Police officers should be "confident" to stop and search someone they suspect of carrying an offensive weapon,
Any estimates ?
Guaranteed to help societal inclusion
Right mess, police scared of being called racist, and massive budget cuts is the root of the issue.
All I can say is that it'll get worse before it gets better unless there's some major changes.
"someone they suspect of carrying an offensive weapon"
It would be helpful if he spelt out some criteria that he thinks might be appropriate to build suspicion on wouldn't it?
constable savage has a list of criteria
Met police have had £700m in cuts since 2011, ask a copper what they think of Theresa May & the Tories, you'll get an appropriately blue response.
R4 last week had an article about closure of sure start centres followed by article on rise in youth violence, they didn't deliberately spell out a link , but...
Don’t be asking any awkward questions about the nature of our countries drug laws, and whether it’s the best idea to have a young population living in abject poverty, with **** all prospects in life and only one way to make any money, living next door to the enormously wealthy who have a large appetite for recreational drugs?
Who on earth would have thunk that that particular dream combination would lead to violence?
police scared of being called racist
perhaps they could consider doing it in a way that is not racist this time?
Maybe they could call this process ‘Sus-law’, just to make things easier...
I reckon the black policemen/women (can I say 'black'?) should only search the same coloured people & ditto for the white policemen/women.
The police themselves don’t even believe that stop and search, or indeed any police action, could make a significant impact on the situation. The problems are far too deep rooted. This is just the result of a lot of chickens coming home to roost all at once
Riots soon..
Back to the "good old days" because after all.. The Country has Taken Back Control..
Morons.
If I was young and lived in London I’d being thinking about a new wardrobe if I was previous a fan of the ‘Roadman’ look, or if I rode a Scooter.
If you are looking for suspected IRA terrorists, you stop and search mainly Irish people.
If you are looking for Islamic terrorists, you stop and search mainly Muslims.
If there was a spate of murders being carried out by overweight, middle aged cyclists I would expect the Police to be stopping and searching me until the crimes were reduced.
How the Police speak to and treat the individuals they stop and search is the bigger issue to me.
Talking to a mate last night who has been a copper for 20 years.
He said it is all going to shit.
Budgets slashes, specialist units disbanded, fear of being called racists etc.
He said that Stop and Search worked if done in correctly and if the copper involved "didn't act like a ****".
"
If you are looking for suspected IRA terrorists, you stop and search mainly Irish people.
If you are looking for Islamic terrorists, you stop and search mainly Muslims.
If there was a spate of murders being carried out by overweight, middle aged cyclists I would expect the Police to be stopping and searching me until the crimes were reduced.
How the Police speak to and treat the individuals they stop and search is the bigger issue to me.
"
This.
A thousand times this..
More people are killed or seriously injured every day in every city /town/ village of the uk by motor vehicles, there are specialist police depts trying to stop and educate errant motorists and yet the carnage still goes on.
all stop and search will do is alienate certain groups in society, but looks good as a public reassurance measure, and just where are all those extra police going to come from to police london for the next few weeks, from working overtime/cancelled holidays and working longer shifts.
You only need to read what was done in Glasgow to get the murder rate down to understand that this is what's required. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16140920.Glasgow_held_as_example_to_London_in_cutting_murder_rate/
The fact that the tories have cut the policing budget , along with other cuts that have contributed to this, all you will get from the resident torys here is the usual attack on the Mayor, and whataboutery.
I've been stop/searched in Glasgow years ago. Didn't have an issue with it. At the time there was a big crackdown on because of stabbings and slashings in the city centre. The murder rate in Glasgow at the time was anything up to 63 per million people. For comparison London's 116 murders last year is around 13 per million. So at week ends the city centre was flooded with police.
Was my stop/search justified legally? Probably not. BTP had a walk though metal detector at the exit from Glasgow Central Station and anyone who set it off was getting searched. But if a 2 minute search means less chance of being slashed I'm all for it. Mostly, in the city centre streets it was young white working class males from the schemes that were getting searched so nothing much was made in the media of the huge number of searches carried out.
The big operation in the city centre was probably because rather than gang members attacking each other respectable passers by were being targeted and it was bad publicity for the ongoing re-branding of Glasgow.
There was even a change in the laws as the offensive weapons law at the time didn't cover things like Stanley knives unless an intent to use as a weapon could be proved. So a new 1995 law prohibited the carrying of pointed or bladed items.
Is stop/search the answer? It is part of the answer. It's human nature if someone thinks there is a risk of being searched and arrested he is less likely to carry a weapon. If the police cede the streets and stop searching people weapons carrying will increase and therefore weapons use will increase.
