THE race row between Anas Sarwar and the Scottish Police Federation (SPF) intensified yesterday.
The Labour MSP was criticised over the weekend after he claimed that black and Asian people were over four times more likely to be stopped and searched by police.
He claimed police were making people “feel they are a greater target because of their colour or religion”.
The SPF, effectively the trade union of the rank and file, hit back calling the remarks a “disgraceful slur against police officers”.
The figures, taken from a six-month review into new stop-and-search guidelines were disputed by the SPF. Susan McVie, the author of the review, pointed out that the data was not “robust enough to support direct comparison between ethnic groups” and issued a correction.
While Sarwar admitted he had been working off faulty data, he said they had “reflected the experiences that my constituents had raised with me”.
Yesterdaty at First Minister’s Questions, he said: “The First Minister will know from her own constituents that there is, at the very least, a perception of bias in stop and search among our diverse minority ethnic communities.”
Sarwar hit out at the federation, accusing them of trying to “shut down the debate by accusing me of playing the race card or having a personal agenda”.
The SPF’s David Hamilton, said he could not accept “people misusing strictly caveated data to try to evidence widespread racism in the service”.
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