The most senior Muslim woman in the Met is days away from lodging a claim of race discrimination against her employer, just days after Tarique Ghaffur has been ‘relieved of his duties’, it has emerged.
Yasmin Rehman, a director of diversity within the force’s territorial policing department, intends to file a claim with a London employment tribunal within days claiming she has been subjected to racist bullying and victimisation, according to the London Evening Standard.
The news comes just a day after the UK’s most senior police office Ghaffur was put on ‘gardening leave’ because of the way he launched his race discrimination claim in public. He is to be investigated by the Met for possible misconduct for holding a press conference about his claim.
A friend of Rehman told the Evening Standard: “Yasmin has been one of Scotland Yard’s shining stars on working with ethnic minority communities and tackling-vital issues like forced marriages and honour killings. She has worked very passionately on helping the police get to grips with these types of crimes. But she has been off sick for a year with stress-related problems and feels she has been targeted because she is Asian. Her thinking is, ‘I’ve worked too hard to let them force me out’.”
Rehman sought advice from the Metropolitan Black Police Association, the same organisation which is backing Ghaffur’s claim of victimisation in the Met Police.
A Met Police spokesman said the force had not received notification that Rehman was to bring a claim. A statement from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) said: “The MPS has received no notification concerning an employment tribunal involving Yasmin Rehman. She is not head of diversity for the MPS as previously reported [by the Evening Standard], but in fact holds the post within territorial policing as director of partnerships and diversity. She has no direct connection with the commissioner.”
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The statement also pointed out that the Met is the largest employer in London with a workforce of 53,000. In the past 5 years only one case has been lost solely on race discrimination grounds and four on a range of issues.
It added: “We now recruit up to three times as many ethnic minority officers as a decade ago, and we continue to build on this success.”
