Why do they say it's brave to appoint a black chief constable? He's been a good boy

Mike Fuller of the Metropolitan Police is to become the chief constable of Kent, the first black chief constable in the UK. Some wag (and he has to be a wag) commented that it was a brave act done by the authorities. What is brave about his appointment, I ask? Trace Fuller's career and you will find that, without any help from positive discrimination, he rose to the top in a perfectly normal and unromantic way, like most of his white colleagues.

His particular strengths were shown in his leadership of Operation Trident, the squad that successfully challenged Jamaican Yardie violence. Fuller is Jamaican by origin and knows that community especially well. Within half an hour of any Yardie murder in London, Trident knew who did it, how and why. Fuller understood the Yardies' weaknesses. They are what we in the Caribbean community refer to as "just-come gangsters", meaning that they are without the traditions of loyalty fostered in the underworld elsewhere. They would grass up their grannies and shoot their friends. As a result, they are ostracised by the settled Caribbean community. All this helped to make Operation Trident successful.

Fuller generally kept his head down and stayed away from the Black Police Association. He did not join in charges that black officers in the Met suffered from racism. Nor did he support the ground-breaking policing attempted by Commander Brian Paddick and others in Brixton. Rather, he groaned that liberal voices were causing black children to become victims of cannabis use.

He was hugely wrong, but he attracted the goodwill of the establishment. He has been a good boy, and good boys are rewarded. In the wake of the row over the Met's Superintendent Ali Dizaei - acquitted of all charges in court after wide-ranging accusations by his fellow officers - his appointment is perfectly timed. Far from showing bravery on the part of the authorities, it shows only their capacity to manipulate people into thinking that the black police associations are being mischievous when they charge the Met with racist practices.

I am pleased that Fuller has broken the glass ceiling. But I have no great expectations that he will be part of the revolution in policing that this society so desperately needs. And I am certain he will not be allowed to stop and search the white middle classes of Kent on a whim in his pursuit of cannabis users.

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