One of the highest-ranked former black police officers in Britain has accused chiefs of a "staggering" failure of leadership over their handling of racism complaints.
Dr Victor Olisa, a former borough commander in the Met Police, said that new data uncovered by The Mirror should raise alarm bells across British policing.
Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that less than three per cent of the thousands of complaints alleging racial-motivated misconduct against police staff were upheld by forces in the past five years.
And the data reveals an alarming level of variation - with nearly half of complaints upheld in Cheshire, compared to just 1.6 per cent by the Met Police.
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After seeing the data, Dr Olisa said: "I'm staggered.
"This suggests there's a widespread problem in the police service.
"These aren't the type of complaints that someone would make easily, you'd seriously have to think about making an allegation like this.
"Clearly there's no oversight from (police watchdog) the IOPC or central government, or someone would be asking why there's so much variation.
"All of it is just absolutely staggering."
Data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows that 5,169 complaints were lodged to 39 police forces between 2015 and 2020, but just 153 were upheld.
Dr Olisa branded it "astonishing" and said: "The police can't make an argument that 5,000 people have made malicious complaints.
"These will not have been trivial or vexatious complaints, it looks like police police are really lacking in tacking this seriously."
Dr Olisa warned that the UK is becoming more like the US, where violence against black people has sparked protests around the world.
His former force, the Metropolitan Police, received the highest number of official complaints of all forces in England and Wales, with 1,368 claims investigated - although less than 2% were upheld.
He told The Mirror that this was "disproportionately low", and said people do not put in complaints lightly.
Dr Olisa said: "People are reluctant because they don't think police will take it seriously or they believe that if they make a complaint they will be targeted by officers.
"I just feel that if word gets round that such a small number is upheld, people will think it's just not worth complaining."
And he said it is not enough for chief constables to simply dismiss rogue officers as "bad apples".
He said: "If the vast majority of officers are fine, which they are, why are the vast majority silent when they see these things happening?
"Where is the leadership in this? That's what worries me.
"There's a lot of questions at leadership level about why these complaints are coming in.
"It's absolutely a failure of leadership."
And he said there were alarming parallels between the way police treat members of ethic minorities between the UK and the US.
He said: "I don't think we're that far behind the US, people say we don't use as much force, our police use tasers instead of lethal weapons.
"The mindset seems to be very similar, we've moved to law enforcement rather than policing by consent.
"It's no co-incidence that the use of force against black and brown people seems to have gone up over the last two years."
Police forces deny that the figures are a sign of systematic failings.
Chief Constable Craig Guildford, lead for complaints and misconduct, at the National Police Chiefs Council, said the variation between the proportion of upheld cases is "expected".
He said: “Whilst complaints of racism are extremely low in number each one is still taken very seriously by our professional standards departments and the Independent Office for Police Conduct.”
"Racism complaints are very low in number and vary from force to force. Consequently the variation in the numbers upheld is to be expected."
He rubbished allegations of institutional racism within UK police forces, saying: “The police service welcomes scrutiny and wherever there is evidence of misconduct we will always take appropriate action. Equally, when an investigation finds no evidence, it is important that this is also reported.”
Individual forces have defended their records on investigating allegations of racism.
In a statement to The Mirror, the Met Police said: "Where we get it wrong, we fully investigate to determine whether the conduct of officers has breached the standards of professional behaviour.
"If standards are proven to have fallen below what is expected, we take appropriate action and ensure that lessons are learnt from each case."
IOPC Discrimination Lead and London Regional Director Sal Naseem said: “We reject the assertion that nothing is being done to tackle how the police respond to complaints of discrimination. Discrimination and the disproportionate use of police powers are a matter of concern which we have raised many times.
“In 2019/20 we upheld over one-third of appeals with race discrimination as factor, a clear demonstration of how we are exercising oversight of the complaints system. Last July, we announced work on race discrimination to identify the trends and patterns that might help drive the meaningful changes needed.
“We are looking at how the police respond to complaints as part of our discrimination work, as well as investigating more cases where there is an indication that use of policing powers are disproportionality impacting members of Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities or where people from BAME communities have felt unfairly treated by the police.
“Oversight of complaints on areas of public concern cannot just be driven nationally. We strongly support a local and national approach, where police forces also take responsibility for reviewing and responding to concerns and have previously called on Police and Crime Commissioners to provide more transparency and assurance to local communities on how complaints are being scrutinised.”
