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Racism charges

01 November 1994

Three police in Manchester's community relations department face disciplinary charges of racism after complaints that racist attacks were trivialised and offensive language used against complainants. A community officer, Michael Reid, now retired, compiled a 14-page dossier of examples of racism among the community relations police, such as their description of Moss Side and Hulme residents as "wall-to-wall shit". In 1993 there were 172 complaints of racism, resulting in one recommendation for a disciplinary charge. The Police Complaints Authority (PCA) is investigating 17 complaints of racist and aggressive policing arising from one incident outside a nightclub in January 1993. The disciplinary charges mark the drawing of the battle lines in Chief Constable David Wilmot's "crackdown on racism", which has seen a police constable fined two days pay and given a warning for calling a prisoner "nigger". The Chief Constable's initiative involves logging all stops and searches carried out in Moss Side, which resulted in the finding that black people were stopped and searched twice as often as whites, and his acknowledgement that some policing of the area is "heavy-handed", which has brought howls of protest from his own officers. Divisional Commander Andrew said the PCA's advice on rebuilding community trust in the police as "naive nonsense".

Independent 22.11.94; Guardian 26.11.94; Police Complaints Authority press release 21.11.91.