Development of Black Police Associations: Changing Articulations of Race Within the Police

• NCJ Number: 208310
• Journal: British Journal of Criminology Volume: 44 Issue: 6 Dated: November 2004 Pages: 854-865
• Author(s): Simon Holdaway; Megan O'Neil
• Date Published: November 2004
• Length: 12 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Historical Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This paper examines the initial development of Black Police Associations in England and Wales, with attention to the first association, the Metropolitan Police Black Police Association.

Abstract

The authors focus on the change from an understanding of race relations within the police as a problem of individuals to an institutional problem, with the role of Black Police Associations as an aspect of this perception. Studies of serving and former ethnic-minority police officers conducted in the 1980's and early 1990's, before police associations began, documented their significant experience of racial prejudice manifested in various ways in their work experience. Individual ethnic-minority officers mostly developed personal ways of coping with such discrimination, without assistance or advice from more experienced peers. Their dominant experience was isolation. A number of ethnic-minority officers took specific cases of discrimination to court and won, often with an award of substantial damages. These cases gave a public face to racial discrimination in police agencies and led to increased attention to the problem by the Home Office, which eventually impacted the attention of local agencies to the problem. This paper describes how the efforts of the Metropolitan Police management personnel to increase positive interactions between Black and White police officers in fact led to an increased recognition of the racially based perceptions of and ways of addressing the problem. The informal network of Black officers that emerged from various management-sponsored seminars led to the formation of a Black Police Association. This paper argues that the emergence of Black Police Associations is a new way of addressing the existence of racial issues in British police agencies and involves a common perception of Black officers that race/ethnicity is an ongoing issue in agency policies and practices that requires an organized analysis and response. 19 references