Positive discrimination could encourage more black people to join the police so that our forces better represent their communities
Neil Basu is assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan policeI write this not as a 30-year serving police officer, an assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police service, a board member of the race and policing action plan group, or the chief constables’ non-executive director on the board of the College of Policing. I write this as the most senior police officer of colour in the UK. I write this as Neil Basu.
More accurately, I write this as Anil Kanti Basu – the mixed-race son of a white Welsh woman and a Bengali Hindu immigrant, invited to the UK on a medical scholarship in 1961 to help build our glorious NHS, Their subsequent treatment would have been entirely recognised by a post-Windrush community that still doesn’t trust the police. I write this with 54 years of lived experience of racism. I understand how they feel.
Continue reading...2024-09-20 07:32:31