Subject :	Community Policing
Topic :	The Perception of Police by Ethnic Minorities Groups in the UK

Introduction

Recent decades have seen a massive expansion in private and quasi-public forms of policing provision, and provide an overview of, the emerging new policing division of labour. Sociological studies have been instrumental in revealing racist attitudes among police officers. In the 1980s, a study of police by Roger Graef (1989) concluded that police were 'actively hostile to all minority groups'. He noted the frequency with which officers would use stereotypes and racial slurs when speaking about ethnic minorities. During the 1990s, several high-profile incidents in the UK raised awareness about police racism in ways that no study ever could. The racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 has significantly altered the nature of the debate over racism in the UK by demonstrating that it is not restricted to certain individuals, but can pervade entire institutions.

Following the publication of the McPherson Report in 1999, Jack Straw, the then Home Secretary, and challenged police to become 'champions of a multicultural society'. Many of the report's seventy recommendations were acted on within a year of its publication, although critics have claimed that change is not occurring quickly enough. In the very first year after the publication of this report, more than one-third of police forces had not hired any additional black or Asian officers and the number of ethnic minority officers had fallen in nine out of forty-three forces in England and Wales. There have also been indications of an "anti-McPherson backlash" among some segments of the law-enforcement community, who believe that the report unfairly targeted police (Fitzgerald 2001).

Community Policing

Surrey Constabulary is credited as being the first UK force both engage in problem-oriented community policing (1982) and to implement some kind of programme on force-wide basis (Leigh et al 1996). Enthusiasm and levels of adoption varied considerably across the UK, influenced to a degree by the fact that some sites experienced considerable problems with implementation. Generating enthusiasm for problem-oriented community policing and advertising success was difficult in the early days because not all of the early forces that ran problem-oriented community policing projects (such as Metropolitan Police, Northumbria, and Thames Valley) built formal effectiveness evaluations into their projects, and the early formal evaluation in one part of Leicestershire was disappointing (Leigh et al 1996). However, a number of drivers provided encouraging signs for the advantages of problem-oriented community policing, some of which overlap with driving forces for intelligence-led policing. These included the demand gap, further research on the concentration of crime, a greater belief that community partnerships can help alleviate crime problems, and government support for community cantered crime prevention (Leigh et al 1998).

In England and Wales, policy initiatives to combat racism and xenophobia, specifically with respect to combat racism and xenophobia, specially with respect to racist violence and crime, have often emerged as a direct response to inter-community conflict and, in particular, poor community-police relations. One such catalyst for change was the 1981 Brixton riots, which erupted in the largely Afro-Caribbean London district of Brixton, and were followed by riots in other UK cities where ethnic minority communities were concentrated in deprived urban areas. The Scarman Inquiry into the Brixton riots attributed their cause largely to the police's overuse of stop-and-search powers against the Afro-Caribbean community. Among a number of recommendations, the inquiry called for an emphasis on community policing and recruitment of ethnic minority police officers. Although the riots were not directly related to racist crime, they drew attention to the policing of ethnic minority communities, and the need for improvements in police-community relations.

In the 1990s, police mismanagement of the investigation into the racist murder of Afro-Caribbean teenager Stephen Lawrence resulted in the Macpherson Inquiry (1999); the findings of which formed the basis of many reforms in England and Wales concerning the policing of racist crime. One of the most notable developments to emerge from the report was the adoption of its working definition of a 'racist incident', as 'any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person'. Before the definition, police forces were collecting information on racist incidents on the basis of a 1985 Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) definition, which reads: 'any incident in which it appears to be the reporting or investigating officer that the complaint involves an element of racial motivation; or any other incident which includes an allegation of racial motivation made by any person (Macpherson 1999, p. 205). With the adoption of the Macpherson Report's definition of a racist incident, the justice system in England and Wales moved from a criminal justice-centred definition of a racist incident, where the 'racist' attribute of a crime was primarily the decision of a police officer, to a victim-centred definition.

