Non-Subscriber Extract
Gagging order
By Claire Haynes
29 November 2007
'There was a culture of racism preventing ethnic minority officers from getting into specialist roles and no one would tell us why...it was discrimination based on race.
'We felt we had no option but to take the force to a tribunal. We did not think we would win, it was all about principle for us. An hour before the tribunal decision we were sitting there talking about what we would do when we got the sack.'
This is one officer's experience of discrimination and taking their force to a tribunal. But how many complaints end up in an employment tribunal and how many are settled before they get that far? Figures obtained by Police Review from forces following a Freedom of Information Act 2000 survey show that during the past two years, police forces in the UK have received more than 700 complaints of discrimination from police officers and staff. But staff associations fear these numbers only represent a fraction of the true levels of discrimination within the service.
Liz Owsley, national co-ordinator for the British Association for Women in Policing, says some officers will not do anything about discrimination or will choose to informally speak to someone for advice, but these cases will not be recorded. Ms Owsley says: 'The only ones we know about are the ones where [someone] has challenged it and put pen to paper. I think that [the figures] are probably the tip of the iceberg.' Scott Westbrook, chairman of the National Disabled Police Association, also says a lot of incidents go unrecorded by forces. 'The figures tell a story. Unfortunately they only give half a story,' he says.
The Police Review survey asked forces how many complaints of discrimination by police officers and staff have been recorded between 1 April 2005 and 31 March 2007. The Met could only provide figures for the 138 cases that had made it to the force's employment tribunals unit and Merseyside Police was the only force which did not respond to any of the questions. The answers added up to 744 individual complaints during the two year period, more than one a day.