Racial justice is key to effective policing, says top chief amid legitimacy crisis

Martin Hewitt says he wants to change generations of history' between police and black communities

The leader of Britain's police chiefs has said forces' legitimacy in black communities is so low it is damaging the effectiveness of law enforcement, as he vowed to change generations of strained trust and confidence.

In his first interview about race since the Black Lives Matter protests of last year, Martin Hewitt said it was not a matter of political correctness" or wokeness" but an operational necessity to boost racial justice in policing. Everyday crime-fighting was being damaged, he said, with the issue of race being the continual fault line of British policing.