The legislative and police responses to racist and, latterly, religiously motivated crime in England and Wales have been driven to a large extent by particular events, and the adoption of recommendations that have emerged from inquiries in the aftermath of these events. At the same time, the integration of ethnic minorities into British life has been addressed proactively, to greater or lesser degrees by successive governments, through a range of non-discrimination initiatives that emerged via 'race relations' and, more recently, 'muticulturalism' and the language of 'diversity' (Home Office 2004). In turn, the evolving victims' movement of the 1970s and 1980s leant support of racist violence and crime. From here, the movement towards 'victim-centred' justice gained momentum in the UK and has remained at the top of governmental and non-governmental concerns to date (Goodey 2005).

Police occupational culture while policing the ethnic minority

Racial prejudice and discrimination have been found to be abiding elements of the occupational culture of the police rank and life (Holdaway and Barron, 1997). Although the relationship between ideas and action, between racial prejudice and discrimination, is not direct, there is sufficient evidence to argue that the lower ranks work in an environment in which derogatory language about ethnic minorities is a commonplace and in which discriminatory action is likely. The task here is to consider how the occupational culture moulds the experience of ethnic minority officers, especially black and Asian officers. This in turn demonstrates some of the ways in which mundane social processes that are basic to the occupational culture of policing construct and racialise and employment experiences of black and Asian officers.

Prejudices and discriminations were a routine feature of these officers' experience of police employment. The problem was not one of racist individuals, unchecked by colleagues and supervisors, but the culture of the rank and file that formed a framework for police employment. To understand this situation we therefore need to place race within the social context of the police as an organisation, with its distinctive occupational culture. We can then try to analyse how taken-for-granted features of this culture, which may affect all or a range of other minorities within the work force similarly, construct negative racial relations between ethnic minority and ethnic majority officers.

Holdaway and Barron (1997) interviewed black and Asian officers and described their reasons for resigning from the police service. It makes the general point that being treated differently is not just the fate of members of minority groups. However, most minorities are regarded differently by the rank and file.

"No, they didn't treat me differently, not necessarily because I was black, the thing is it's down to attitudes really…it wasn't just about blacks, it was about women who were beaten up, it was about women who were raped dressed up in loud clothing shall we say, it was about Irish people, it was just about everybody – and I just didn't. I didn't really share the ideas, I didn't really".

White resigners made similar comments, but a difference between white and minority ethnic officers' views became clearer when they talked about the power of the occupational culture and its particular relevance to black people, and to women. The following quote is from a white officer, whose view was challenged by the majority of black, Asian and white female officers interviewed by Holdaway and Barron (1997). If you're not on the butt end of prejudice you can afford to say that you "never felt it was racist and it was never sexist". When you stand as a target, your perception is rather different.

"But I always felt that it was never racist, and it was never sexist, it was simply part of – I mean they'd take the Mickey out of a man who's fat, and they'd take the Mickey out of a man who's bald. Its part of just seeing how far they could push you and, you know, making sure you understand. And the lads who work out on the unit, they want you to understand them. They want to know that they can trust you, that you're there and that you're going to blow up every time you talk".

The occupational culture is an oppositional culture that engenders negative views among the rank and file (Keith 1993a). Rather than policing a primary emphasis on positive and hopeful aspects of police work in which social order is preserved, people helped, crime prevented and community bonds affirmed, its heart is a triumphant defeat of what, by rank and file definitions, is not normal and taken for granted. Minority ethnic officers therefore have to weigh the value of the negative views that surround and at times influence them.

Race Relations and the Police

Since the late 1960s the UK has had legislation aimed at preventing or tackling discrimination on grounds of race, gender or other social characteristics (Race Relations Act 1976, Sex Discrimination Act 1975, Disabled Persons Act 1986). However, the National Health Service and other public bodies remained outside the legislative framework of the Race Relations Act 1976 until the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000. Sadly the last decade has seen a number of large-scale inquiries into the treatment of people from minority ethnic groups by the police, social services and health authorities in Britain (Blofeld 2003, Laming 2003). While these demonstrate evidence of prejudice, discrimination, ignorance and negligence at all levels of police service provision, they also provide lessons for the UK and other European countries. Although not without their critics, these reports attempt to inform policy and practice in a strategic way and in the case of Macpherson Inquiry have already influenced legislation.

