NOT MUCH COP
Police recruitment slated after it’s revealed only 253 officers are of BAME background
Just 253 of Police Scotland’s 17,693 officers are from BAME backgrounds, the force has admitted.
The figures – released in response to a Sunday Mail enquiry – show a tiny 1.4 per cent come from the black, Asian and minority ethnic community compared with 86 per cent who are “white British”.
The last census carried out in Scotland in 2011 found four per cent of the population were from ethnic minority groups, with the figure likely to have increased over the past nine years.
Pol ice Scot land a lso revealed none of its executive team of senior officers are from the BAME community.
Labour’s justice spokesman James Kelly MSP said: “The under-representation of BAME people is unacceptable and it is very troubling to hear that not a single member of the executive team is from a BAME background.
“Police Scotland must reflect the diverse and vibrant nation that it polices and it is the duty of senior officers to encourage BAME people to apply and to help facilitate their career progression. Recent events around the world have underlined the importance of a population feeling represented by their police force.”
Scottish Conservative deputy leader Annie Wells said: “These numbers a re disappointing and we need to see them changing soon. It doesn’t matter how many gestures or positive statements the Scot t ish Government makes – it’s action that’s required.
“We need our police force to reflect the population and, as it stands, from a BAME perspective, that’s not the case.” Of its 5455 civilian staff, Police Scotland has just 87 BAME employees – 1.6 per cent of the total workforce. A number of officers and civilian staff chose not to disclose their ethnicity for the Police Scotland figures – 7.4 per cent for officers and 4.1 per cent for civilians – while a small number weren’t recorded for other reasons.
Deputy Chief Constable Fiona Taylor insisted the force was working to improve representation of minority groups.
She said: “We are committed to relentlessly improving how we reflect, represent and engage with our communities, and recognise the need to increase recruitment from underrepresented groups across all ranks and grades in Police Scotland.
“A dedicated team to increase the diversity of candidates applying to
Police Scotland, including from BAME backgrounds, was established in 2017.”
The 2011 census found 84 per cent reported their ethnicity as “White Scottish” and a further eight per cent as “White Other British”.
Minority ethnic groups and white non-British groups, meanwhile, made up eight per cent of the population.
Rallies by Black Lives Matter took place in Edinburgh and Glasgow earlier this month. They followed the death of 46-year-old George Floyd in the US.
He died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes whi le he was being ar rested in Minneapolis last month.