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UK: Morris report finds “bias against black and Asian police officers”

01 November 2004

Twenty years after the Policy Studies Institute found endemic racism in the Metropolitan police force and five years since the MacPherson inquiry uncovered institutional racism, another investigation has reported racism among the ranks of Britain’s largest police force. The new inquiry, which was chaired by Bill Morris, the former general secretary of the Transport & General Workers’ union, was called after the case of Superintendent Ali Desai, who was subjected to a £5 million investigation into allegations of corruption. Desai was cleared after two trials and reinstated with a reprimand in 2003. The Morris report found that Black and Asian officers in the Met. are facing serious discrimination and that “there is no understanding of diversity” within Britain’s largest police force. It remained “at worst a source of fear and anxiety, and at best a process of ticking boxes.” The report, The Case for Change: People in the Metropolitan Police Service, which was published in December, found “a clear disproportionality in the way black and minority ethnic officers are treated in relation to the management of their conduct” with black and Asian officers more than twice as likely to be investigated. It also found discrimination among the lower ranks against women, Muslims, Christians, Jews and the disabled. The report makes more than 100 recommendations. It is available on:

news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/14_12_04_morrisreport.pdf