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Racism charges (1)

01 January 1991

Racism charges
artdoc March=1995

Three police in Manchester's community relations department face
disciplinary charges of racism after complaints that racist
attacks were trivialised and offensive language used against
complainants. A community officer, Michael Reid, now retired,
compiled a 14-page dossier of examples of racism among the
community relations police, such as their description of Moss
Side and Hulme residents as `wall-to-wall shit'. In 1993 there
were 172 complaints of racism, resulting in one recommendation
for a disciplinary charge. The Police Complaints Authority (PCA)
is investigating 17 complaints of racist and aggressive policing
arising from one incident outside a nightclub in January 1993.
The disciplinary charges mark the drawing of the battle lines
in Chief Constable David Wilmot's `crackdown on racism', which
has seen a police constable fined two days pay and given a
warning for calling a prisoner `nigger'. The Chief Constable's
initiative involves logging all stops and searches carried out
in Moss Side, which resulted in the finding that black people
were stopped and searched twice as often as whites, and his
acknowledgement that some policing of the area is `heavy-handed',
which has brought howls of protest from his own officers.
Divisional Commander Andrew said the PCA's advice on rebuilding
community trust in the police as `naive nonsense'.
Independent, 22.11.94; Guardian, 26.11.94; Police Complaints
Authority press release, 21.11.91.

Statewatch, Vol 4 no 6, November-December 1994