Stop and Search: West Yorkshire Police on the slide

Research from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) earlier this year revealed that some Police forces were several times more likely to use stop-and-search powers against black people than white people. This racial disproportionality in the statistic led the EHRC to conclude that any continuation of this disproportionality may indicate a breach of the law as they are not complying with their public-sector duties obligations.

Now new figures reveal that black people in West Yorkshire are five times more likely than white people to be targeted. These statistics are being interpreted as racist and an irresponsible abuse of power. The gross inequity of their conduct has prompted calls for a review.

This trend of institutional racism within the Police force, and the West Yorkshire police authority in particular, is not a new one. Critics argue the police have a poor track record on race whether it is the treatment of ethnic minority police officers or the harassment ethnic minority citizens on the streets.

West Yorkshire police defended themselves by stating that the “Police officers tend to be deployed into the more deprived areas of our towns and cities which suffer from a higher degree of social problems and crime. These also tend to include areas which have higher concentrations of ethnic minority communities.”

However, evidence has shown that disproportionate stop and searches have failed to yield any productive outcomes, in particularly cutting crime. For example stop and searches can be used with the Misuse of Drugs Act; however under this law the proportion of people who were arrested as a result of being searched was roughly the same, despite their ethnicity.

A further problem with the disproportionate stop and searches is the erosion of trust and confidence in the police force by ethnic minority communities. This problem is also evident in the reporting of hate crime. Just Yorkshire, a campaign groups that promotes racial justice, civil liberties and human rights in the North of England, mad a freedom of information request to establish trends in racially and religiously aggravated crime and offence. They found that “the low arrest and prosecution rate has serious implications for BME confidence in reporting racist incidents and attacks.”

On one side victims of race and religious hate crime are being let down by low arrest, detection and prosecution, and on the other, the police are overzealous with their treatment and attempts to arrest ethnic minorities.

In 2010 the EHRC Review into 42 policing areas during the past five years highlighted that racial stereotyping and discrimination are significant factors behind the higher rates of stops and searches for Black and Asian people than White. 2 years on from these findings and it is the same conclusions for the same institutions, with West Yorkshire police being among the worst offenders.

Whilst stop and searches are a necessary part of the police’s activities, they should be even-handed in their approach. Targeting people based on racial prejudices risks alienating people and creating confrontations with the police. These problems have been extensively documented and yet there are no changes in the trends, and no adjustment in the attitudes of the police forces.

Alan Ssempebwa