Scotland’s police chief admits force is ‘institutionally racist and discriminatory’

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Scotland’s most senior police officer admitted the force is “institutionally racist and discriminatory” and that acknowledging it was a crucial step in winning public trust and building an inclusive service.

Sir Iain Livingstone’s comments at a board meeting of the Police Authority of Scotland, which oversees policing in the country, prompted opposition parties to call for faster action to tackle discrimination and make it easier to report racist and sexist.

Policing behavior and culture across the UK has come under close scrutiny since the 2021 rape and murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens, who was a serving officer in the London Metropolitan Police, Britain’s largest force.

A review by Baroness Louise Casey in March he deemed the police force to be racist, sexist and homophobic, a characterization which Sir Mark Rowley, the head of the force, rejected.

Casey’s review was published nearly a quarter of a century after the Macpherson inquiry sparked by the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence found that the Met was institutionally racist.

“Police Scotland is institutionally racist and discriminatory,” Chief Constable Livingstone said on Thursday.

“Public acknowledgment of the existence of these institutional problems is essential to our absolute commitment to defending equality and becoming an anti-racist service.”

Livingstone’s admission that the force had problems with “racism, sexism, misogyny and discrimination” was praised by activists, opposition parties and Humza Yousaf, the Scottish first minister.

In May last year, Livingstone told a public inquiry into the death of Sheku Bayoh, a black man who died after being held by police in Fife in 2015, that he had pledged to make the force “anti-racist”.

“We are actively, sincerely, listening to underrepresented communities, within the police force and across our country and beyond, to understand how we can better serve them,” Livingstone added on Thursday.

“We are committed to regularly and actively challenge and change our policies and procedures to root out unwitting bias.”

Livingstone’s statement was an “unprecedented and important intervention,” said Maggie Chapman, justice spokeswoman for the Scottish Greens, who govern Holyrood with the Scottish National party.

Scottish Labor justice spokeswoman Pauline McNeill said the admission of Livingstone, who has been Chief of Police Scotland for most of its existence, revealed the slow pace of the transformation.

Livingstone was appointed Chief Constable of Scotland in August 2018, having served as Acting Chief since the previous September. This summer he should retire. The force was formed in 2013 after the merger of Scotland’s eight regional forces and a specialist crime and drugs agency.

Aamer Anwar, a prominent lawyer and activist representing the Bayoh family, said on Twitter that Livingstone’s statement was revenge for victims of racial violence and injustice. Yousaf said the statement was “monumental, historic”.