Black police officer wins tribunal against racist police force

A black police officer who was passed over for a job because of the colour of skin has won his case against Wiltshire Police Force.

Ronnie Lungu, who is originally from Zimbabwe joined the Wiltshire Police Force after arriving in the UK in 2003.

10 years later he was made a temporary sergeant and after taking his sergeant exam applied for a permanent position.

Out of 20 candidates, Lungu was the only ethnic minority to apply for the position, in police force that has only 16 ethnic minority employees out of over a thousand.

Lungu was soon passed over for the position and after realising that this was for no reason other than because of his race, he filed a law suit against the police force.

Wiltshire Police initially denied the allegations however further investigation found that Mr Lungu was deliberately marked down in his assessment because of his race. Another employee was also invited to make negative comments about him. Racist comments were also made towards him by other members of the force

“The reduction in the scoring has the very significant effect in terms of making it appear reasonable that the one black applicant for promotion was scoring lower than the 19 white applicants and should therefore not be promoted,” the employment tribunal concluded.

“This behaviour is so extreme that the tribunal cannot think of any apparent motive other than one that is directly related to [the] claimant’s race.”

Despite his poor treatment Mr Lungu has decided to stay with force although he was notably upset when he discovered that he was being discriminated against.

“When I realised I was being singled out and treated badly because of the colour of my skin I felt so angry and upset,” he said.

“It was totally unacceptable. But what made matters worse was that when I did raise the issue internally it wasn’t taken seriously. I joined the force to uphold the law and I still would like to remain with the force. I need reassurance from Wiltshire Police that they will take issues of discrimination seriously in future and I want to see new procedures put in place to tackle discrimination.”

While the police force initially stated that it was “concerned” about the findings of the case, they are still looking for grounds to appeal the judgement.

“This case was complex and there were a number of points covered. With our legal advisors, we are undertaking an assessment of the tribunal’s findings in order to decide whether to appeal any aspects of the judgment,” Chief Constable Patrick Geenty said.

“Following this assessment, decisions will be made on what action we may need to take and how we can ensure that lessons are learnt from this case.”

“As a force we remain committed to robustly and proportionately tackling inappropriate behaviour in the workplace and supporting those who report wrong doing,” he added.