Dorset Police Race Action Plan

Workstream One: Represented

Overarching community principles:

• Supporting the development of Black officers and staff so they can fulfil their potential and progress to the most senior levels.
• Ending racism in the workplace.
• Ensuring our systems, processes and work environment encourages Black people to apply for roles within policing.

We will:

Deliver training to officers and staff who use policing powers to develop better awareness of disproportionality, the history of the relationships between policing and Black communities and the impact that policing has on individuals and wider communities, especially Dorset’s Black communities.

Publish a strengthened hate crime action plan, which outlines the steps that the organisation will take to ensure officers, staff or volunteers who are victims of hate crime are provided with care, compassion and support. This plan will emphasise the importance of conducting expeditious and robust investigations as we would with any victim of hate crime.

Deliver training to all officers, staff and volunteers to include community lived experiences, the history of policing and Black communities, as well as other factors such as mitigating bias and external influences, including the media.

Develop a communications and engagement strategy to enhance and amplify the positive collaboration of communities and policing to ensure that we are delivering fair and effective policing to all.

Build an allyship programme, which works alongside our Dorset Ethnic Police Association to enhance, support and amplify the voice, interests and activities of our colleagues from ethnically diverse backgrounds.

Workstream Two: Respected

Overarching community principles:

• Not making assumptions about Black people as offenders.
• Reducing racial disparities in the use of police powers and criminal justice outcomes, regardless of their root causes.
• Treating Black people who have contact with the police fairly and with respect.

We will:

Reform how we use stop and search powers by:

• Ensuring our officers have the confidence in using their powers fairly and effectively, providing frameworks to enable them to form strong and objective grounds, mitigating the impact of bias and assumptions.
• Focusing the use of our stop and search powers on community and policing priorities alongside other problem-solving tools, understanding why we use stop and search and any potential impact on the community.
• Ensuring that we have effective internal and external scrutiny processes that encourage learning and reflection for individuals and the wider organisation.
• Introduce ‘Stop and Think’ principles for officers to consider when using their policing powers with members of our Black community. This will encourage officers and staff to consider the impact of bias, stereotypes or assumptions and the impact of generational trauma and history as part of their decision-making process.
• Mandating the completion of a specific stop and search training input, which provides an update on reform practices and the positive impact fair and effective use of stop and search can have on community support, trust and confidence.
• Ensure that those occasions where officers do not use Body Worn Video during a stop and search encounter that this matter is escalated and understood.
• Involve our community members in the development of stop and search training.
• Publish our data in relation to stop and search for public view.
• Publish our community scrutiny reports for public view.

Conduct a review of our intelligence processes and practices by inviting community members into the organisation to observe and scrutinise our intelligence delivery. We will then listen to feedback and recommendations to improve.

Introduce a data capture capability to record the ethnicity of individuals stopped in their vehicles under Section 163 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 so that we can identify any related disproportionality and take action.

Conduct a deep dive review into stop and searches that expose intimate parts and custody strip searches of Black people to enable us to understand and explore reasons for disproportionality in these cases and then take action to eliminate them.

Gain a better understanding of county lines, drugs and knife crime offender profiles so that we enable our officers, staff and volunteers to use intelligence and evidence- based approaches, while removing the potential for bias, stereotypes and anecdotes to influence our activity.

Workstream Three: Involved

Overarching community principles:

• Recognise and reconcile the divisions between the police and Black people.
• Understanding how community trauma and distrust affects Black people’s ongoing experience of policing.
• Asking Black people to share their views, so we listen, respond and involve them in the development of our improvements and decision making.

We will:

Form a joint internal and external community group named the Police Race Action Plan Group. The group will be made up from key community contacts from the Black communities of Dorset, the co-chairs of the Dorset Ethnic Police Association, the Office of Police and Crime Commissioner and Corporate Communications.

The group will be co-chaired by a community member and the police.

The Dorset Police Race Action Plan Group will support the vision and purpose by:

• Exploring and addressing causes of disproportionality in
• Listening and hearing concerns from our Black
• Co-designing and developing priorities and actions within the Dorset Police Race Action Plan.
• Setting the direction of the Dorset Police Race Action

Members of the Dorset Police Race Action Plan Group will:

• Act as a critical friend, with an active and independent voice, highlighting issues of concern around the plan.
• Provide advice, guidance and recommendations to the Force’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Board relating to activities.
• Track and monitor progress against the

Act as key community contacts, seeking to encourage community involvement and disseminating communications, where appropriate.

The group will have the responsibility:

• To represent the interests of Black communities in all of its
• To work transparently in order to be accountable to the general
• To develop activity and actions for delivery against the plan

To facilitate and support delivery activity through task and finish groups.

Involve our community members in the planning, preparation and delivery of our Senior Leaders’ Event in November 2024 where we will launch our Police Race Action Plan and conduct workshops to ensure our strategic intent is actioned into business delivery.

Our community members will be invited to facilitate and bring diversity of thought to the event, providing valuable lived experiences and perspectives.

Agree a calendar of community group scrutiny visits across our organisation to encourage transparency and seek to understand how we can deliver a better service to all our diverse communities. We will have candour and encourage recommendations and observations of our systems, policies, processes and structures from the visits, which will be tracked and monitored for progress through organisational learning.

Promote and increase meaningful community engagement with our Black communities at a tactical and operational level and build a network of key community contacts and independent advisory group members.

Workstream Four: Protected

Overarching community principles:

• Working with Black people more effectively to tackle the crime and disorder problems that cause concern or harm, particularly to young people.
• Understanding the needs of Black victims and witnesses, and treating them fairly, with respect and as individuals.
• Making sure Black people feel safe, particularly those who are vulnerable.

We will:

Review our approach to Black people missing from home and seek to improve our processes to eliminate disparities in relation to the time it takes for us to find Black people and prevent repeat missing episodes.

Work with our Black communities to better protect them against crime and disorder, especially how we can protect young Black people from becoming victims of serious youth violence.

Improve our recorded ethnicity data across all our systems, especially linked to victims, so that we can better understand disparities in the delivery of fair and effective policing.

Develop and complete a community safety and confidence survey, which captures the feelings, perceptions and experiences of our Black communities so that we can seek to understand and address areas of concern and disparity against our existing Community Safety Survey.

Introduce a technological solution so that we can proactively identify, address and monitor disparity in our policing activities.