Met fast-tracks women to end 'white macho culture'

Scotland Yard is to introduce a scheme to boost the tiny number of ethnic-minority officers and women who work in specialist squads, such as the Anti-Terrorist Branch, or as senior detectives.

Concern that plain-clothes detectives in the CID and specialist operational teams, such as the Paedophile Unit and Special Branch, are dominated by white men has prompted Britain's biggest police force to set up the country's first training course for non-white officers and women.

The scheme is being introduced as Metropolitan Police figures reveal that there are only 17 black and Asian officers in senior detective ranks – equivalent to 0.25 per cent of the workforce – and just 47 women.

Reasons given for the failure of more ethnic-minority officers and women to break into the higher echelons are the unsociable hours, poor prospects of promotion, and an old boy's network of white male detectives.

The need for action is revealed in figures for the Met's workforce last month.

They show that there were 17 ethnic-minority officers in the senior plain-clothes ranks of detective chief superintendent, detective superintendent, detective chief inspector, and detective inspector, out of the total of 668 – roughly 0.25 per cent. This compares with 40 uniformed ethnic minority officers in the same ranks. There were were 47 women (7.5 per cent) and 621 men holding the same senior detective ranks, compared with 88 women in senior uniformed positions.

The Met is introducing a training course, which will last from three to nine months, to help 15 uniformed officers a year to move to a detective branch. At least one other big city police force is expected to set up a similar programme. But the scheme is bound to meet objections from some officers, particularly white men who have failed to get into the CID, or specialist operations teams. Detectives who have failed to win promotion may also feel resentment.

The Met will contact all the women and ethnic-minority inspectors and chief inspectors – about 120 – and ask them to apply for the new "female and ethnic-minority detective training course". Successful applicants will be seconded to different detective roles and given specialist training.

The managers of the course stress that officers who complete the training will not automatically become detectives and will have to apply for the jobs alongside their white, male, colleagues.

Darren Bird, a diversity manager at the Met, said: "In the past, the perception was of a white, male-dominated macho culture which didn't lend itself to ethnic or female officers. Specialist operation departments have done a lot of work over the past few years to redress these imbalances."

Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Jarratt, one of the founders of the course, said the "macho culture of the CID" was a "belief rather than a reality". He said increasing the number of women and ethnic-minority officers in the higher ranks of senior detectives should provide "fresh ways of thinking and bring in some key talent as well".

The Metropolitan Police has been one of the few success stories in trying to recruit and train more ethnic-minority officers although it still has a long way to go to meet the Home Office target to have a quarter of the force staffed by non-white officers. The number of black and Asian police in the capital rose from 1,049 to 1,286 last year. Four forces saw the numbers fall.