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The British Transport Police has hit back at a barrage of anger from online trolls over its efforts to boost the number of minority ethnic and female officers.

The force was bombarded with abuse online and accused of discrimination after running a recruitment drive to encourage more job applications from women and ethnic minorities.

It ran specialist workshops to help applicants prepare for the hiring process, which were initially only opened to women, black people or those from minority ethnic groups.

Fury erupted at the force’s plan, despite figures showing that ethnic minorities make up less than 10 per cent of all UK police officers and just one in five officers are female.

On Friday BTP, which deal with crime on the UK’s railways, put out a short statement on Twitter in response to the anger it had received.

It said: “To everyone that’s been getting so angry at us over the past few days.

“We ran a handful of specific workshops so that people from ethnic minorities and women felt comfortable joining our force.

“We want our officers to be made up of the communities we serve.”

Critics of the force’s plan to help increase diversity said its efforts were discriminatory against white male applicants – but BTP responded and said the workshops was designed to reach out to applicants who might not usually apply for policing roles.

The force said every application will be judged on merit and “no one will be discriminated against or favoured because of ethnicity or gender”.

Advertising its job application, its text reads: “We want our people to reflect the communities we serve so that we can represent them in the best way possible.

“As a national force we work closely with people from all kinds of backgrounds every day. At the moment, a fifth of police officers in the UK are women and less than one in 10 come from an ethnic minority.

“We believe we can do better than this, and that’s where you come in.”