The Home Office set a target to achieve 7% of the countries officers to be from a black or ethnic minority background (BME) by 2009. The House of Commons Report 'The Macpherson Report, 10 Years On' states that by the end of 2008 the percentage of BME officers had risen from 2% to 4.1%. However, there was a recruitment rate of 7% for police officers from BME backgrounds within the country and nearly 20% at the Metropolitan Police.

As the British Police forces have an extensive monitoring system thus they are in the position to know how many BME police officers are in higher positions and how long police officers remain in the services. Those figures indicate that are significantly less BME police officers in the higher ranks of the service than those who are not from BME background. Likewise figures indicate that BME officers do serve shorter periods than their non BME counterparts. Both these examples indicate that there are still equality issues that need to be tackled.