Sir Ian Blair dismissed favouring non-white applicant recruits to the Met as "yesterday's solution" at a National Black Police Association debate yesterday.
The recruitment bus rolls into Trafalgar Square's Diwali celebrations this weekend to demonstrate the Met's policy of targeting their recruitment at black and Asian communities. As they say, The better we reflect London's diverse communities, the better we're able to serve them. The Met is still struggling to represent London, however, and looks unlikely to hit its target of raising the number of officers from ethnic minorities to the Home Office's 7% target by 2009.
Positive discrimination to boost diversity was never really on the cards but "affirmative action", mooted back in April, sounded a pragmatic option that could have been implemented for those from under-represented communities and to boost the number of female police officers in the force whilst not jeopardizing the calibre of candidate.
Whilst Sir Ian says that action of this kind is "fraught with difficulties" and the Home Office did not support it, it is clear that life in the Met as a non-white officer is also fraught with difficulties given that just a fortnight ago ethnic minority recruits were being warned off a career in the Met by a seasoned, black police officer with a torrid tale of victimisation and discrimination.
This is a tough nut the Met has to crack. No wonder the Commissioner looks so depressed all the time.
Image courtesy of moonhouses' Flickrstream.