These inquiries are held with varying levels of public openness. In some ways, the most damaging are internal inquires conducted within the police service, which tend invariably to be savagely critical of their colleagues. One prominent example was the inquiry that followed the disorders in the City of London on 'J18' and concluded with the City force being subsumed within the Metropolitan Police for public order purposes. This was a serious humiliation to a force that had long guarded its independence from its much larger and more prominent neighbour. This was by no means an isolated example; internal inquiry reports on the policing of the Broadwater Farm riot, the anti-poll tax riot in Trafalgar Square and other disorders have been no less censorious. Nor is savage internal criticism restricted to reviews of public order operations: evidence of impropriety that revealed the miscarriage of justice in the Guildford Four case resulted from an investigation by police officers from an outside force; likewise, it was the Kent Police force inquiry into the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence that highlighted many of the flaws that bedevilled that investigation. Why does this occur in a service with a reputation for intense solidarity?

The Race Relations Amendment Act 2000 was introduced in the wake of the Macpherson Inquiry, a government inquiry into the way in which the Metropolitan police dealt with the death of the black youth Stephen Lawrence in London in the late 1990s. The inquiry, headed by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, demonstrated a catalogue of negligence and poor policing which led to the failure to follow up leads and gather sufficient evidence to convict the killers of the young man. The inquiry found the Metropolitan police failed to take seriously the racialised nature of the assault against Stephen. While there was evidence of overt racism in the police force, attitudes, organisational systems and policing practices were more a reflections of the stereotypes, ignorance and unchallenged prejudices held at all levels. Although the Macpherson inquiry related the Metropolitan police, the report suggested that this was not unique to that organisation and could be found in all major institutions in the UK. The report made clear recommendations not only for the Metropolitan Police Service but for local government agencies and other parts of criminal justice system and was one of main drivers of amendment to existing legislation on race relations.

Post-Lawrence, conceptualisation of the police position in respect of minority ethnic groups has become one in which anti-racism is a central theme. This requires the police service to adopt a proactive and interventionist stance to take prejudice, and recognise that minority groups, and not just those that are based on ethnicity, have legitimate needs not shared by the majority. The role of the police extends beyond a law-enforcement or crime-fighting responsibility to embrace a broader social agenda. In summary, the previous position was one in which the police occupied a largely neutral, inert role whereby social racism was a given problem to which the police responded, and members of the public, whether victims, witnesses or suspects, were to be treated equitably and in a uniform manner. Perhaps the most significant dimension of reconceptualising the police role has been an emphasis on policing as an explicitly anti-racist activity: one in which a proactive interventionary role is taken to challenge the problem of racism.

Recognition that the active pursuit of good community and race relations is central to contemporary police leadership is evident in the remarks of the president of the UK Police Superintendents' Association, who noted that, 'if you're not delivering on this [policing diversity] you should not be a basic command unit commander" (Police Review, 2001 a, p. 6).

Ethnic Minority Officer and the police race relation

Ethnic minorities are, for example, numerically under-represented in the police, more likely than other officers to resign for the service, less likely to hold promoted positions, and more likely to express dissatisfaction with their experiences in the workplace, often feeling isolated and subject to discrimination (Bland et al 1999, p. 45-6; Home Office, 2002). Industrial tribunal cases in which ethnic minority officers have been awarded compensation on account of their experiences of racial discrimination illustrate the general level of dissatisfaction still felt by many ethnic minority officers, as well as the ongoing problem of racism within the police service, although the success of the cases also shows that mechanisms, however imperfect, are in place to respond to such problems (Holdaway and O'Neil 2006, p. 857-8). However, there is also evidence of substantial change in the experiences of ethnic minority police officers for the better, particularly in the period following the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (Foster et al 2005). Over the period since Police and People in London (PPL) there has been an increase in the number of ethnic minority police officers recruited, although they remain under-represented, and ethnic minorities now have a stronger voice within the police service and a more obvious presence for the general public (Foster et al 2005). These limited, although significant, changes in the representation of ethnic minorities in policing are a modest step towards enhancing public confidence, especially among ethnic minority communities.

