- guardian.co.uk, Saturday December 23 2000 17.05 GMT
PC Steve Hutt was given back his job with the Metropolitan police yesterday after an appeal to the home secretary, Jack Straw. He will return to duties on January 2 and will be fined 13 days' pay.
PC Hutt, 38, was suspended and then sacked by a disciplinary tribunal after admitting shouting at a 14-year-old "Sit down, you black bastard".
Thousands of officers signed a petition demanding his reinstatement, but it was roundly condemned by the Metropolitan police branch of the Black Police Association. "This decision unleashes a licence to be racist," said branch chairman Inspector Leroy Logan. "It undermines the work done since the Lawrence inquiry, giving a clear signal that it is acceptable to be racist with justification and a good lobby."
PC Hutt had admitted making the comment "in a moment of madness" after trying to pacify the teenager, who had been arrested by an anti- hooligan patrol in Fulham, west London, in February 1999.
"What I said was wrong and stupid. I bitterly regret it, but I have never been a racist," said PC Hutt. "I felt the original punishment of dismissal was excessive."
Detective Constable Mona Pope, who is black, said: "Some 16,000 of us, black and white, backed Steve and I am quite sure that if the campaign had gone on, then more officers would have supported him."
The row over PC Hutt came as the Met admitted there had been a mistake in the most recent figures for the capital, which should show that its total strength has fallen by 339 this year, rather than 1,200.
The "clerical error" which involved some double counting of Met officers who are on secondment to other forces means that Mr Straw can go into the election campaign claiming that national police numbers have gone up by 444 in the past six months.
This will not stop the opposition from pointing out that total police numbers are still more than 2,500 down on the figure that Labour inherited. But it will take some of the heat out of the accusation that the Met is suffering a haemorrhage of staff in the aftermath of the Macpherson report last year.
The Met's deputy commissioner, Ian Blair, said that the past few months had seen recruits outnumbering those leaving, and he expected the force to reach full strength at 25,600 by the end of next year.
The Conservatives did not seek to make political capital out of the mistake. A spokesman for the shadow home secretary, Ann Widdecombe, said they accepted that an error had been made but added: "New research showing that the cost of crime has risen to £60bn in England and Wales shows that the government has not got anything to crow about."
Paul Wiles, the director of Home Office research, said that in compiling the figures for the six months to September 30 the Met had twice deducted from the total 451 officers who were on secondment to Essex, Hertfordshire and Surrey.
The officers involved had been temporarily seconded since April 1 as a result of boundary changes to the Met area and would return to the force in due course.
