Police attitudes to race 'frozen at core'

Britain's police remain in the grip of racist behaviour and attitudes, a damning report today reveals.

The Commission for Racial Equality attacked the service for failing to change five years after the Macpherson report into the murder of teenager Stephen Lawrence.

While senior management were willing to reform, the change was not being translated into action further down. "The police is thawing on the top, but still frozen solid at the core," the report said.

The CRE recommended stripping police forces of their responsibilty for race equality and instead putting the Home Office in charge of how police forces and authorities deal with race diversity.

The CRE launched an investigation in December 2003 after the BBC TV documentary The Secret Policeman exposed racism among recruits at a police training centre. Ten officers resigned and 12 face disciplinary action as a result.

The inquiry team, headed by former-director of public prosecutions-Sir David Calvert-Smith QC, revealed the findings in today's report.

He said that the police had made " significant progress" but declared: "There is still a long way to go before we have a service where every officer treats the public and their colleagues with fairness and respect regardless of

their ethnic origin.

"Willingness to change at the top is not translating into action lower down, particularly in middle-management where you find the ice in the heart of the police service."

The inquiry found that none of the organisations examined complied fully with their race equality duty.

The report did not name individual forces, but sources close to the inquiry warned that the CRE was ready to "name and shame" the worst performers if they failed to address their concerns.

Trevor Phillips, the CRE chairman, said: "I recognise that we will never be able to weed out every single racist, but if we can change the culture of the police service so that racists are made to feel uncomfortable and isolated, fewer and fewer recruits of the sort so graphically displayed in The Secret Policeman will want to sign up."

ACPO race and diversity spokesman Peter Fahy, the chief constable of Cheshire Police, said: "Only our harshest critics would fail to acknowledge the progress made since the Stephen Lawrence report."

He said police had launched a series of initiatives to improve the recruitment, selection and training of officers. All forces now used a national assessment process to screen out racists.

However, there was a danger that "the current climate has created a defensive attitude to race and diversity", Mr Fahy warned.