The father of Stephen Lawrence has said black people are still treated as second-class citizens “not only in this country but all over the world”.
Neville Lawrence said he believed British police remained “institutionally racist” despite promising reform following a 1999 inquiry into failures in the investigation into his son’s murder six years prior.
“It’s not been done, I don’t know when it will be done – we should not be talking about it 21 years later,” he told The Guardian. “They have fallen way, way short. Twenty-one years short.”
The first police investigation into 18-year-old Stephen’s killing was hampered by prejudice, incompetence and alleged corruption, and the subsequent inquiry concluded the Metropolitan Police was guilty of “institutional racism“.
Commissioner Cressida Dick last year declared this was no longer the case and insisted her force was “an utterly different Metropolitan Police”.
But Mr Lawrence told The Guardian: “I totally disagree with her.” Citing the disproportionate use of stop and search tactics on black people, he added: “Yes, the police are institutionally racist.”
Mr Lawrence’s comments came as the Met’s assistant commissioner urged his fellow officers to “stand up to racists, to inequality and injustice”.
In an open letter to his UK colleagues, Neil Basu wrote: “Despite how far we have come we must confront the fact that with many of our communities – especially the black community – we still have a long way to go”.
