Part 1: Importance of Diversity in Policing

[Supt Gavin Wong] Hi there, my name is Gavin Wong, I’m a Superintendent and I am the Police Commander for Slough police area.
[Supt Bhupinder Rai] Ok, my name is Bhupinder Rai, I am a Superintendent with Thames Valley Police, my current posting is that of an LPA Commander at the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead.
Today, I’m going to talk about diversity and how important it is to have people of all different cultures and backgrounds working for and working with the police.
[Supt Gavin Wong] Back in 1829, Robert Peel set up a number of principles for policing, for modern policing and one of those principles was that the police are the public and public are the police.
[Supt Bhupinder Rai] In order to police by consent, we have to be able to have the confidence of all of our communities and to be able to get the confidence of all of our communities, we need to be able to understand our communities, understand the sensitivities across the board across all of our communities.
[CC Francis Habgood] And the reality is, is if our communities look at policing and don’t see an organisation that looks like them then I do think it has an impact both in terms of confidence but also in terms of legitimacy and it’s the responsibility of all of us to do something about that.
[Supt Gavin Wong] Now when I joined the police service over 22 years ago, the amount of black and minority ethnic people in the service was only 5% and today… it’s 5%.
[CC Francis Habgood] In terms of BME officers and staff, 5% of our workforce comes from those communities against an economically active population of about 15% so there is still some way to go.
[Supt Bhupinder Rai] Our aspiration is to increase that, ideally we would like to have the same level of representation in policing as we have in our communities across the board. It may take some time to do that, but we are really committed to getting as closely represented to our communities as we can for all the things we just talked about.
[CC Francis Habgood] And there’s a real strength to UK policing in terms of having a diverse workforce and making sure that every section of our community has the confidence to be able to come and work and volunteer for us.
[Supt Gavin Wong] The reason why we need to reflect our community and we talk about diversity and why that is so important is that we know that, one, we need to reflect our society so we have the trust, so that we can work together but second, we also know that research tells us, the more diverse organisations at all levels of the hierarchy perform better and if we perform better, clearly we are doing a better service for our public and the public are what we serve.
[Supt Bhupinder Rai] The reason it’s really important is because if the community, all communities have confidence in us, they are prepared to talk to us, they are prepared to tell us about what is happening in their communities, they are prepared to report crimes to us, they are prepared to give us information, we are much more likely to be able to have a clearer picture of what is happening out there.
[Supt Gavin Wong] Now, as I said earlier, I cover Slough, which is the most diverse town outside of London. The population is over 50% minority ethnic and we need people who have got certain skills to help us communicate with our society whether that is through language or just an understanding of culture. But it’s important that we have those skills in order to make us a better and more reflective police service of the local community.
[Supt Bhupinder Rai] What you bring as a BME to Thames Valley Police is something that other people won’t necessarily bring, you bring an understanding, having lived in, having developed, having spent all of your life in communities that very many people in Thames Valley may not have spent. You will have that understanding, that real in depth knowledge about what works and what doesn’t work, what turns people off in your communities and what doesn’t. What it is that they would really like us to think about and what it is that we really want to be able to concentrate on that will help make them and other communities safer. That comes with living in communities, that comes with knowing those communities, that comes with growing up in those communities, that comes with having family, friends, social interactions, cultural traditions that you know and understand that other people may not understand in quite the depth that you do so you bring something really special to policing, something that is really important, not just from the community that you come from, but for all communities to help all communities be safer, from that knowledge and confidence that you will bring from the communities that you come from.