A damning report out today makes heavy criticism of West Yorkshire Police over its race relations in Manningham.

The report, which will be sent to Home Secretary Jack Straw and MPs, calls for a radical overhaul of its race and community relations procedures in Bradford.

The publication, titled Repeat Offenders, calls for:

The axing of the post of police community and race relations officer, currently held by Inspector Martin Baines;

A new unit made up of community specialists who would meet a strict criteria in skills, experience and knowledge of working in a diverse and multi-racial setting;

Serious consideration by the Police Authority of tendering out the responsibilities of the community affairs department;

A working group to look into Neighbourhood Forums, where ethnic groups are not well represented.

The report has been co-ordinated by Manningham researcher Manawar Jan-Khan and was carried out by a new police race monitoring group. A panel of five has worked for the past two months on it on behalf of Manningham Residents' Association, which has about 100 members.

Mr Jan-Khan said today the police had not been supportive but had "prevaricated".

"This type of report has never been done before and it was undertaken because it was felt that relations between the police and local community were really deteriorating," he said.

But today Superintendent Dave Richardson, Divisional Commander of Bradford Central Police said Insp Baines had wide community support for his job and the way he did it.

He said Inspector Baines had introduced many good initiatives and was vice chairman of the Bradford Alliance Against Racial Awareness, an initiative which had received national recognition.

Mr Jan-Khan headed a community report - Foundation 2000 - into the Manningham riots almost five years ago. That accused the police of a "Rambo-style" approach during the night of the disturbances. Today he said there has been extensive talks since the riots but not enough action.

The new report says the Racial Equality Council also had "exceptionally poor" representation at the Police Community Forums.

The Race Monitoring Group says in the light of the recent MacPherson Inquiry into Stephen Lawrence's killing it is important that the spotlight is placed not only on dedicated police roles relating to race and community relations, but also on bodies such as the police authority.

But Supt Richardson said they did not believe Mr Jan-Khan's views had wide community support or reflected the true state of police and community relations in Bradford. He asked Mr Jan-Khan to work with the police on issues and said they had invited him on a number of occasions to discuss his criticism but he had refused.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.