The period around the Lawrence Inquiry Report was a particularly active time in terms of police organisational reform. In July 1999, the Home Office issued ten-year recruitment targets for many criminal justice agencies, including the police, in England and Wales. The police race equality target of a 7 per cent representation of ethnic minorities in the service was clearly demanding given the slow rate of progress to date. By 2004 statistics published under Section 95 of the criminal justice Act 1991 indicated that only 3.3 per cent of police officers were from ethnic minority backgrounds (Home Office, 2004, p. 101), a considerable improvement on the position in the Met in the early 1980s, but nonetheless still a considerable shortfall: 2001 census data show that 2.8 percent of the general population were black, 4.5 per cent Asian and 1.2 percent 'other' ethnic minority group (Home Office, 2004, p. 1). It is worth noting that other criminal justice agencies have been rather more successful in recruiting and retaining representative (or even rather over-representative) numbers of ethnic minorities to their organisations. Statistics from 2000/2001 indicate that the Youth Justice Board and the Probation Service, in particular, had a significantly stronger representation of ethnic minorities (9 per cent) amongst their staff than the police (Home office, 2002, p. 8). Referring back to the discussion in the previous section the perceived adversarial/social control function of the police, and the fact that they are symbolic of 'white' authority (Smith 1991), makes it particularly difficult for the organisation to recruit ethnic minorities from certain backgrounds. This is by no means a new finding: Lord Scarman recognised the problem as being one that 'probably accounts, more than any other fact, for the failure of suitable people of West Indian origin to come forward as candidates for appointment' (1981, p. 76).

Other formal developments that have had an impact on the police organisation in recent years have included the extension of race relations anti-discrimination requirements to criminal justice agencies through the Race Relations (Amendment) Act, 2000 (Home Office, 2004), the commitment to tackle hate crime and racist victimisation through adoption of a wider definition of 'racist incident' to encompass 'an incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person' (FitzGerald, 2001; Foster et al 2005), and ACPO commitments to incorporate race issues into all police training programmes (Home Office, 2002, p. 11). There has, therefore, certainly been an explicit commitment made to make the police organisation more accessible and responsive to ethnic minority communities at the level of official policy. That said, many similar commitments were also made in the wake of Lord Scarman's recommendations in the 1980s, but did not appear to do much in the way of changing actual practices. Foster et al (2005, p. 85-92) found that the Macpherson Report had acted as an 'important catalyst' in improving police responses to the recoding and handling of hate crimes in all but one of the forces studied. Formal commitment of the police to equally and race awareness is not doubt important symbolically, but only ongoing, post-Macpherson monitoring of the steps taken (by senior officers, HMIC, Home Office Statistics, and independent research) will be able to show how far such commitments create genuine organisational change.

Female ethnic minority officers and police race relations

Female's involvement in policing was initially the result of social reform movements, which were given impetus by the huge depletion of manpower caused by World War I and the consequent need to draw upon the reserve of female labour. The need to improve the image of police in the eyes of the public, as well as to prevent crime by fixing broken windows, has led to the implementation of community-oriented policing. In making an argument for the competency of women police, advocates claim that the service-oriented style of policing utilised by women police is the most desirable qualification for a police officer working under a community-policing program to posses (National Center for Women and Policing 2001).

Police who are women have proven that they can handle these situations better than police who are men and, furthermore, that the skills of women are desirable for police work. What else is there to prove? The answer is that, historically, the notion of women doing anything outside of the home or engaging in anything other than traditional motherly or wifely behaviours has been renounced. That is, if an individual does not do gender, then he or she is rejected.

In UK, the acceptance of women in the police has demanded upon a confluence of several key factors: favourable public attitudes towards women participation in the labour force, especially in male-dominated jobs; women's support groups, and legislation condemning gender discrimination and sexual harassment (Prenzler, 1994). A study on "Aspects of Discriminatory Treatment of Women Police Officers Serving in Forces in England and Wales" was conducted by Brown (1998). This study examined discriminatory treatment of female police officers in England and Wales. Data on women officers' operational tasks, access to deployment and promotional opportunities and exposure to sexual harassment were obtained from: (1) a secondary analysis of official 1990 data on officers in 42 of the UK police forces; and (2) questionnaires completed in 1992 by 1,802 female officers and 510 male constables in London and 5 provincial agencies; and (3) questionnaires completed by 164 female civilian personnel employed at 2 police forces.

