Black and blue: The data on alleged police assaults makes plain the urgent case for much more representative forces across Britain

When confronted with the shocking news that more than 3,000 police officers are being investigated for alleged assault, it is hard not to be nostalgic for the gentler era of law enforcement symbolised by the 1950s TV series Dixon of Dock Green.

Constable George Dixon seemingly needed little more than common sense and a dose of human understanding to keep criminals in line in his patch of London. Fiction this may have been, but how rare and urgently needed both these traits seem in the real-life police forces of Britain today.

The police face great challenges, headed by a mix of budget cuts, fragmented community cohesion and the growth of gang culture. We also recognise the under-reported and under-appreciated fact that Britain is getting safer, the crime rate having largely fallen for 20 years.

But it is 10 years since the Macpherson report first raised the issue of “institutional racism”. Today – in the cases of the 3,000 police officers being investigated for alleged assault – black and Asian citizens are still three times more likely to have made the complaint than their white peers. Old habits, it seems, die hard.

Professor Lee Bridges at the University of Warwick’s School of Law recently analysed the figures disclosed by the Metropolitan Police for its Gangs Matrix, the intelligence database used to combat gang violence.

It showed 85 per cent of the capital’s gang members are believed to be black or Asian. The figure for white Londoners was only 439. This includes anyone engaged on an organised basis in “violence, criminal offending and gang membership” and is meant to feature all those involved in such organised crimes as drug-dealing, fraud, vice and football hooliganism.

The Met’s figure, it must be said, does not capture the entire picture. This matters as it is investigative tools such as the Gangs Matrix which are behind the Met’s new much-hailed “intelligence-led” investigating approach. If, as Professor Bridges’ analysis implies, there remains a racial bias in the statistics being used, then a racial bias is inevitable in its results, and therefore also in the mindset of the officers out on patrol armed with such information.

Greater London and the West Midlands, the UK’s two largest police forces, accounted for almost half of the assault cases under investigation. But in London, black, Asian and minority ethnic officers make up only 11 per cent of the force compared with 40 per cent of the population, while West Midlands Police admitted last month it had recently selected only one black officer from 162 recruits.

This newspaper rarely supports positive discrimination, believing it risks blocking the promotion of the ablest and feeding the resentment of those who feel ignored. But a situation can sometimes be so severe and urgent that it turns a bad principle into a necessary practice. Our police force is one such instance.

Last year the london Mayor, Boris Johnson, raised the prospect of half of all new Met police recruits coming in future from a minority ethnic background. The time has come for his successor to take the steps required to implement a similar policy, and for other forces with a similar disconnect between those serving and those communities being served to act likewise.

It is the common-sense approach, one that also shows a human understanding of the reality of modern Britain. Both should no longer be confined to fictional mid-20th-century police shows.