality duty."

Mr Philips said when he announced the investigation in 2003, after the hard-hitting BBC documentary, 'The Secret Policeman' showed racist behaviour among some police officers, he had requested that the Police Service put in place a recruitment, training and vetting regime that prevented racists from entering the force. He said: "I recognise that we will never be able to weed out every single racist, but if we can change the culture of the Police Service so that racists are made to feel uncomfortable and isolated, fewer and fewer recruits of the sort so graphically displayed in the 'Secret Policeman' will want to sign up. Where racists do get into the service they have to be managed and their victims protected. The investigation found an atmosphere of overwhelming fear of reporting racist incidents; this has to be extinguished and racist behaviour dealt with effectively."

Mr Philips also referred to the compliance action taken against some forces and authorities last year, which he said resulted in a "sharp improvement" in their race equality schemes. He said that police forces and authorities had until May this year to review, and update if necessary, their race equality schemes.

(KmcA)