Chief constables are struggling to attract non-white officers from immigrant communities in Scotland and intend looking south of the border and overseas to fulfil their requirement to have racially diverse staff.

The quotas, based on the proportion of black and Asian members of the population, are set by the forces themselves. In Scotland targets vary up to 2.5% of police staff, while in England all forces have a quota of 5% or more.

While television programmes such as 55 Degrees North present a picture of a racially integrated force, the situation in Scotland is quite different. Of the 16,000 officers in Scotland, about 120 are non-white, most of them constables. In Strathclyde 58 officers are from black or ethnic backgrounds, less than 1% of the force, against a target of almost 200.

Lothian and Borders aims to have 2.5% of its force from non-white backgrounds but is less than halfway there with 32 officers, about 1% of its staff.

“Our focus is to recruit from communities in Scotland but we need to explore other avenues if we’re not meeting the targets in terms of the black and ethnic minority population,” said Andrew Cameron, chief constable of Central Scotland police and spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (Acpos) on race issues.

“It matters not a jot where they come from if they are the right calibre and providing they satisy the immigration aspects of coming into the country.”

The problem of attracting ethnic minority recruits is partly due to a perception of racism and partly because Scottish forces are “fishing from a small pool”, according to Cameron.

“It’s difficult because there are reservations in some areas about joining the police service, the perception is they are not welcome, that there might be racial discrimination,” said Cameron. “We need to keep an absolute open mind about where we recruit people from.”

Medical staff have been recruited from Poland, Hong Kong and India to plug gaps in the National Health Service.The armed forces have also solved staffing problems by recruiting from Commonwealth countries. However, critics said that a scheme to recruit from abroad to meet diversity quotas was being driven by political correctness.

“If you ask the ordinary man or woman on the street, they’re more concerned about tackling crime, they’re not bothered about balancing up numbers of ethnic minority officers in the police service,” said Margaret Mitchell, Tory MSP and member of the justice committee.

“A politically correct agenda has been ruling things rather than getting down to deal with the issues that need to be addressed.”

Norrie Flowers, chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, said: “It would be important for anyone coming into the force to meet the standards because the last thing you’d want is to bring someone in that wasn’t up to that standard and then the pressure would be on them because it’s quite a demanding job.”

Senior police officers, politicians, law officers and equality campaigners will attend a “race summit” in Aberdeen later this year where the issue will be discussed. Among those expected to attend will be Jack McConnell, first minister, Colin Boyd, lord advocate, Elish Angiolini, solicitor-general, and Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality.

The executive said: “We would be supportive of any initiative that develops the Scottish police force into an appropriately diverse, fair and inclusive law enforcement body.”