Interview with Ali Dizaei

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Commander Ali Dizaei, National Association of Black Police Officers

ANDREW MARR: Now, like politicians, policemen in Britain who get to the top are overwhelmingly white.

Commander Ali Dizaei is one of the very few exceptions.

He was accused of corruption and very nearly thrown out of the force. But he was finally cleared in the case that some people think was racially motivated.

Ali Dizaei was recently elected Chair of the National Association of Black Police Officers, and a few weeks ago at the fifth attempt, promoted to Commander of the Met, and is now in charge of some of the most sensitive and high profile operations in the capital. Commander Dizaei thank you for coming in.

Let's start with a little bit of the, of the astonishing biography, the corruption case against you went on for a very long time, cost millions of pounds. Do you think it was racially motivated/

ALI DIZAEI: Yes. I think it was. I was delighted that we went through a process, we went through the court and one of the wonderful things about this country is that we have a judicial system which is unbiased and everybody has an opportunity to say their piece. And I'm delighted that members of the jury decided that there was no foundation in the allegations. I was found not guilty and I'm delighted that it's now in the past and I'm moving forward.

ANDREW MARR: It is in the past, but of course you have to work alongside some of the people who were accusing you and were after you, is that difficult?

ALI DIZAEI: It is difficult, but we are professional people, we joined the police service in order to serve the community, and it's really very important that we don't allow our personal differences to get in the way that we actually do our job.

ANDREW MARR: Now the chief copper up in Cheshire, Mr. Fahy, has said that he believes there is institutional racism and there's quite often what he describes as whispering campaigns against black officers trying to get promoted. They're regarded as not being quite one of the lads, or the women, not entirely like everybody else, regarded with suspicion. Is that fundamentally your perception of what's going on in the police forces like the Met?

ALI DIZAEI: We hear a lot of anecdotal evidence and representations from black and Asian officers and support staff, up and down the country, that they have to work twice as hard to be recognised, and do half as much to be criticised.

They believe there is a selection process which is based on acceptability rather than suitability. And I think it's very important for the police service to get a hold on that and as a result I have written to Sir Ronnie Flanagan asking him to do an inspection of the way recruitment and progression of ethnic minority officers take place within UK. And the reason that is important...

ANDREW MARR: Just to be clear, you're saying that the police are still institutionally racist?

ALI DIZAEI: Yes they are. We are less institutionally racist than ten years ago. Have we got a clean bill of health? No. Is it within our grasp? Possibly. And I think the reason this is very important, and I think politicians ought to really take this very seriously, because there is direct correlation in the way the police service looks in terms of this composition, and the way we deliver a service to our community.

ANDREW MARR: You have become Commander at the fifth attempt, which of itself suggests that you are abnormally tough and determined to keep going when other people might have given up long ago. Was it frankly humiliating to have to do, go through that process five times, and do you accept, some people say about you that you are, you were just a little bit too over-confident if I can put it that way, a little bit too cocky?

ALI DIZAEI: Yes, well I mean, clearly all of us aspire to achieve and get to our level of competence. I always believed that I could do this job. I was hugely supported by my line managers. It was unfortunate that I couldn't convince the police authority that I could do it, and therefore I kept on and on, delighted that I got through on the last occasion.

ANDREW MARR: Now you've got, you're in charge of a great swath of west London and north London where a lot of the knife crimes and a lot of the trouble that we've been talking about earlier on in the programme, take place. Don't you think that when people say we need more stop and search, the police should be given more powers and have to think less about paperwork, that that is one of the crucial ways forward?

ALI DIZAEI: Yes it is. I think it's very important to state clearly that stop and search is simply a tool which we can use in dealing with criminality and knife-related offences. However, it's not the silver bullet to deal with this issue. It is important that it's part and parcel of the much wider strategy, for example having knife arches, for example in terms of targeting our prolific offenders, making sure that we do our stop and searches in our hot spots.

If you do it that way then it's far more likely to be effective. And one thing which is also equally important, you've got to get the community on board. Otherwise in order to appease public opinion you may cause tension within that community which later on will come back and bite you.

ANDREW MARR: So do you have reservations about stop and search being too widely used? What about those who say that the police are hampered by too much paperwork when it comes to those kind of acts?

ALI DIZAEI: I've no reservations about stop and search being widely used provided it is intelligence-led, and provided it is done scientifically with a purpose, and clearly monitored. In terms of bureaucracy I'm the first one who's going to jump and shout from the rooftops "we need less bureaucracy".

But it's really very important to bear in mind that every time politicians suggest something new for police officers to do, that in itself creates more bureaucracy, so we need to square the circle.

On one hand we need to get rid of bureaucracy, on the other hand please bear in mind that if you're going to enforce certain policies and practices that inherently increases bureaucracy.

ANDREW MARR: All right, well good luck. Thank you for coming on, Commander Dizaei, thank you.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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