Supervising Black and Asian Officers

Abstract

Front-line supervisors work in close proximity to constables and can have a critical impact on the style of policing adopted by their shift. Black and Asian resigners, however, found their supervisors frequently locked into the rank-and-file team, ignoring and, in some instances, joining in racialist banter, failing to identify race issues in their routine work, and apparently ignorant of the problems faced by their colleagues. There was no malice on the part of supervisors in the vast majority of the examples of prejudice and discrimination related to us. We are not describing the antics of determined ‘racists’ who planned to racialise the workforce. That which was taken for granted, and articulated through mundane processes within the organisational and occupational cultural contexts of police work, sustained racialised relations and influenced the premature resignation of black and Asian officers.