Hampshire police spent £20,000 on recruitment adverts using actors

Hampshire Constabulary spent the cash on a joint project with Essex police in a bid to ramp up the number of black, asian and minority ethnic officers.

Currently the workforce among officers is just 6.8 per cent BAME, and 34.6 per cent women.

Three out of the adverts created do feature Hampshire police and staff, focusing on BAME employees, women and promoting difference.

But the campaign, called We Value Difference, did use a reportedly straight married actor standing in front of an LGBT flag.

Police said actors ‘helps mitigate the time and cost risk’ if officers featured pulled out or could not be shown due to operational reasons.

Garry Smith, secretary of Hampshire Police Federation, told a national newspaper: ‘Policing should reflect the communities we serve and any campaign to encourage people of all backgrounds to consider being a police officer has to be welcomed. Policing is a challenging and rewarding career where every day is different.

‘Hampshire Police Federation is saddened we couldn't use serving police officers from our diverse force to showcase how great it is to be a police officer - and that the work had to fall to actors.’

‘The view of Hampshire Police Federation is that our fantastic colleagues are in the best position to advertise how brilliant it is to be a police officer - how we keep people safe and the fantastic job satisfaction of locking up criminals - and that we can do that much better than paid, scripted actors.’

As reported, Hampshire’s highest ranking BAME officer is a chief inspector.

Hampshire police have defended the use of actors in the recruitment project.

A spokeswoman said: ‘The national uplift in police officer numbers is a great opportunity to make Hampshire Constabulary far more representative of the communities that we serve.

READ NEXT: 'Gutted' former Royal Marine appeals for return of medals

‘We first used the new content, developed with Essex Police, in September 2020.

‘Black and minority ethnic applications from this campaign exceeded 16 per cent. This compares to 6.8 per cent in the force currently. We are keen to build on this in future campaigns.’

She added: ‘The observation that the parts of our recruitment marketing that use actors could give a false impression is something that we will take on board. That is not our intention and we will look at how we can make this clearer in future.’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

You can subscribe here for unlimited access to Portsmouth news online - as well as fewer adverts, access to our digital edition and mobile app.

Our trial offer starts at just £2 a month for the first two months.