As for the reduction in London stop searches. Seems it was a political decision based on flawed stats and largely for political reasons. As this article from January this year said.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/01/theresa-mays-stop-and-search-shake-up-is-costing-lives/
I always rely on the Spectator for an unbiased look at matters.
Gangbangers don't carry knives or guns (which are still hard to get hold off) all the time they carry then when they need them which or in the case of knives they stash them around their habitat hence weapon sweeps on estates , because of this random stop and search may not be that effective. Unfortunately targetted intelligence led policing to interdict those on their way to commit mayhem costs money and as mentioned MPS have been cut hard
Haven't body worn cameras have been introduced since stop and search was halted? It suits certain political narratives that urban black kids are killing each other in London even though most of the Met's funding comes from central government.
Not sure what the point is there but I am addled with gin atm, MPS have national lead on various matters and pick up a lot of expenses as a result of London being the capital, ie DPS, guarding parliament, etc hence different funding but there is a lot of politics around this both from MPS and from outside
it was a political decision based on flawed stats and largely for political reasons. As this article from January this year said.
Claimed it did, prove it it did not [ even try] Without any proof it is is just post hoc ergo propter hoc - because of this that - without any offer of proof of causality that is all it is.
Any stats on knifes found % during a stop and search pre and post the announcements?
Just wait til someone white and upper middle class gets caught in the crossfire? You’ll soon see some proper action being taken
As it is, the silence from the PM, and lest we forget.... former Home Secretary, who slashed police budgets and lectured the Met about ‘crying wolf’ over fears for public safety from the reduction in police numbers, is deafening
I wonder why....?
as a young Irish lad in the early 90's, me and my mates were stopped and questioned a lot as the police knew the places we hung out etc. The questioning was very overtly racist and confrontational. Our 'gang' tended just to go to raves and parties and were certainly not violent or involved in any criminality - put me off asking my local bobby directions forever.
At least 2 of the recent London + the Manchester terror attackers had been reported to Prevent, and then police have admitted that they didn't have the resources to follow up everything. May was repeatedly warned by the police that they were being cut beyond their ability to function. The nation just shrugged & carried on navel gazing over Brexshit.
Im not convinced that any posh white folks getting killed will change anything
Also.
"If you are looking for suspected IRA terrorists, you stop and search mainly Irish people.
If you are looking for Islamic terrorists, you stop and search mainly Muslims."
WT actual F? You don't look for any sort of terrorists by doing random stop and search in the street
Targeted stop and search for someone you suspect may be carrying, is fine. Weight there on the words "targeted" and the specific suspicion. But it can't be "lets stop lots of black kids and shake them down and see what we find" nor can it be "suspects matching".
And it definitely can't be a bandaid on the wound caused by catastrophic police cuts. The Met doesn't have time to harrass people on the street even if they want to.
Apparently stop and search really doesn’t work, as was found in New York and Glasgow.
New York just increased Policing massively and had zero tolerance on crime, Glasgow was much more holistic and looked at kids mental health, family and social setup.
All stop and search does is find small quantities of cannabis , and helps alienate people who already feel like they don’t belong
Stop and search the demographic most frequently involved in violent crime. If someone doesnt like it they are part of the problem.
Sweet Jesus! Thanks for your intelligent and well considered analysis!
And if that alienates the very people you need onside (who lest we forget... are also most likely to be victims), all to achieve pretty much nothing, then brilliant, because it looks great on the front page of the Daily Mail.
i’m going To go out on a limb here and hazard a guess that you don’t live, and never have lived, in a racially mixed inner city area populated by people on the lower end of the income scale?
Man, any time someone hits you with "part of the problem", I always just instinctively am glad to be part of the problem.
It's all, when it comes down to it, about 2 things- actual likelihood of useful results, and knockon effects. Stop and search when used widely is basically ineffectual, it soaks up time and it doesn't catch many people because the bottom line is, most people aren't carrying weapons or drugs or whatever it is you're looking for. The numbers are massively against you. And the knockon effects on attitudes, confidence in policing, etc I'd hope speak for themselves.
Stop and search when used widely is basically ineffectual
Isnt that the point though - wide or random use is pointless, everyone agrees, whereas when targeted at young males hanging round the streets at night in deprived urban areas with high knife crime rates it’s castigated as racist.
Stop and search didn't stop violence in Glasgow, it's been on the reduction for years and years(hardly like it's gone away though). Growing up in the 80s and 90s it was a much scarier place. 00s and 10s less so as time went on(a factor in that is obviously me getting older, but I think it's a fair observation). I'd put it more down to tearing down a lot of the shit-holes about the place and rebuilding. The gang culture, while it hasn't disappeared, reduced significantly with that imo(gang culture is a bad word for that btw, scheme (estate) territorial-ism significantly reducing is a much better way to put it.)
