The Police Race Action Plan must introduce measures to end racial disproportionality in police powers. This is not possible without taking the necessary first step of acknowledging that the police force is institutionally racist, in line with the Baroness Casey Review.
The Macpherson Inquiry 1999, which investigated the Metropolitan Police Service’s mishandling of the investigation into Stephen Lawrence’s murder, identified that institutional racism ‘persists because of the failure of the organisation openly and adequately to recognise and address its existence and causes by policy, example and leadership’. The consequences of failing to acknowledge institutional racism in policing are, therefore, profound: ‘without recognition and action to eliminate such racism, it can prevail as part of the ethos or culture of the organisation’.
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