New police stop and search plans

An unprecedented coalition of BME organisations led by the Black Police Association have sent a letter to the Home Secretary Theresa May MP, calling on her to think again about scraping measures that would allow the police to racially profile individuals.

Stop and search figures highlight that Black and Asian communities are already disproportionately affected by the present policing methods. Black individuals are a shocking 26 times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white counterparts.

The changes to Section 60, would allow police to take evidence from third parties who had not witnessed any criminal act. This, the Black Police Association stated would open the door to ‘racial targeting that could be based on gossip, malice and outright racial prejudice’.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission also raised serious concerns. It stated that; "We consider there is a significant risk that this provision will result in race discrimination."

Lee Jasper, Chair of the London Race and Criminal Justice Consortium angrily stated:

“The consequence of these proposals will be to plunge Black community police relations back into the dark days of the 1980's. The move will undermine the principle of policing with consent and see return to the time where the police are seen as an occupying force”.

Echoing the concern of Lee Jasper, a very senior white officer recently informed me that, ‘these measures will return us to a time when, for example, we thought we might have difficulty getting a house search warrant, we would go to a public telephone booth pretend to be a member of the public and state that we had just seen some suspicious behavior at the address we wanted to enter. It wasn’t even effective policing’ the officer lamented, ‘much less the abuses that occurred.’

Simon Woolley