The London Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Condon, expressed his "enormous sense of shame" following the publication of the Macpherson report, writes Rachel Donnelly.
Sir Paul again apologised to the Lawrence family for the police's failure to catch their son's killers.
Committing himself to see through the recommendations made in the report until his retirement next year, Sir Paul admitted the Metropolitan Police had "failed". He would not be resigning, he said, because since Stephen Lawrence's death the force had implemented "dramatic changes" aimed at removing racists from the force and improving the solution rate for racially motivated crimes.
One of the crucial elements of the report was the insistence that all police officers should accept the charge of institutional racism. Sir Paul said he now accepted the "new and demanding" definition of the term. If it applied to all public institutions, as the report recommended, it must also apply to the London Metropolitan Police. "My fear with the old definition was that it could be used to label police officers as deliberately racist. I could not accept that . . . They are not," he added.
Announcing three key initiatives, Sir Paul said: random testing of police officers for racism would be introduced; significant resources would be redirected into murder investigations to establish a rapid response force; and a major public research project would be undertaken to ask Londoners what they wanted from their police force.
The Black Police Association welcomed his willingness to accept the new definition of institutional racism and called on every officer and department to accept the recommendations outlined in the report.
However, the Society of Black Lawyers and the Association of Black Probation Officers said the Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, should have ordered Sir Paul to resign.