Police issued with guide to ethnic customs

An extraordinary handbook will be issued next month to every one of the Metropolitan Police's 25,000 officers and civilian staff to help them deal more sensitively with the people of the most international city in the world.

An extraordinary handbook will be issued next month to every one of the Metropolitan Police's 25,000 officers and civilian staff to help them deal more sensitively with the people of the most international city in the world.

The race guide, which has taken more than a year of cautious compilation, contains painstaking advice on how to avoid offence when policing religious and ethnic minorities in a population which has 340 spoken languages and 33 national groups of more than 10,000 people.

The handbook, which looks like a personal organiser and is designed to be kept in every police locker, could become one of the most poignant symbols of British policing in the wake of the Macpherson report into the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

Police officers are warned not to summon a Somali by beckoning with their finger - a gesture reserved in Somalia for dogs - nor to touch a Sikh's turban without permission.

The breadth of the 129-page handbook has taken aback the academics, community groups and other professionals who were consulted. Harry Fletcher, of the National Association of Probation Officers, said: "This is a unique, cutting-edge exercise and other agencies like probation should learn from it. Understanding diversity is vital or communities will be alienated, witnesses will be lost and miscarriages of justice will occur."

The handbook is intended to offer practical advice for working officers. It points out that helmets and shoes should be removed when entering a Buddhist temple and arms covered inside a mosque but advises officers to keep their headgear on when visiting a synagogue.

It explicitly warns officers not to raise the subject of Triad gangs when speaking to Chinese people. Kosovars may be wary of police because of past experience of brutality, while the traditional Vietnamese respect for seniority may mean they would prefer to talk to an older officer. When interviewing Japanese people, officers should be aware that shyness may mean they say "yes" even when they do not understand a question.