How do police forces break down by ethnic minority officer strength?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/jan/28/police-force-ethnic-minority-officers

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Greater Manchester chief constable, Sir Peter Fahy has called for a new law to force police to tackle the diversity crisis at the top of policing. Crime correspondent Sandra Laville writes today:

Police forces should be made to positively discriminate in favour of black and ethnic minority officers in the face of a growing diversity crisis, according to one of the country's leading chief constables.

The radical proposal – which would mean a change in the law – from Sir Peter Fahy, of Greater Manchester, comes in the face of what he said was an embarrassing paucity of black and minority ethnic officers (BME) at the top of British policing.

The Home Office publish annual statistics on police service strength in England and Wales. According to the most recent publication, there were 6,679 ethnic minority police officers (as at 31 March 2012). This accounts for 5% of all officers compared with 4.8% in March 2011. The chart below shows ethnic minority officers as a proportion of all officers from 2003-2012.

The data also shows that black and ethnic minority (BME) officers are under-represented at senior ranks compared with the rest of the service. BME officers accounted for 3.7% of officers at the rank of chief inspector or above compared with 5.4% of constables. The bar chart below shows BME police officer strength (including central service secondments) by rank.

According to the Home Office statistics, the Metropolitan police had the largest proportion of BME officers at 10.1%, followed by West Midlands (8.3%) and the British Transport Police (7.4%).

Of the BME officers that stated their ethnicity, 39.1% classified themselves as Asian or Asian British, 21.3% as black or black British, 28.1% as mixed and 11.5% as Chinese or other ethnic group.

The table below shows ethnic minority police officer strength by force and shows how the proportion has changed since 2011. The downloadable spreadsheet also includes BME officer strength by rank and gender. What can you do with this data?

Data summary

Ethnic minority officer strength by police force area, as at 31 March 2012

Click heading to sort table. Download this data

Source: Home Office

Download the data

• DATA: download the full spreadsheet

• SOURCE: Home Office

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