Is Police Scotland 'institutionally racist'?

‘Dear transphobes, we have a phobia of your behaviour…Yours, Scotland’. That was just one of Police Scotland’s ‘Letters from Scotland’ campaign posters that started appearing across Scotland five years ago. Misogynists, racists and religious bigots were warned by the chief constable Sir Iain Livingstone, who fronted the campaign, that they’d be dealt with the full force of the law. So it is more than a little ironic that, according to Sir Iain himself, the haters have been hiding in plain sight in the ranks of his own force.

‘Police Scotland is institutionally racist and discriminatory,’ Sir Iain announced today to the Scottish Police Authority. It is also institutionally sexist and no doubt deeply transphobic, though he didn’t actually name check transphobia this time. But it is clearly no place to be if you are black or female. Will he now be fronting a new poster campaign: ‘Dear Police, we hate your hate crime and we’re coming for you, Yours Scotland’? Perhaps not, given Livingstone recently announced his retirement from the force.