Middle-aged, middle-class, white female – that’s me! I’m not overly happy with this profiling – particularly the middle-age bit! But on the other hand – I’ve never been stopped, let alone searched. Not the right profile I guess!
But profiling clearly does exist and appears to play a part in the decision of who the police stop when they use their discretionary powers of stop and search. The police see stop and search as a vital tool in their work to cut crime and make London safe. But are they being entirely honest when they say the decisions on who to stop are based on intelligence rather than racial profiling?
These are the issues being looked at by a panel at Metropolitan Police Authority, the body to which London’s Met police force is accountable. The investigation, for which I’m the Vice Chair, has been holding a series of public evidence-gathering sessions and also working through a wealth of written evidence. Witnesses have included the Met itself, the CRE, the Islamic Human Rights Commission, Boyhood to Manhood, Black Police Federation, young people, community reps, the Mayor’s adviser on race – and many, many others.
As we near the end of our examination, I cannot speak for the whole panel as we have not reached our conclusions yet – but I can speak for myself.
Whilst I think it is right to recognise that stop and search is an important tool in the fight against crime, I think it is also right to recognise that it can easily be abused. There is clearly is a problem and members of the ethnic communities are more likely to be stopped and searched despite the fact that there is no evidence to suggest that they are more likely to commit crimes.
At the same time the confidence of the local community is crucial to good policing, and the use of stop and search – a very visible exercise of police power – has the potential to have a big impact on how the local community sees the police. I think there is a link between the figures on lower levels of confidence in the police amongst Asian communities and the acknowledgment that Asian people are more likely to be stopped and searched.
An effective and fair use of the power is therefore also very much in the interests of the police, if post-Burnley and Bradford and post-9/11 they are to improve their relations with the Asian community.
Since 9/11 on the one hand we are more aware then ever that the police and security services rely on help from local communities, and so improving trust is crucial. On the other hand it has become more important than ever to improve the accountability of the police in stop and search given the apparent temptation post 9/11 to target Asian and other ethnic minority communities.
Right in the middle of the scrutiny came the BBC film expose ‘The Secret Policeman’ – a salutary reminder that significant racist elements remain in our police forces. We can never root them out completely, but we can ensure better education and training and better accountability. And it is vital that we ensure that there are enough safeguards over individual police officers’ behaviour so that, whatever thoughts are buried deep in someone’s mind, their behaviour remains professional and exemplary.
For me, perhaps the most telling evidence came from a question I asked at a scrutiny session last week of the ex-commander of Lambeth Police. He was saying that he monitored and supervised all the stop and search records to check that no individual officer or team of officers were acting unreasonably. When I asked him whether any of the top brass of the Met kept a check on what he or other commanders were doing in terms of supervision on stop and search, he said he had never been contacted by a senior officer in this regard. Never, ever. That spoke volumes to me!
It was also clear from the evidence that often the only experience young Asians had of the police was when they were stopped and searched. Now, if your only contact with the police is poorly executed, invasive, possibly discriminatory and offensive, you are not going to form a good impression of the police. From 31,721 searches carried out on Asians by the Met in 2002/2003 there were 3,883 arrests made. The actual conviction rate was not available because the police do not have that data – shockingly.
And it wasn’t just the relatively small number of ‘successful’ searches that counted. We heard evidence from young people about the way they were treated during a stop and how much difference it made when the exercise was carried out with respect and even more so, if it was done by a local police officer that they knew.
From the young people who came to the scrutiny I can quote you some of the evidence we heard: on the everyday reality of being a member of an ethnic community, one respondent noted that at one point he was being stopped ‘every couple of days … got used to being stopped’. On police profiling according to our witnesses, police seemed to ‘go after the black boys’ and the ‘hoodies’. Preconceived notions and stereotypes of which the police stop seemed to be based on dress, race, and ‘girls never get searched’. The behaviour and approach by the police was described by young witnesses as ‘rowdy … with no explanation of why they were doing it, they twisted my arms, searched me, handcuffed me and arrested me’. And on the impact of being stopped: ‘I cried’ said our witness.
It has been a gripping investigation to be involved with. We have already had ten evidence sessions with around forty witnesses and there is just one more to come. That will be our opportunity to question the most senior officer in charge of stop and search. And there were lots of other issues raised, including the lack of data – the Met don’t appear to know if they have reliable data on how many stops result in conviction – and the pros and cons of Recommendation 61 from the MacPherson report.
When the last session is over, we then have to try and make sense of it all and put forward recommendations to try and improve the use of stop and search – because if it goes on as it is now – the rift between community and the force that polices it will only get worse.
