At the Crab Crawl restaurant in St Michaels, Maryland, your meal comes with a hammer and a promise: 'If it doesn't kick then we don't cook.' On the table, there is a paper cloth and place mats that outline the anatomy of your dinner and the order in which it must be dismembered.

Such, presumably, is the logic of the commissioner designate of the Metropolitan police who was "disappointed" by the remarks of Imran Khan, the lawyer who represented the Lawrence family. "I still have trouble with recommending that black people join the police service," said Khan at a conference on Monday. "Essentially the difficulty stems from the institutional nature of the problem. While the canteen culture still flourishes the police service is not going to welcome and retain black recruits."