Britain Revisits a Racist Death

...The report also points to a "lack of direction and organization during the first vital hours after the murder...

...People from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh make up less than 4.5 per cent of the British population and feel little cultural solidarity...

...In addition, to avoid a replay of the Lawrence investigation fiasco, a police rapid reaction unit is being set up to move in quickly where violent crimes against individuals are believed to have been racially motivated...

...To boot, as the Lawrence affair has highlighted, only 2 per cent of the police come from minority groups and barely a handful of those have risen to the rank of sergeant or higher...

...Norman Gelb reports regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...

...The majority of American blacks, of course, arrived in the New World before the forebears of most American whites, allowing for no question about their right to American identity...

...Under pressure to resign (he is due to retire next January), he has reluctantly admitted, too, that the London police force is institutionally racist, despite his efforts to rectify the situation...

...Sir William recommends that all British police forces take steps to increase trust and confidence among minority communities...

...Carl Josephs, who lives in Birmingham, says that while driving he has been stopped by the police 34 times in the last two years, though he has never been found to have done anything wrong...

...For example, the lawyers representing Stephen Lawrence's parents object to a proposed change in the law that could make acquitted defendants (like two of the suspects in the case who were tried and freed because of insufficient evidence) face double jeopardy when new evidence comes to light...

...But if the police have grounds for feeling singled out in a society no less racist than themselves, they have certainly failed to adequately recognize until now that they have to be cleaner than clean regarding community relations...

...QUESTIONS ABOUT SCOTLAND YARD Britain Revisits a Racist Death By Norman Gelb One night six years ago an 18year-old black, Stephen Lawrence, was stabbed and beaten to death on a South London street by a group of white youths shouting racial epithets...

...Furthermore, the report concludes that London's police force, and by implication police throughout Britain, are shot through with "institutional racism...

...Even Scotland Yard belatedly conceded that the senior investigating officers displayed dazzling incompetence...

...The police insist they are no more racist than the rest of British society—implying that some officers are racist and act in racist ways, but most are not and do not...

...Indeed, blacks are five times more likely to be interrogated than whites as part of the police's "stop and search" operations against crime...

...It is difficult to compare racism in Britain with its counterpart in the United States...

...London police officials, particularly the commissioner, Sir Paul Condon, are very much on the defensive these days...

...Objections have also been made to the proposal that racist language be criminalized even if it is uttered "otherwise than in a public place," a phrase that might be taken to extend to the privacy of a person's own home...

...Among other things, he intends to deploy undercover black and Asian officers in precincts where racism is suspected...

...Not surprisingly, spokesmen for the federation representing police officers are not happy with Sir William's report...

...To the family of the victim—a promising student who hoped to become an architect—to Britain's black community, and to many others here it appeared that much more was involved...

...Britain's black community dates back only some 50 years, when families began arriving from British colonies in the Caribbean to take up waiting menial jobs as the economy began recovering from the ravages of World War II...

...Scotland Yard's reputation for excellence is a myth created by detective novels...

...Nationally, the British government has also launched a campaign to combat racism by broadening existing antiracist legislation...

...In fact, there has been considerable public outrage at how some police officers have recently taken advantage of clean-slate early retirement at full pension to escape being brought before disciplinary hearings for messing up (several from the Lawrence case are an example), not to mention suspected corruption...

...Some criticism of the report's recommendations, though, is more substantive...

...It defines this as "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, culture or ethnic origin...

...Young black men complain that officers regularly question them in an accusatory manner for no good reason...

...Over a period of 10 months, he and his team interviewed everyone having any connection with the murder —including the five suspects, who declined to answer questions on the advice of their lawyers...

...It reveals that one of the investigating officers did not realize he could detain someone he had reasonable grounds to believe might be involved in the murder...

...Sir William Macpherson has accepted responsibility and apologized for putting those people in harm's way...

...The police received information identifying the likely killers, but they failed to take appropriate action for several weeks...

...Similarly, there are those who warn that the plan for promoting racial diversity would result in greater divisiveness in Britain, rather than greater tolerance...

...Another is described as reacting indifferently when the five primary suspects were implicated within 24 hours of the killing, then failing to provide witness protection for the informants though he knew they were being threatened...

...In the same vein, he would alter police training to heighten awareness of racism and cultural diversity...

...It notes that no police officer attempted to administer first aid upon arriving at the crime scene (although this was attributed to inadequate training...

...He has granted that the senior officers on the case acted ineptly and has not tried to hide his own embarrassment at not recognizing this earlier...

...Their contention is that they are being crucified because of one instance of stupidity which, though serious, has been blown up to falsely suggest a police culture of prejudice and wickedness...

...As Paul Barker, a Senior Fellow of the Institute of Community Studies here, has observed, "The police are so integral to the functioning of the state that racism [in their ranks] is doubly pernicious...

...By that time forensic evidence could no longer be checked out, possible witnesses had been terrorized, and no legally convincing case could be built...

...He would establish an independent agency to make certain racist incidents involving police are properly reported and acted upon immediately...

...And it deeply deplores the police failure to treat Stephen's parents with appropriate sensitivity when they were trying to come to terms with their son's violent death...

...It enjoys, at best, a fair-to-middling success rate in its war against crime...

...It was another act of gross incompetence of the sort that has marked the entire appalling episode...

...They warn that its sweeping condemnation of the police may, on the one hand, encourage young blacks to think of themselves as victims even when they are not, and, on the other, tempt police officers to act too passively in cases involving blacks...

...The immediate job of dealing with police racism in London has been assigned to Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Grieve, one of Scotland Yard's most experienced detectives and the former head of its antiterrorist unit...

...Blacks, who constitute roughly 1.5 per cent of the population, are divided between those of Caribbean and those of African origin...

...Sir William's report, released at the end of February, is a withering attack on the handling of the case and on racial attitudes in the London police force...

...British racists still look upon their country's ethnics as unwelcome intruders...

...Last April Sir William Macpherson, a distinguished retired judge, was finally appointed to undertake a thorough official inquiry...

...A third is shown to have avoided criticizing how the investigation was being handled because he thought it would damage police morale...

...In an effort to make the force more representative, a vigorous campaign to recruit blacks and Asians is now under way...

...Countering the racists is a problem because the ethnic communities lack muscle and are not cohesive...

...Sir Paul has humbly apologized to Lawrence's parents, whose determination to achieve justice has not diminished after keeping the murder investigation going for six years...

...Not only was young Lawrence's murder seen as a racist act, but police incompetence was attributed to prejudice as well...

...Certainly it is true that even the officers identified as having bungled the Lawrence investigation have no history of racist behavior...

...That egregious loophole will soon be closed...

...Nor is it unreasonable to assume they would have acted any differently if the murder victim had been white...

...The severest criticism of the report, however, concerned the inclusion, through an oversight, of the names and addresses of people who were prepared to give evidence against the notoriously violent youths suspected of murdering Stephen Lawrence...