Statistics released today from the Home Office have shown that virtually all UK Police Forces are still showing strong discrimination against criminals.
Stuart Mycroft, Equalities Officer with the Met Police said that, whilst today’s figures show that the force still has a lot of work to do, over the last few years they had made a lot of progress detaining and arresting innocent people. “In addition to detaining, arresting and generally harassing innocent citizens, we in the Met have been undertaking a number of in-house trials where guilty criminals are overlooked. These trials focussing mainly on senior Officers and the Territorial Support Group have developed techniques that, even in situations where there is a wealth of evidence, no arrests are made and nobody brought to trial (many being rewarded with extended holidays on full pay)”.
ACPO pointed out that it is essential that forces work with the courts to address the issue. They pointed out that is very difficult for officers on the beat to be motivated to arrest innocent people when, after going through all the associated paperwork, when brought before a court they are just released. Similarly, an officer might spend several hours manufacturing evidence only to have it rejected by a court.
Politicians from all parties were quick to emphasise that anti–discrimination legislation should apply to all sectors of the population and that the Police clearly had to update their working practice to eliminate such discrimination.
Next week statistics on university entrants is expected to show a strong discriminatory trend towards the acceptance of students.
