Tarique Ghaffur (; born 8 June 1958) is a former Ugandan-born British police officer in London's Metropolitan Police Service. His last post was that of Assistant Commissioner–Central Operations. Biography Born in Jinja, Uganda to Muslim Punjabi parents hailing from modern-day Pakistan in 1958, Ghaffur and his family emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1972 after President Idi Amin forcibly expelled most of the country's minority South Asian population. Ghaffur's parents had previously emigrated from British India's Punjab region to Uganda during the Partition of India in 1947. Tarique's family was taken to a resettlement camp in Staffordshire. Two years later, in 1974, Ghaffur joined the newly formed Greater Manchester Police, where he worked in uniform and as a CID detective. One of only two police officers from a minority ethnic background out of a force of over 6,000, Ghaffur asserted that the desk sergeant on his first day with the police refused him admission to the station as he did not believe he was a police officer. Ghaffur rose through the ranks at the GMP, reaching the rank of Superintendent and transferring to Leicestershire Constabulary in 1989. He was appointed Assistant Chief Constable in Lancashire Constabulary. After reaching the rank of Deputy Chief Constable at Lancashire, he transferred to the Metropolitan Police Service in 1999 as a Deputy Assistant Commissioner and in 2000 served as Borough Commander of the City of Westminster. In 2001, he was promoted to Assistant Commissioner, and headed three of the Metropolitan Police's Operational Command Units: the Directorate of Performance, Review and Standards in 2001; the Specialist Crime Directorate from November 2002; and Central Operations from 2006. He is currently dean of the London Community College of Education, a private college in London. Controversies The UK's highest-ranking Asian Muslim police officer, he often used his position to comment on issues of alleged racism in the police service, and on alleged discrimination against Muslims as a factor inciting radical Islam. In June 2008 he accused his own force of racism, claiming that, inter alia, he was not properly consulted over the proposed law involving 42-day detentions for terror suspects. The MPS rejected the claim of racism and said it would "robustly challenge" Mr Ghaffur's claim at any employment tribunal. In 2005 Tarique Ghaffur and Sir Ian Blair were involved in Operation Finnean, the investigation into supermodel Kate Moss's alleged possession and distribution of a Class A drug.