LONDON — The London Metropolitan Police will aim to hire 40 percent of new recruits from Black, Asian and other minority backgrounds by 2022, Mayor Sadiq Khan said on Friday, the centerpiece of a sweeping effort to make the city’s main police force more representative as it tries to address accusations of racism and discriminatory practices against minorities.
The plan also calls for the Metropolitan Police to take other measures to counter discrimination and racism, including a review of all traffic stops, after the force found that Black people were four times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched in their vehicles in London.
The police in London and cities around the world have come under increased scrutiny in recent months, and Mr. Khan said in an action plan that the Metropolitan Police should be more inclusive; work more closely with local communities; and gain the trust of minorities, who are treated differently than white Londoners.
In the report, Mr. Khan said that the Black Lives Matter protests this summer had highlighted the need to change the perceptions of the police, and that recent episodes had shed a new light on discriminatory practices that include the disproportionate use of force, including Tasers, and stop-and-frisk tactics.
“We must do more to improve Black Londoners’ trust and confidence in our police service, and ensure police powers don’t disproportionately impact them,” Mr. Khan said on Twitter.
In a rare public acknowledgment, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement on Friday that it recognized the pain felt by Black communities in London, and that it was “committed to eliminating the disproportionate use of force on Black Londoners.” Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, said that her force was “not free from racism or discrimination.”
By recruiting 40 percent of new officers from ethnic minority backgrounds by 2022, the Metropolitan Police said the goal was for 16 percent of the force to be from minority backgrounds by 2022, and 28 percent by 2030. There are currently 5,000 officers from ethnic minority backgrounds of a total of 32,600, compared with 3,000 a decade ago.
The killing of George Floyd and other Black men and women by the police in the United States and the widespread anger it set off has been sharply felt in Britain, where tens of thousands of protesters marched against police brutality this summer.
While Prime Minister Boris Johnson has acknowledged that there was “much more that we need to do” to tackle racism, it took him days to address the death of Mr. Floyd or the protests in London, and he accused some demonstrators of “thuggery.” Many have also found his recent declarations lacking credibility because of his past use of racist language.
Britain has a fraught racial history and in recent months several cities have faced a reckoning with their past, including Bristol, in southwestern England, a cosmopolitan cultural hub that was once a crucial port in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In June, protesters toppled a statue of a 17th-century slave trader, Edward Colston, and threw it in the city’s harbor. A British sculptor later replaced it with the statue of a local Black protester, but the city authorities had the new artwork removed after just one day.
The Metropolitan Police also have a long history of discriminatory conduct and shortcomings in investigating racially motivated crimes. One turning point came in 1999, when the force was accused of “pernicious and persistent institutional racism” by William Macpherson, a retired High Court judge leading an inquiry into police failings around the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a Black teenager who was killed by five white youths in southeast London in 1993. (Two men were ultimately convicted in the case in 2012.)
The police force came under fire again early this year for the discriminatory use of stop-and-frisk tactics, after a spike in their use was reported during the first coronavirus lockdown.
In July, the police apologized to Bianca Williams, a 26-year-old champion sprinter, and her partner, both of whom are Black, after they were detained while driving in West London with their toddler sitting in the back. They were handcuffed for 45 minutes while officers searched the vehicle. Nothing was found in the car.
Mr. Khan, who oversees the city’s police forces along with Britain’s Home secretary, said after the arrest of Ms. Williams that he had commissioned the action plan. But it was unclear whether Mr. Khan’s decision was prompted by the incident, which caused outrage, or if he had commissioned it earlier.
Other recent episodes included a bungled investigation into the assault on three Black women last December that the police said was “compounded by racial motivation,” and a picture of two murdered Black women taken by officers in June that was reportedly sent to a group of people, including civilians.
The Metropolitan Police said in the action plan that it also would reintroduce a requirement that calls for recruits to live in London, and dedicate 300,000 pounds, or about $400,000, to efforts to encourage young Black Londoners to consider a career in the police.
Mr. Khan said in the action plan that communities would also take a more active role in holding police forces accountable. One of the most important elements, he said, was “addressing the concerns of Black Londoners about the lack of transparency that they feel exists around the activities of citywide police teams,” the plan read.
To that end, officers will also review footage from body cameras to identify potential patterns in the use of stop-and-frisk tactics, and how de-escalation methods could be used more frequently.
Organizations that contributed to the action plan welcomed the announcement, but said they remained cautious about how changes would be enacted and the extent to which it would address the broader problems it identified.
“While the acknowledgment that historic and systemic racism has created a breakdown in trust between the police and Black Londoners is welcome, there is still much to be done,” said Ben Lindsay, the chief executive of Power the Fight, an organization that combats youth violence in Britain.
“At the center of the consultation was whether institutional racism continues to exist in the M.P.S.,” the plan read, referring to the Metropolitan Police Service, more than 20 years after the Macpherson inquiry.
“Either way, the fact that this question is still being asked demonstrates how much more work needs to be done to ensure that the M.P.S. has the trust and confidence of all Black Londoners.”
