The Muslim community ‘could do more’ to help identify extremist individuals, a senior officer has said.
Sir Norman Bettison, the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, said that while he is conscious there is a fine line between winning the support of the Muslim community and alienating it, there was also a need for the community to work with the police.
“I’m looking for the community to work much more closely with the police in identifying young people that they have concerns about in terms of the people that they’re mixing with, the sort of websites that they’re going on to and the material that they’re reading,” he said.
“Now that information can only come from the community itself.”
Sir Norman was speaking during an interview for the BBC Two series Generation Jihad - the first episode of a three-part series is being screened tonight.
He told the programme that Muslims could be doing more to oust extremists within their communities.
“I think we have to be alert and conscious of the risk that’s ever present and prepared to interdict and prepared to share information,” Sir Norman said. “So the community as a whole could do more and the Muslim community is a part of that,” he added.
Sir Norman, who is the Association of Chief Police Officers’ representative for policy on tackling violent extremism, said “Generation Jihad” was likely to remain a problem for some time.
“I think it’s a generation of treatment to prevent the infection spreading and I think that will take us probably 20 years,” he said.
MI5 estimates there are about 2,000 Muslims living in the UK who pose a potential terrorist threat - plus an unknown number who sympathise with extremist ideology.
The first episode of Generation Jihad will be broadcast tonight on BBC 2 at 9pm.