The real reason that Black youths are perceived to be stop-searched more than white youths: officers only bother to fill out the forms for every single stop search if it may cause grief later i.e. Ethnic Minority members of the community, MP’s sons, people searched on CCTV etc. Otherwise, forms get filled in if the person wants it (they rarely do) if the officers have time (they rarely do) if it’s not raining (it usually is) or if it is the end of the month and they have a target!
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That must obviously mean that the police are racist as they are making more effort on these groups then? Ofcourse not. The papers will have to find a new way to make the police look racist
Aren’t forces just making a rod for their own back by not completing a seach form for each person then, given the scrutiny on this sort of thing, or are the press always using older statistics?
We should not be filling the forms out in the first place for goodness sake, it’s totally unecessary. We only fill them out so someone can be employed to count them, not because they serve any remotely useful purpose !
AAAAAAaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh !
It’s yet another example of the law of unintended consequences, one of very few laws that applies everywhere and needs no policemen to enforce it!
Ah, the good old stop/search form, the bringer of much wailing and gnashing of teeth! The form only serves a single purpose, and that is keeping the bean counters in employment. In my Force, we caused uproar in the Home Office Department of Counting Beans and production of Meaningless Statistics as it appeared that 95% of the persons that we stop checked were from the Chinese community! As you could imagine, this raised more than a few eyebrows and an investigation was launched, staffed by a thousand civil servants. In the end, all was well, we did not have a vendetta against the Chinese community, but were merely incapable of putting the correct ethnic code in the box,due to the fact that the new PNC codes had changed and nobody had told us!
Our bosses then decided that we were to submit a 251 for every person that we spoke to and for every vehicle that we stopped. As you can imagine, the system then went into overload very shortly as every aged granny who asked for directions, everyone who said hello or every motorist who asked where the nearest petrol station was became subject of a 251 and caused the sytem to implode in upon itself! Who says you can’t beat the system?
See, I have no problem with filling in Stop & Search forms.
What amuses me is Stop & Account.
Every time I ask some random scumbag what they’re doing I end up having to fill in a form to justify that.
In an area known for burglaries? See someone who’s know to burgle? If you ask them what they’re doing there, you have to fill in a form.
And people wonder why the police get nothing done…
Some of it is caused by the fact that young urban blacks are responsible for more crime in a specific area then other racial groups, then their numbers in the population should support. For example street robberies in Met boroughs are almost always perpetrated by blacks, baring that in mind more would be searched. Nothing unusual with that. If you have young blacks involved in 14 times more street robberies then white and asian youths, (which is the case) then rather then it being a sign of racism were stopping them 7 times more then whites and asians in the met, we should be pushed to stop DOUBLE the ammount we’re stop searching. In fact blacks are stopped far less than they should be in comparison to the level of crime they are responsible for. Rather then accusing the police of racism for stopping them, the government should address WHY black youths are commiting a dissproportionate ammount of spevific types of crime. Condon mentioned this 15 years ago, and its still not been addressed.
A brave statement by Laura, whether you agree or not. Do bear in mind that street robbery is just about the only crime committed whereby the victim can almost always describe the ethnicity of their attacker, so if you go on an area search where a witness describes a 17 year old black lad, it is only common sense to stop people the same. The only other volume crime I can think of where the IC code will always be known is assault, and assault is basically a robbery with a lack of business sense on the part of the offender! In my area, the correlation between young black males and street robbery is not quite as strong as 7 x more likely, but it is still statistically significant.
Before the PC brigade start sharpening their knives for me, let me just say that I have voted Labour all my life, and am hardly the stereotyped right winger some would have people believe comprises the majority of the police! I would also draw your attention to the studies committed by the Home Office about the percentage of different ethnic groups who failed the Police entrance tests because of racist values. It is covered in one of coppersblog.blogspot.com ’s past articles, I may be a couple of percentage points out at most, but I believe 77% of white candidates passed, black and chinese candidates were slightly lower, but not really a significant difference, and the lowest scores were Bangladeshis, of whom only 36% passed.
I also remember a study a couple of years ago by a University group, I forget which University, but basically they parked vans up in certain areas and counted the number of youths of different ethnic groups they saw on the streets at certain times, and compared it to the statistical breakdown of ethnic groups in that area of the community, and basically it showed that young black men were far more likely to spend their leisure time hanging around on the street. Hence they were more likely to be stop searched, as you can’t walk up to someone in their living room or sports centre and stop them! I can’t remember the details of the study though, can anyone shed any light on it?
Having said what I’ve said, I will continue to treat every robbery as an individual event. To slightly misquote Lord Stevens on the Stalker inquiry, go where the evidence takes you, and you cannot be wrong.
We (the police and the public) are always consciously or unconsciously profiling people. Most of the time car crime is committed by young males between 14 – 30 years of age. So if there is a car crime problem in an area we are not going to solve it by searching as many older females as younger males just because that fits the population profile of the area.