The study deduced that women were still under represented both laterally and horizontally in the Police service. Discriminatory and harassing behaviour occurred frequently. The working environment could not be changed merely by the necessity for equal opportunities and other policy initiatives over the last 20 years. Thus, further deconstruction of the police occupational culture and the obstacles it poses for women in the police service are warranted.

As with female officers, but more so, there are relatively few black officers. In 1998, only 2 percent of the police officers in England and Wales were from ethnic backgrounds, and the highest-ranking ethnic minority officer was an assistant chief constable in Lancashire (Walklate 2000). Over twenty years ago the Scarman Report (1982) highlighted the need to recruit more ethnic minority police officers and, given the figures above, the recruitment strategies since then do not seem to have been very successful. Walklate (2000) suggests that reasons for this include the negative image of police held by ethnic minority, and especially young people, groups and the fact that ethnic minority officers face difficulties both from their own communities and from within the police force. This lack of black officers does not in itself mean that there is a racist element to police culture, although it may be indicative of the attitudes within the police and of the attitudes held by the black population towards the police. As with gender, discrimination on grounds of race is against the law; however, this does not ensure equal treatment of black police officers. Walklate (2000) points out that black officers experience racial prejudices and discrimination from both the public they police and their fellow officers.

However, countering these initiatives were indications that racialisation remained central to police culture. A new generation of officers was socialised into a resentful anti-Scarman police culture that insisted there was a relationship between race and criminality and advocated a tough policing response to what was perceived as the increasing lawlessness of black neighbourhoods. This, of course, fed into and was fuelled by the 1985 riots and periodic 'mugging' panics. Despite officers being trained in specialist community and race relations courses, there were suggestions of a tacitly condoned casualised racism. Equally significantly, there were also indications that ethnic minority officers, as the classic 'outsiders-now-enemy-within', were encountering significant levels of prejudice, disadvantage and discrimination within certain police forces (Holdaway 1997). In the early 1990s, the inability ethnic minority and female officers into the ranks generated a series of high-profile cases of institutionalised racism and sexism. At the same moment as the police were having to defend themselves against a record number of complaints of malpractice and corruption, the fabled 'blue shield' was breached from within. What was revealed was a claustrophobic workplace culture, which presumed conformity to a hegemonic white, male, heterosexual culture and condoned vituperative sexist and racist attitudes and behaviour. Unacceptable attitudes and behaviour were going unchallenged and ethnic minority, female and gay officers were tokenised, isolated and extremely vulnerable (Holdaway 1997).

Conclusion

In the light of incidents like the murder of Stephen Lawrence, it is hardly surprising that research confirms that hostility to the police is a common phenomenon among ethnic minorities (Keith 1993). To some extent, such attitudes are simply result of direct experience; the attitudes of young blacks in particular are shaped by the policing strategies they encounter. The fourth PSI survey, found that only a quarter of the respondents who had been racially attacked in the previous year chose to report the attack to the police. Half of those who did turn to the police were dissatisfied with the treatment they received. Many felt that the police response showed that they had no real interest in knowing about or investigating the incident (Modood et al 1997).

Ethnic minorities are in the greatest need of protection by police and the criminal justice system because they more likely to be victims of crime than whites, but there are some indications that law-enforcement policies seem to have racial character that targets non-whites: so-called "stop-and-search' policies, for example, tend to target non-whites disproportionately. The number of ethnic minorities fell after the publication of the McPherson Report in 1999, but has since risen as police forces became more sensitive to the risk of terrorism. This has led to a rise in the number of cases where British Asians, some of whom are Muslim, have been stopped and searched, with police using new powers granted to them under the 2000 Terrorism Act.

The justification of racism and the aggressive acts of war and extradition of refugees has done nothing to bring peace to the world. Quite the opposite, racism has further enflamed the fears and imaginations of all peoples and has done nothing to ensure the safety of Western countries from terrorism nor stilled the fears of ethnic minorities who are not presently associated with terrorism. While measures such as making airports safer for travel and subjecting known terrorists to just and fair trials under international law make sense, the hysteria of terrorism has become little more than an excuse for prejudice and discrimination on all sides.

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