Positive Discrimination

In this piece on BBC News, Police heads are discussing the Positive Discrimination of Ethnic minorities, in order to meet the set quota of Black and Asian officers recruited to the Police Force by 2009.

I personally feel that this is wrong, to do a job effectively, one hires the best candidate for the position, whether the person is black, white, yellow or green with purple polka dots. To get the best from our ( and I stress our) Police Force, we need to know that we have the best for the job.

We as members of the public are policed by our consent. That is we give our permission and agree to abide by rules that benefit us all, for the good of society as a whole. Parliament may make the laws, but we still have to give our consent, to be ruled by these new laws. We can refuse as has happened in the past over the Poll Tax. Civil disobedience is a right we have, and when we feel aggrieved we can exercise this right.

We expect sometimes too much from our officers, after all they are only human. What we as members of the public want, is not ethnic monitoring or quotas, we want effective officers on the beat. We do not want target led policing, we want the officers out on the front line catching the bad guys. We want a Police Force we can be proud of, not one that is used for political ends, as is happening much to often these days.

We as members of the public, care not if the officer who stops us is black or white, we only care about manners, civility and respect. We expect the Police officer to be there when we need them, not in a station filling out forms.

Keith Jarrett, President of the National Black Police Association, said he supported the use of affirmative action.

He told the BBC: "If we look at Hounslow in London, it's a borough that is predominantly from a minority ethnic background.

"Now whilst my white colleagues are immensely qualified to do the job, I would put forward that Hounslow would be better served as a borough by a person from an Asian background, who has got culture in common with the local inhabitants, and perhaps speaks the same language."

I make no excuses for my thoughts and comments, and my first thoughts on Mr K Jarretts' statement about speaking the same language is "that is crap", they should have no need to speak any language other than English, that is the mother tongue of this country, and should the Asians, Blacks and East Europeans choose to live here, then they should learn the language. They have a duty to accept our culture, we only have an obligation to respect theirs. We are bending over much to far, the UK's language is English and English must be used!

Positive discrimination panders to the minorities belief that they have in some way been mistreated in the past, be it through colonialism in the past, or just perceived thoughts of racism. The Police have to prove to people that they can do the job without being racist, and regain the trust of all of the members of the public!

If our Police Force, which was once , one of the most trusted in the world goes ahead with Positive discrimination, we are as a nation on a very slippery slope. Next you will have white youths claiming discrimination because they were stopped by an Asian Officer, that his English wasn't good enough to understand, that he doesn't understand their culture.

If a person applies to join the Police Force it does not matter what his colour as long as he has the required qualifications and can do the job. If the ethnic minorities do not have the qualifications (which I seriously doubt) then they should not be in the police. In my mind I have a sneaky suspicion that the basic Policeman's salary is not enough to entice the ethnic minorities to apply for a position.