Metropolitan
Police And Affirmative Action: Playing politics with equality legislation.
The news that the MPS has asked for a change in the
law to allow for affirmative
action type laws ensuring one-to-one recruitment of police officers has
cause quite a stir.
As the Policing Director for London for former
Mayor of London Ken Livingstone I was responsible for driving forward Black
recruitment in the Met. We had a remarkable degree of success in attracting
Black and Asian candidates.
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| Spot the Black Police Officer. |
One of the fundamental principles of policing a
multicultural city like London, right up there with policing by consent, is
the requirement that police must reflect the communities they
serve. To often, in many areas of London the Met looks like a foreign army of
occupation.
A representative police service is an absolutely
critical requirement for the building of trust and confidence among
communities who have a history of suffering from unrestrained police racism
and brutality.
Institutional racism is still a huge problem in the
Met. In recent years police/black communities relationships have suffered huge set backs. Suspicious deaths of black men in police custody, stop and search, the August 2011 riots and the dismantling of the Mets policy forums and
committee’s, tasked with monitoring the implementation and progress of
important Lawrence report recommendations all have contributed to the current impasse.
The consequences of this political
attack on McPherson, by Government and Boris Johnson has been huge resurgence of police racism. Internal and
external race complaints against the Met are currently at an all time high.
This has ended what I call the “post McPherson
settlement” between Black communities and the Police, made possible when the
Police admitted that they needed to deal with institutional racism.
Black communities decided, that given that admission
and the commitment to change, we would now engage with police officers in
tackling crime. The change in relations was dramatic.
Whilst in the Mayors office I was determined to take
a long hard look at this issue.
I instructed that analysis be done assessing how long
would it take the Met to become representative of London, at the current rate
of Black recruitment.
The answer was 80 years. We also found out that if
the Met were to recruit 100% Black and Asian police officers, for the entirety
of the Mayoral term, we would still only reach a 10% target.
I convinced all concerned that we could not entertain
such bone achingly slow progress.
I procured a top Barristers opinion on the use of
existing law that determined it was lawful, under positive discrimination, for
all future police recruitment to be exclusively targeted at Black and Asian
communities.
We worked out the total number of police officers
being recruited in the each of the following year and set a target employment
quotas for each individual quarter, backed up with monthly reports to me that
indicated whether recruitment was on track.
Failure to achieve was not an option. The
Commissioner regularly reported progress being made to the Mayor who made it
crystal clear that this was a clear political priority.
The number of Black and Asian police officers
recruited into the Met increased by 100% during 2002 and 2007. For the first time in the Mets history,
the majority applications came from Black and Asian communities.
The proposal that there should be a one-to-one
Black/White recruitment does not need additional legalisation and in fact will
produce change at a much slower pace than that achieved by the Met under my
100% Black and Asian recruitment policy.
Whilst I would agree we need a change to anti
discriminatory laws particularly to drive forward equality in private sector
employment practice, the fact is the Met and the Mayor are simply playing
political games.
They could right now, lawfully target all their
recruitment at Black and Asian communities. Postulating a need for a change to
the law to enable one-to-one recruitment is simply a ruse.
I believe this represents a cynical attempt to blame
the law for what is in essence a failure of political and professional
leadership.
The top brass at the Met and the Mayors office are
aware that police and Black and Asian relations are so bad, that currently
there is a net loss of such officers and community confidence is at an all time
low.
They calculate, they have little chance of attracting
sufficient numbers of Black candidates in the forthcoming round of recruitment
and by running up this idea up the flagpole now they can blame future failure
on the law later on.
