The Chief Constable of Cheshire, Peter Fahey, has said that “whispering campaigns” might be happening to prevent black or asian police officers from getting promoted and has called for a “fairer” system to ensure more of them get promotions.
Fahey has previously called for a change in the law so that police forces will be able to operate quota on promotions to ensure that more black and asian officers are promoted.
The BBC says that only 7 out of more than 200 senior police officers are black or asian. What they fail to mention is what percentage of police officers are black or asian. If it’s more than 3.5% then it’s possible, based on the law of averages, that they are being overlooked but if it’s less than 3.5% then they’re already over-represented.
So what percentage of police officers are black or asian? According to this 2006 report by the Internet Journal of Criminology it’s 3% so the 3.5% of senior police officers that are black or asian is actually and over-representation and Fahey wants to introduce more discrimination against white officers to ensure that black and asian officers are even more over-represented.
Technorati Tags: Police, Racism, Discrimination, Peter Fahey
No-one ever looks at these sorts of issues in this way. It somewhat pisses me off.
What percentage of the population is ‘black?’
The problem is, it is all concentrated in wee lumps, how many non whites are their in cornwall? How many are their in the ‘Rivers of Blood’ place (Wolverhampton?)? it will be different from the national averages.
This is a case of Lies, damned lies and statistics, where the numbers can be made to mean anything the user wants. Look at friend Deman and his success rate of using skewed statistics to his financial gain.
What does BME mean?
BME is Black/Ethnic Minority. I think nationally BME makes up 11% of the population. In places like Wolves it’ll be higher – there are areas of Wolverhampton that are almost exclusively black or asian. Whitmore Reanes is one of them – a lot of asylum seekers are housed in that part of Wolves. Of course, there are parts that are almost exclusively white. THe whole area round First Avenue (can’t remember the name of the area now) is a white area, real salt of the earth types if you know what I mean. Great place to sell cable … ah, memories.
3.5% of BME senior officers is below the percentage of the population that is BME but the percentage of police officers that are BME is what matters when considering this statistic and I really wouldn’t want the police to enforce that kind of quota – I’d much rather they employed the best people for the job regardless of colour.