When The Pendulum Swings Too Far...

The 'Guardian' on the sometimes unsettling history of black and minority police officers:

They told of “old sweats” or “John Wayne types” who were openly racist towards the public. “Words such as ‘spooks’, ‘nigger’ and ‘coon’ are in such general use throughout the service that one officer counted 230 instances in one week,” the summary said.

Decsribing a time in the past when things were undoubtedly bad. But that's not the case today, surely? 

Thirty years on from that historic event – more than half a century after Norwell Roberts, now celebrated as the UK’s first postwar black police officer, donned his uniform – black and Asian officers are still struggling to find their place in the police service.

Really? Today's police offices still resound to the epithets from unreconstructed dinosaurs in uniform? 

Few now say they hear racial slurs in their stations or find racist graffiti on their lockers or faeces in their helmets. In policing, as in wider society, the line has been drawn against such overt discrimination.

So...what's the issue? 

The Home Office says there were 9,174 BAME police officers on 31 March 2020 – an increase of 842 on the previous year and 7.3% of all officers. But that still represents only just more than half of the proportion of those it classifies as “other ethnic groups” in the population. The proportion of senior BAME officers has risen from a paltry 2.8% in 2007 to just 4%.

Ah, it's the old story of 'not enough want to be police officers', right? Well, no. The 'Guardian' has another theory:  

...they face the prospect of having their lives destroyed by a discriminatory disciplinary system.

How, exactly, is it 'discriminatory'? Does it treat black and ethnic officers more harshly? Astonishingly, the answer is exactly the opposite: 

And the why, as set out by the police chiefs themselves, is revealing: “It begins with the BAME officer being referred to professional standards department (PSD) by their supervisor for low-level conduct allegations, with that supervisor failing to deal with the conduct allegation proportionately and at the earliest opportunity. This is either out of fear of being called racist or not having the knowledge to deal with the matters raised appropriately. As a result, BAME officers were often only made aware that their performance or conduct was in question when their supervisor informed them they had been reported to PSD.”

It's revealing all right, 'Guardian'. But not, I think, of what you might imagine...