Only since 1998 and onwards the force has doubled the proportion of ethenic minority officers. The laws changed and allowed pursue positive discrimination, equal opportunities and the number of females made available to the police force has increased. It is understood to take the form of a less direct form of preferences.
Positive discrimination often confuses people who find a contradiction in applying discrimination in favour of women in order to remove inequality against them. By contrast, it is argued that these measures are not taken simply to ‘prefer’ women rather than to ensure full equality in practice in a more effective manner.
Many people think the police force should be able to use positive discrimination rather than positive action to recruit and promote more people from black, female, and other minority groups. This is because they think black officers should take over the white and will be able to fight for it. The scheme they want is black, asian and female officers to be offered more than a constable, they would want them to be up to the rank of an inspector. The scheme meaning decisions on selection not being made alone but also on race and gender. On the other hand some think the opposite of this and think they should rather use action. The reason for this is because a number of white police officers claimed they have been discriminated against the colour of their skin and resentful white’s convinced they are the ones being overlooked for promotion. ‘I would like to see a better, less racist environment for black officers within the police rather than recruiting people into a racist environment that they live’. This is a complaint of black officers being victimized for trivial offences.
In my point of view I think the police force should be able to use positive discrimination rather than positive action because people fight against terrorism is more difficult because there are too few ethnic minority officers to make links with communities who may hold vital intelligence. It will help the police to tackle terrorism and serious crime more effectively. ‘You need to have a relationship with local community before they have the confidence to bring anything to concern to you. Its about having officers from that background who can create good relationships in the first place as local beat officers’. I think they should have the proportions of officers from ethnic minority communities as the area they serve. I also agree that when making decisions, there should be a range of race and gender. As overall as my opinion I think the law should change ethnic minority black officers through positive discrimination.
Positive discrimination is the selection of a candidate for a position on the grounds of race, sex or colour rather than merit alone. If positive discrimination is introduced it will lead the police force to have more communication and representatives. The police force will have both sex and a racial mix. It will be really useful in areas where there are a high percentage of ethic minorities. ‘Police action policies’ in the police force was already an issue, and people want to see ethnic minorities getting jobs in specialised areas and chief officers positions. There should be able to manage that as well. As a police authority, their duty is to maintain an efficient and effective police service. They should be improving and should discuss the possible future policing. So overall there should not be able to reject people.