If they think stop and search will solve their ills they are on to plumbs.
ninfan - beause even then it does not do much good and does a load of harm. Read up on it.
beause even then it does not do much good and does a load of harm
You mean if you disregard the effects, both direct and deterrent, of successfully locking up toe rags who currently happily walk about carrying guns, knives and drugs?
Totally against it. You want to search someone then get a warrant or produce evidence that shows a criminal was about to be committed first
Stop and search is a short term approach that can give some immediate success but leads to racial profiling and therefore long term alienation and resentment.
We should try and solve the bigger issues first and not just spend more on roving police that are allowed to search people at will.
"Apparently stop and search really doesn’t work, as was found in New York and Glasgow."'
What? The same Glasgow people are using as a good example for cutting knife crime. While only part of an overall strategy Glasgow used stop and search on a gigantic scale.
In 2016/17 in London the stop search rate was 5 per 1000 people.
In Greater Glasgow in 2014/15 the stop/search rate was 191 per 1000 people.
It was pressure from the media and certain vocal elements of what we lamentably refer to as 'society' that lead to Teresa May (then Home Secretary) curbing the use of Stop Search - while some of this sounded sensible (not searching based just on appearance etc) it was what the vast majority of Officers in the country had been doing for years. The tone of training delivery was not helpful - all searches would be aggressively scrutinised by a senior Officer and you had to be almost certain of a positive result before using powers. League tables were generated showing percentages of positive outcomes from Stop Search, and questions were asked if performance changes were seen. This lead to a lot of frontline Officers being pressured into not using their powers - after all, you won't get in bother for NOT searching someone, and you could simply state that you felt that the grounds for the search didn't exist.
Stop Search is a very useful tool for detecting and preventing crime - we suffer County Lines drug dealing on my patch - and there have been some great results from coordinated, intelligence lead stop searches. It is when the power is used indiscriminately, or without the correct levels of suspicion or civility, that problems can occur.
The last point is that Police resources are now so scarce that effective crime prevention is almost impossible. Our area covers 200-odd square miles with 160,000 people living there - anyone care to take a guess as to how many Officers regularly patrol the area on a night shift? I'm not allowed to publish anything that would undermine public confidence, so I can't reveal exact figures...
My understanding, from talking to officers, is that stop & search selection was primarily based on a combination of behaviour and fashion choices.
eg. If you're looking a bit shifty on the street in an area known for drug selling or gang trouble, wearing a flat-brimmed cap and dressed like an extra from The Wire - you were more likely to be targeted whatever colour your skin is.
I don't feel this is unreasonable and a certain amount of tolerance will be required on both sides if an entrenched issue like this - which has been brewing for decades - is to be dealt with.
The differenc between Glasgow and London is that in London stop and search was based on stopping young black men in glasgow it was white men. Young black men were stopped and searched so often that it caused a lot of friction. People would be stopped simply on the basis of the colour of their skin and rates of crime detection were very low bar minor amounts of cannabis and even that was pretty low.
Policing needs consent of the community to be effective. When a particular group feels singled out and harrassed then this essential consent is lost. the police become the enemy
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jun/12/police-stop-and-search-black-people
Amber Rudd says
Home Secretary Amber Rudd says police cuts have played no part in the surge in street killings
yet you lot allude that the police say the opposite .....so confusing
Cressida Dick says the police havent lost control of the streets, im off into paddy power right now seeing what the odds are that if it kicks off like a few years back the army have to sort it out
Policing needs consent of the community to be effective.
One of Sir Robert Peel's founding principles - although he uses the word 'public' which is much broader. The statement above falls down a little with the use of the word 'community'. What if the 'community' of postcode drug gangs does not give consent to be policed in the current style? Everyone has equal human rights, but should society place equal weight on the views of dedicated, dangerous and violent criminal gangs?
The differenc between Glasgow and London is that in London stop and search was based on stopping young black men in glasgow it was white men.
Young black men were stopped and searched so often that it caused a lot of friction. People would be stopped simply on the basis of the colour of their skin
Maybe there’s a reason why the police were stopping and searching young black males? I recall the stat a few years back was that something like 75% of gun crime victims in London were young black males, and 75% of suspects were young black males.
perhaps - however being 100 tims more likely to be stopped and searched if you are black rather than white and having disproportionate amounts of force used just because you are black is damaging - between 3 and 9% of all stops resulted in arrests. Many innocent black youths were stopped daily for nothing other than being black and these stops were not polite questions but heavy handed assaults.
Evidence based practice old boy - and the evidence suggests that the stop and search tactic was not only ineffective but counter productive.
