EX1 - bad apples and all that. Not dismissing it, but there always will be one or two in a big organisation.
EX2 - Two former TOP BLACK OFFICERS - careers blighted, really?
EX3 - One mixed-race officer, whose father is Jamaican and who would prefer not to be named, tells me that his childhood on a rough and ethnically diverse south London council estate was largely themed by a distinction between law enforcement and everyone else. “There was them, and then there was us,” he says. If you already percieve 'the babylon' as the enemy it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. I think we need to resolve the issue of the 'ethnically diverse council estate' being 'rough' and
EX4 - fair enough, no answer to that.
EX5 - I nearly didn't bother as the first para in a paper apparently about racism in the UK force began with the sentence 'who killed George Floyd'. Interestingly the stats on BAME officers reflect the general population circa 1999, but not now as it has doubled from 7-14%. It may just be 'lag' or there may be an issue - particularly with senior positions. Not sure what is to be done - we've seen some of the issues with positive action / positive discrimination with single sex shortlists to address sexism. I'm not sure they would be any less fraught with difficulty if used to address racism.
For what it's worth I'm a member of an organisation that was male only until 1990. I can hand on heart say it is now not remotely sexist, and although 'shop floor' membership is pretty much 50/50, the senior positions are still male dominated. Some of this is just a matter of time / numbers. I wonder what percentage of any police officers make it to the most senior ranks? - if you then take 7% of that number it may be somewhere between 0-1 which would explain there being no BAME representation at the top. The two in your second example seemed to do ok though?
In short there are racists in an organisation as big as the police, just as I'm sure there are thieves, murderers, paedos and rapists. I still feel the police are being scapegoated though and the whole George Floyd thing and the rest of the US goings on are a distraction. Young black men in SE London particularly are stopped disproportionately, and are probably committing a disproportionate amount of crime. No sooner had stop and search been reduced than the met faced calls to 'do something' about young black men carrying knives (from the black community). What we need to solve is the issue of black men in particular being denied opportunity and sucked into crime. That would involve real change and a redressing of fundamental fairness in the country -I get frustrated with the BLM crusade against the police, statues, and to an extent stop and search because I think these are all symptoms or distractions rather than the disease. The people who wish to preserve the status quo will be delighted if a few old statues, rule Brittannia, and the police take the rap for this so they don't have to make any actual improvements in the UK or to the lives of black people within it.
