Families of young Asian women who run away from home are reluctant to contact police for fear they will never be reunited, it was claimed today.

Concerns about how incidents in Bradford are dealt with by police were raised at a community meeting in Thornbury.

Several members of the Asian community argued police liaison officers often acted as "judge and jury" rather than mediators.

They agreed police should intervene to protect young women fleeing forced marriages or violence, but said not enough effort was being made to reunite women who had gone missing for other reasons.

One member of the public, who did not want to be named, told yesterday's Bradford North Anti-Crime Partnership meeting: "Once a young woman leaves home she is taken away by police and the case is closed.

"There is no co-operation between the police and families - that is something the Asian community is unhappy about."

He said the police needed to make more of an effort to find out what the underlying problem was, instead of simply assuming it was a forced marriage issue.

Local ward Councillor Ghazanfer Khaliq said: "The perception in the community is that sometimes the police take one side's view of things in family disputes.

"No-one is in favour of forced marriages or domestic violence, they just want the police to look at the different reasons for why young Asian women leave home and, where possible, try to build bridges."

The city is currently playing host to a three-day national conference looking at the issue of forced marriages and how police in the UK can tackle the problem by developing links with their counterparts in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

Bradford community and race relations officer, Inspector Martin Baines, said: "We deal with each case in an individual, tactful and non-judgmental manner.

"We are not in the business of dividing families. In many cases, happily, the families are reconciled."