Tarique Ghaffur, CBE QPM (born 8 June 1958) is a former high-ranking British police officer in London's Metropolitan Police Service. His last post was that of Assistant Commissioner–Central Operations. Born in Jinja, Uganda to Muslim Punjabi parents hailing from modern-day Pakistan in 1958, Ghaffur and his family emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1972 after President Idi Amin forcibly expelled most of the country's minority South Asian population. Ghaffur's parents had previously emigrated from British India's Punjab region to Uganda during the Partition of India in 1947. Tarique's family was taken to a resettlement camp in Staffordshire.
Two years later, in 1974, Ghaffur joined the newly formed Greater Manchester Police, where he worked in uniform and as a CID detective. One of only two police officers from a minority ethnic background out of a force of over 6,000, Ghaffur asserted that the desk sergeant on his first day with the police refused him admission to the station as he did not believe he was a police officer.
Ghaffur rose through the ranks at the GMP, reaching the rank of Superintendent and transferring to Leicestershire Constabulary in 1989. He was appointed Assistant Chief Constable in Lancashire Constabulary. After reaching the rank of Deputy Chief Constable at Lancashire, he transferred to the Metropolitan Police Service in 1999 as a Deputy Assistant Commissioner and in 2000 served as Borough Commander of the City of Westminster.
In 2001, he was promoted to Assistant Commissioner, and headed three of the Metropolitan Police's Operational Command Units: the Directorate of Performance, Review and Standards in 2001; the Specialist Crime Directorate from November 2002; and Central Operations from 2006.
He is currently dean of the London Community College of Education, a private college in London.
