News / Crime
‘I’d never seen a black cop when I was a kid’
The most senior black police officer at Avon & Somerset Constabulary is retiring this week after three decades of service.
Norman Pascal has had a significant impact on local policing in Bristol, rising from a bobby on the beat to Detective Chief Inspector and chair of the Black Police Officers’ Association.
Pascal has had an extraordinarily varied career since joining the force in 1987. “You name it, I’ve done it,” he told Bristol24/7.
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“CID. Traffic. Undercover. Press office. Internal investigations. Counter-corruption. Firearms commander. Commander in Bath. Commander in South Glos.”
The Easton-born 58-year-old has dedicated the latter part of his career towards diversifying the constabulary.
“It’s changing in terms of where our big stations are. Southmead, Knowle, Easton. Inner city areas with social-economic problems. So we’re getting more police officers from there.”
Pascal talks warmly about the initiatives to improve representation in the police: “There’s a cadets group that’s been set up. We’ve got a good percentage of kids from BME backgrounds engaging with police officers for the first time.”
Often the only black officer in the room in the early days of his career, Pascal has plenty of stories of bigoted senior officers back in the 80s and 90s.
But he speaks very warmly about his current colleagues: “I made some great friends. I couldn’t have survived the police without people on the inside supporting me.”
Whatever he owes his colleagues, it’s clear the sterling work that he has put into the community on every possible front.
His work on having a more representative force is already starting to have a demonstrable effect: out of 240 officers recruited in the past 18 months, 22 were from BME backgrounds.
Ten per cent is a way off from reflecting Bristol’s 16 per cent BME population, but compared to the force’s overall 2.8 per cent of BME staff, things are clearly heading in the right direction.
Pascal notes that great progress has also been made in the LGBT and disabled communities too, with more recruits than ever before.
On the prospect of his retirement, which he has decided to take after a requisite 30 years in the force, he says: “I just need to relax for a little bit. My concern is I’ll get bored. I’ll go and do something, but not till I get bored.”
It’s certainly hard to imagine Pascal staying out of community work for too long. “When I go into schools and colleges I’m planting a seed,” he said.
“I’d never seen a black cop when I was a kid. Hopefully I’m planting a seed in some of their minds that it is something they can do. Long-term, I’m sure we’ll see the benefit.”
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