Racist police actions
Update, Monday 15 January 2007
This is a very old post but people are still finding it through Google searches and it needs an update. A group of people working with the council supported a Kurdish youth group. Something happened to one of the young people and issues were raised on this blog. A lot of positive work was done as a result - threats of legal action by the police have a tendency to motivate a blogger! By June the issues with the police were resolved (do look at this post).
The situations described are now well in the past. Readers of this blog are advised to click on the title (Advocacy Blog) and concentrate on more recent posts.
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Update, Thursday 20 April, 11:50 PM
This post has been temporarily removed while the Advocacy Action Committee considers threats of potential legal action by West Yorkshire Police.
Please see the Disclaimer for further information about the relationship between this blog and Advocacy Action.
There have been some positive discussions today about how to move forward on the issues that have been raised, and it has always been my intention to move forward positively. I would like to stress that I have never suggested that any individual officers are racist - the post refers to racist actions. (Just as I believe in my work with vulnerable people we cannot call any individual 'stupid', but we all do stupid things occasionally.)
There was one particular officer who was identified personally in a comment I attached to the original post. I have heard today that this officer was upset about being identified in this way and felt that they were thereby associated with the alleged racist actions. I am sorry for any upset caused by this misunderstanding, and can clearly say that after several years of working with this officer the thought would never cross my mind that they were themselves racist.
There will be further updates after due deliberation on the issues.
2 comments:
I spoke to the Kurdish boy straight after his release. I am very very concerned that the police do not have correct
information.
The article below gives some recent figures to what I here about regularly.
"Black people six times more likely to be targeted"
AN INVESTIGATION is to be held into why black people are six times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by West Yorkshire police.
West Yorkshire Police Authority yesterday members called for a comprehensive report to be carried out into the issue.
Members of the authority's community engagement committee heard how people from the Asian community are almost twice as likely to be stopped and searched as those who are defined as white.
Members of the black community are nearly six times as likely to be stopped.
The figures relate to an 11-month period from April 2005 to February this year. Out of almost 64,000 stops made by the region's officers, on average 20 per cent of all people stopped and searched by West Yorkshire Police are from ethnic minorities.
Data put before the same committee five months ago showed almost identical figures in relation to the high number of ethnic stop and searches.
At that meeting police chiefs admitted they had "no definitive answer" why a disproportionate number of black and Asian people in the region continue to be singled out by officers.
Authority member Naheed Dockrat called for a comprehensive report into the issue of "disproportionality".
She said: "This is having a negative effect on ethnic comm-
unities and raising lots of issues.
"It is even giving a negative image of the police to children at school at a time when police are already having problems recruiting ethnic minority officers.
"I would like to see a report
to see what we are doing other
than trying to train officers.
Chief Supt Phil Read, head of community safety, said there were no clear-cut answers why the figures remained high.
He said the figures reflected trends across many forces in the country, but denied West Yorkshire was a racist force.
This was published in March 2006.
It is about time these issues were taken a lot more seriously.
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