Commentary 97 One day, when I was going home after work, I came across two young Albanians who looked suspicious. I called them and they came up close to me. When I asked them whether they had papers they started running and, although I chased them for a few metres, they disappeared. Have you ever seen an Albanian running?19 Policing racist violence I also asked detectives how they perceived the issue of racist violence, which proved to be a particularly difficult question for them. At first, some detectives mentioned that they had taken a class on the topic while at the police academy or that they had participated in seminars on racism and xenophobia. Others referred to well-known examples of racist violence in other countries or mentioned orders given by the Greek Ministry of Public Order which aimed at safeguarding the rights of foreigners (but only inside police stations). Perhaps these initial responses were the detectives’ way of gaining some time to think through how to answer the question more thoroughly. When they did so, a large number responded in exactly the same way, for example: There is no such thing as racist violence in Greece. There are, of course, incidents but these are very few.20 The Greeks have never been racist. The Greeks are hospitable people and they have never had any problems with foreigners.21 The implication of this second comment, of course, is that racism can only be directed at foreigners, whereas Greek citizens, such as the Roma, also experience a great deal of racism. Generally, the detectives’ view that Greece has never been a racist country was backed up by statements that ‘there is no Le Pen’ in Greece. Having made this point on the absence of racism, subsequent comments made by the detectives fell into three categories: . Having no interest in the nature or motives of racist violence. Some detectives suggested that, as organisations, police forces are not really concerned with the background of violent acts and whether or not they are racially motivated. They were only concerned with the act of violence itself. In a sense, this was also a way of denying that racial incidents have a racial motivation: There is no such thing as racist violence for the police. As long as there is violence this is something we should look at.22 This mentality has existed in other contexts, too: in the past, police forces in Britain have been similarly reluctant to accept the possibility of incidents having a racist motivation.23 Downloaded from http://rac.sagepub.com at Athens Univ. of Economics on June 25, 2007 © 2006 Institute of Race Relations. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.