Scotland

Thu 1 Dec 2005

Racism is harming frontline policing

MICHAEL HOWIE

RACISM within the Scottish police is hampering efforts to weed out potential terrorists, warned a senior officer yesterday.

Ali Dizaei, a chief superintendent and a member of the National Black Police Association, said suspicion regarding the police service among ethnic minority communities was making it harder to combat terrorist threats.

He said the number of black and Asian officers in the Scottish service - 118 out of 16,000, or 0.7 per cent - needed to be substantially boosted to gain the confidence of multi-ethnic communities, something which is vital in identifying any potential threat from Muslim extremists.

"Gaining proper representation is more important now than ever after the events in London," Mr Dizaei said. "It's communities that defeat terrorism, not Special Branch or MI5." He added: "There is a crisis facing the police service, a crisis of identity, application and integration.

"We have a police service in Scotland which doesn't look like the community they are representing. It will take 70 years under the current procedures for that to happen. The conventional methods of recruiting have failed.

"As long as the police service isn't representative, it cannot integrate with the communities. We need the consent of communities to fight all sorts of crime, including terrorism."

Mr Dizaei was among the speakers at the conference "A Force For Change" in Aberdeen yesterday. It was organised by Semper Scotland, which seeks to promote racial equality in the Scottish police service.

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