Likewise during the troubles in Northern Ireland most though not all terrorists (or freedom fighters depending on your vewpoint) were Irish males. So anybody for example checking travellers at a port would I hope have been more likely to check out a young Irish male than an elderly English female.
So if there is a crime problem in any specific area that is predominately committed by any idetifiable ethnic group I would expect that groups numbers searched to be higher than expected based on their population percentage.
Having said that I also believe that Insp Gadgets theory that form filling procedures are comlied with more fully for potential “problem stops” is a major reason for any discrepancy.
Will someone please have a word with Chief? Superintendent Doctor (his most gracious majesty) Ali Dizaei about this then? This bloke wot has an doctorate and is officially clever, shud no al this? Any fule does! Excellent postings on this (highly emotive) subject. Don’t forget the HO sponsored Dr Marion Fitzgerald ( a real clever person) report a few years ago (around the time Condon still had some balls) which didn’t say what they thought it would and was therefore buried.
A word with Mr Dizaei? You’ll be lucky you’ll need to pretend you’re from the press!! Still I remember when he was in TVP as a Sgt. You’ll be pleased to know nothing changes!!! A good transfer?
I agree with a lot of what Laura said. I worked in an area which predominantly had a population of black males and females, followed by a strong population of people from Eastern Europe. The vast majority of victims I dealt with (of all ethnicities) for street robbery stated their attacker was black. It makes sense – without having to really give it too much thought – that we would stop and/or search (depending on circumstances) a higher proportion of black males. Compare that with my current posting where the majority of the population are White British. The majority of crime car where I work is committed by white youths, therefore the majority of my stops and/or searches (again depending on circumstances) are on White British.
Its absolutely impossible to get away from at least profiling mentally. I have not the slightest interest in stopping 80 year old Mrs Smith returning with her shopping.
Its all so simple to work out really but theres always a great big bloody outcry that we’re stopping persons of one ethnicity more than another. Yet bearing in mind it happens every single year, you’d think the old “Fuck me, the Police are all racist” comment would be getting a little old and they’d realise there must be a much simpler and much less dramatic reason behind it all.
I can’t stand the stop forms, what an absolute waste of time. An interaction of only words with a Police Officer and it must be documented there and then and a copy handed to the member of the public. Absolutely crazy. I’ll make a record of it if I think its good intelligence that will “help the cause” but to record every conversation because I can’t help being inquisitive (but so damn polite) is such a crock of shit.
What has always baffled me with those who cry ‘racism’ when these figures are released is the fact that they do not seem to understand that each search has to be justified on objective grounds. The overall impression from the media is that we just stop someone because they are black/asian/whatever, rather than because we think they have just committed a burglary/carry a knife etc..
I wish that the media would take a responsible and reasonable view of these stats and do their bit to educate the general public instead of trying to sell more papers by deliberately creating controversy where it doesn’t exist.
“Hello Officer. What’ll it be?”
“A cup of coffee and a packet of biscuits please.”
“There you go. That’ll be one pound.”
“Here’s the change. Hang on while I write up a ticket…”
I’m loving this debate. Mr Gadget, The devil wonders if you would be an advocate for him when you retire? (he is a friend of mine you see.)
My stance on this is that I WILL NOT be criticised by any of the following;
1. Armchair coppers.
2. Persons who are not even remotely knowledgable about the stop and search or encounter procedure.
3. Persons who have not been the victim of crime.
4. Persons who have no idea of the crime problems in my area.
I agree with lots of the comments above. Some of you have balls and I would work on your teams anyday. But for me, it is simple. Me being BOLD, TENACIOUS, USING VERVE AND GUILE JUST LIKE THEY DO and also HAVING THE COURAGE OF MY CONVICTIONS. I would stop and search the home sec if I felt that I had the GROUNDS and that I thought I would find what I was searching for. I would GOWISE his ass off. (obviously after having a dust-up with some close protection guys)
I am ANTI-CRIME. pure and simple. It matters not what ethnic group you are from when I am in persuance of my aims, which is to stop crime, bring offenders to justice and help the victims who have mostly been preyed upon because they are weaker (at the time of the crime) than the criminal.
And I reckon our JUDGES would support us too.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if the beancounting people and PR people actually talked to each other and the next time the press said something about such and such group getting stopped 5x more often than middle class whities it was countered with “yes that’s right because that group have been responsible for 10x the incidents than the middle class whities”
“What amuses me is Stop & Account.
Every time I ask some random scumbag what they’re doing I end up having to fill in a form to justify that.”
Thats bonkers! As a private citizen I can ask anyone anything. They don’t have to answer and I can’t make them but I can ask all the same. The uniform makes no difference. I pray that we never follow on and adopt that particular “best practice”. And I thought having to print and submit my typed statements to the typing pool to be retyped was mad…