On March 8, the Home Office announced it was considering making targets for ethnic minority police officers apply only to new recruits, not to the service as a whole, in order to make them “more achievable”. The announcement came on the eve of the release of a Commission For Racial Equality report on police racism. Under the new proposal, each year, local police services outside London would be required to take on double the proportion of ethnic minorities in their working population, but no targets for maintaining these recruits. London would have a substantially lower target. CRE’s interim report, released last June, found a “disturbing racial pattern” in which more black and Asian officers were rejected on racial diversity grounds than white officers. It also found a culture of bullying black recruits.

From Green Left Weekly, March 16, 2005.
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