The mayor of London has warned the Metropolitan police that it has taken too long to stamp out prejudice in the ranks.
Sadiq Khan backed the Met’s new head of diversity, Ch Supt Victor Olisa, who used a Guardian interview on Tuesday to say police failings on race were damaging the force and leading to discrimination against its staff and the public it serves.
Olisa, who starts his new job next week, said reforms had been too slow and added that he feared discrimination was continuing and blocking ethnic minority officers, including himself, from winning promotion.
A spokesperson for Khan, who was elected in May, said the mayor would be looking for answers from Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the commissioner of the Met. “He (Khan) agrees that progress in this area over recent years has taken too long and over the coming months, he looks forward to working with the commissioner to do everything possible to create a Met that is as diverse as London’s population.”
Currently 12% of Met officers are from ethnic minorities, while London is 40% black and minority ethnic (BME), and that proportion is forecast to grow. It represents a 28 percentage point gap – the biggest in Britain – meaning the Met is short of thousands of ethnic minority officers.
Khan’s spokesperson added: “The mayor takes this issue extremely seriously, and is adopting a zero-tolerance approach to every type of discrimination. He wants to see a police service that looks like the communities it is charged with keeping safe – that all Londoners can identify with and have confidence in.”
Olisa moves to the role of the Met’s Strategic Lead for Diversity and Inclusion from his current post as borough commander in Haringey, north London, covering the Tottenham area, a flashpoint for police over decades, including dealing with the fallout from the Mark Duggan shooting and the 2011 riots.
He warned that the Met’s longstanding failings on race were damaging its legitimacy ability to police by consent, which is a central tenet of British law enforcement. The issue of race continues to haunt policing around the country, despite promises of reform stretching back decades.
The Met has previously backed positive discrimination to boost ethnic minority officer numbers, which Theresa May’s home office declined to support. Technically the Met is answerable to the mayor of London, and in effect also to the home secretary.
In his Guardian interview, Olisa said the Met was failing across the board on race, including at street level: “My view is that on occasions we work on stereotypes and that stereotypes of black men being more aggressive, more confrontational, is a stereotype that plays on some officers’ minds and that can lead to a different level of policing style and force being used on a black suspect than it probably would do otherwise.”
He said this may have been a factor in deaths after contact with the police, including cases such as Roger Sylvester and Cynthia Jarrett. He added: “If you look at the circumstances leading up to instances of some people who have died in custody, it points to a disproportionate level of force being used.”
