Police Scotland chief constable says force is institutionally racist

Police Scotland is institutionally racist and discriminatory, its chief constable, Sir Iain Livingstone, has said in a public acknowledgement that has been welcomed by campaigners but prompted calls for action.

“It is right for me, as chief constable, to clearly state that institutional racism, sexism, misogyny and discrimination exist,” Livingstone told a meeting of the Scottish Police Authority on Thursday morning.

“Publicly acknowledging these issues exist institutionally is essential to our absolute commitment to championing equality and becoming an anti-racist service.”

This makes Police Scotland the largest force to make such a public acknowledgement, although chief constables with the Bedfordshire force and the British Transport Police have made similar statements, and there have been regular calls for the Metropolitan police to do likewise after the damning Casey review.

At first minister’s questions, Humza Yousaf described the statement as “monumental and historic”, recalling his own experiences of being stopped and searched by police as a young man, and adding it was “so important we now see action.”

This week the first report of an independent review group detailed first-hand accounts from officers and staff of racism, sexism and homophobia, as well as people being “punished” or “sidelined” for raising concerns.

Livingstone, who is retiring in August, stressed that the force should now “move beyond words and focus on action”, but one of the women at the forefront of exposing misogyny in the ranks asked why it had taken him so long to speak out.

Rhona Malone, a former firearms officer, received nearly £1m in damages last year after an employment tribunal found she had been victimised by a “horrific” boys’ club culture in the force’s elite armed response unit.

Malone told the Guardian she welcomed the statement, and hoped it would help serving officers, but added: “Why now – when the information and intelligence has been there for years, and women’s lives have been ruined – when he could have intervened?”

Last year the Guardian reported on growing concerns that the force has a systemic problem with misogynistic bullying.

After the independent review noted “scepticism and even outright fear” about raising issues formally, Malone said changing the complaints procedure should be a priority. “There is still no protection for whistleblowers. There needs to be an independent complaints procedure that would really target the culture that nurtures bad behaviour.”

Livingstone’s statement came midway through an independent inquiry into the death of a black man in police custody. Livingstone told the board he had made a “personal commitment” that Police Scotland would be anti-racist to the family of Sheku Bayoh, who died after being restrained by officers on a Kirkcaldy street in 2015.

The Bayoh family’s lawyer, Aamer Anwar, said they wanted to “thank the chief constable for raising his voice for the truth and being brave enough to say what black and Asian communities have known for decades”.

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He added: “Our communities are tired of grieving at gravesides, tired of trying to prove structural racism exists. Policing by consent is the pillar of any civilised democracy and today is an opportunity for a fundamental reset and restoring trust with all our communities.”

On Wednesday, a pathologist who had been involved in a recent re-investigation into the Hillsborough disaster told the inquiry that haemorrhaging on Bayoh’s body was similar to that sustained by people in crowd crushes.

Livingstone told board members that Sir William Macpherson’s definition of institutional racism, set out in the 1999 report into the killing of Stephen Lawrence, was a “very demanding test to satisfy” but was also “often misinterpreted or misrepresented as unfair and personal critical assessment of police officers and police staff as individuals”.

He said his acknowledgement of institutional discrimination “absolutely does not” mean police officers and staff are racist or sexist, adding that he had “great confidence in the character and values of our people”.

But Livingstone said: “There is no place in Police Scotland for those who reject our values and standards.” He pointed to a four-year strategy, Policing Together, launched last year to tackle discrimination in the force and in the community.

Before Thursday’s meeting, the lead officer for Policing Together announced mandatory leadership training for thousands of officers, from chief superintendents to sergeants, aimed at tackling “canteen culture”.