Afzal Shah was detained in patrol car after being misidentified as suspect while reporting a crime

A British Asian councillor has described his humiliation at being arrested and held in the back of a patrol car after being wrongly identified as a suspect when he went to his local police station to report a crime.

Afzal Shah said he did not believe white colleagues on Avon and Somerset’s police and crime panel, on which he sits, would have been treated in the same way and accused some officers of institutional bias.

Shah, whose role on the panel includes trying to make the West Country force more representative of the people it serves, claimed such mistakes undermined public confidence in the police.

“I felt humiliated sitting in the back of a police car outside a police station,” he told the Guardian. “I’d done nothing wrong. I went in to report an offence and I was treated like that. There were people walking past looking, wondering what I was doing in the back of the car. People know me in that area very well.”

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The force has insisted its officers acted in good faith, but Shah, who represents an inner-city ward in Bristol, disagreed.

“I do not believe the officers acted in good faith,” he said. “It falls far short of the expectations we have of our police officers. One of [Sir Robert] Peel’s principles is to serve by consent. The police is the public and the public is the police. This kind of behaviour causes people to lose confidence in the police.

“If one of my white colleagues [on the police and crime panel] had gone into a police station in Weston-super-Mare, Yeovil or Taunton, would they have been treated the same way in the same circumstances? Would they have been arrested? I don’t believe they would have.”

Avon and Somerset police were accused of institutional racism in a review published four months ago of the case of Bijan Ebrahimi, an Iranian refugee who was murdered by a neighbour in 2013. The review concluded that the force and Bristol city council wrongly perceived Ebrahimi as a troublemaker rather than a victim and sided with his white abusers.

The force will come under further scrutiny next month when one of its officers goes on trial for allegedly shooting a race relations adviser, Judah Adunbi, with a stun gun.

Asked if he believed there was institutional racism in Avon and Somerset police, Shah said: “I believe there is institutional bias. With what happened to Bijan Ebrahimi, obviously it opens up a lot of questions in terms of institutional racism.

“But I think a lot of hard work has gone into making Avon and Somerset constabulary more representative. I believe the trajectory is going in the right direction.

“People are concerned. They realise that while there are officers that may be institutionally biased, there are also many good officers. I’ve been out on walkabout with them.”

Shah – who has been a councillor in Easton, the scene of the Adunbi incident, for five years – went to Trinity Road police station to report a serious offence on someone else’s behalf. At first he was told the person involved would have to report the crime directly, but he was then shown into a private room.

Around 30 minutes later, Shah said, an officer came in. “He was taking a look at me. He said: ‘I’ll be back to see you shortly.’ Five to 10 minutes later, the door opened. I looked behind me and there were four police officers.

“The first thought I had was, are they going to ask me to leave because I had been too demanding? They said: ‘We’re going to arrest you.’”

Shah was told the arrest was for making threats earlier that day. He said he explained to the officers he had been in meetings all day and showed them his diary.

“They did not attempt to ascertain who I was,” Shah said. “They started reading me my rights. I was taken to a car outside the front of the station. I was made to sit in the back for about 10 minutes. I was told I would be taken to Patchway custody suite [in South Gloucestershire].”

Shah was then taken back into the police station and de-arrested. He demanded to know why he had been detained in the first place. “The explanation was that ‘we thought you were somebody else’. A misunderstanding. I told them I couldn’t accept it.

“Why didn’t they offer me a voluntary interview? A bit of due diligence and there wouldn’t have been any need for this at all.”

Since the incident, Shah has received apologies from the leadership of Avon and Somerset constabulary.

Assistant chief constable Steve Cullen paid tribute to Shah’s work as a councillor and panel member, and said senior officers were working with him to learn and “mutually agree a way forward”.

He said: “As a matter of course, we initiated a review of officers’ actions as soon as Cllr Shah raised concerns. This review is ongoing to ensure he receives a full explanation addressing all of his concerns.

“Our initial findings have established that based on the information they had at the time, the officers felt they had reasonable grounds to suspect an offence had been committed and an arrest was necessary.

“While under caution, Cllr Shah offered an explanation about his whereabouts at the time of the alleged offence. This account led officers to make further inquiries and he was de-arrested.

“We empathise with the impact that this incident has had on Cllr Shah and have apologised for the distress and embarrassment this incident has clearly caused him.”

The force has been working to combat bias, including getting 2,000 officers and staff to attend a course called Taking the Hurt out of Hate Crime.