stop and search policy branded racist?

[graham enzk]

News Headlines from The Press Association
Monday 07 August 2006 09:39am

Police chief condemns terror laws
Britain's most senior Asian police officer is set to warn that anti-terror laws discriminate against Muslims and could "criminalise" ethnic minorities, it has been reported.

Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Tarique Ghaffur will call for an independent judicial review to investigate what caused the "anger and resentment" of young British Muslims that lay behind the July 7 bombings in London.

Addressing a National Black Police Association conference in Manchester, Mr Ghaffur will also speak about how racism within the police has affected his own career, according to the Guardian newspaper.

He will say: "Not only has anti-terrorism and security legislation been tightened across many European countries with the effect of indirectly discriminating against Muslims, but other equally unwanted practices have also emerged, including 'passenger profiling' as well as increased stop and search and arrest under terrorism legislation."

Mr Ghaffur, who started his police career with Greater Manchester Police in 1974, will argue that stopping and searching tends "to be based more on physical appearance than being intelligence-led", the paper reported.

He will say: "There is a very real danger that the counter-terrorism label is also being used by other law enforcement agencies to the effect that there is a real risk of criminalising minority communities.

"The impact of this will be that just at the time we need the confidence and trust of these communities, they may retreat inside themselves."

Ahead of today's conference Keith Jarrett, chairman of the National Black Police Association, said that racism in the police service "had not gone away".

He told Sky News: "The majority of the police service are decent, hard-working people who are not bigoted but the people who are bigoted will always be bigoted.

"But I know routinely black youths are stopped simply because they're black. Senior officers in the police service in London have said to junior officers, 'You will go out and you will stop black youths wearing these clothes and in this age group because they are the ones that are committing robberies'. Now that is institutionally racist."



© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved.


now i am not some high up experienced police chief, so i may be missing some of the subtler aspects of police intelligence but surely you stop and search the people most likely to be involved in whatever crime you're dealing with for the area you are in.
if i was told to be on the lookout for islamic extremists, i would target those of muslim appearance, late teens to 30 odd. not, say, middle class white women in their 50s.
in london looking for folk that commit robberies and targeting black youths dressed in a certain way does not strike me as racist, however if that was the order in dundee then i could see it as being racist because statistically it's less likely to be an accurate profile, it would be to target schemey neds.

thoughts?

[Keerin]

I think what he is trying to say is that these black youths are being stopped for being black and not because intelligence reports that black youths are commiting crimes.

It's like a vicious cycle isn't it. Black teenagers get fed up of being harrased just because they are black so they cause trouble, which re-inforces a previously unfound stereotype (black kids = troublemakes and criminals) and then black kids get more hassle.

With the Islamic exapmle you have given, You indicated that you would stop and search those of Muslim appearance. Randomly? You would randomly search 18-30's who looked like Muslims. Maybe not racist but it's not very good practice to assume everyone who looks muslim is an islamic extremist. Hence he said "stopping and searching tends "to be based more on physical appearance than being intelligence-led"".

Of course, I agree when you say that looking for an islamic extremist you wouldn't stop midle class 50 year olds, but just randomly stopping muslims very frequently will make muslims feel that they are being unfairly targeted.

[graham enzk]

well isn't stop and search a random thing anyway? that just on the off chance you catch someone that you don't have earmarked as a suspect?
otherwise you would be stopping specific people, which would be intelligence led.
that's what i'm getting at, of course stop and search is based on physical appearance.
say for example a lot of crime was committed in this area by people with mohicans but you weren't sure which folk with mohawks were doing it so you decide a bit of stop and search might just nab you a suspect, are you going to stop and search people with mohawks or old ladys with zimmers?

[AlanG]

Originally Posted by graham enzk

well isn't stop and search a random thing anyway? that just on the off chance you catch someone that you don't have earmarked as a suspect?

its not random if you are targetting people for their appearance.

This is stupid because it assumes the only Muslims in the UK have light skin. Even as a measure to target "Islamic extremists" its stupid as all it takes is a group of white Muslims to do something and they can slip past these measures.

The Met have a history of targetting Black and Asian people using anti-terrorist laws. In the 80s the laws to stop and search potential IRA activists was used in the majority of cases against Black people.

[graham enzk]

Originally Posted by AlanG

its not random if you are targetting people for their appearance.

random within certain parameters. completely random is a bit pointless.
if your criminal is a black person, but you don't know who they are but you think they may be in a certain area so you decide to do stop and search, you do the stop and search on black people.
if your looking for white people you do the stop and search on white people.
i dunno it seems logical.
i know the powers can be abused, ie stopping black folk when looking for IRA but what i mainly found wierd was this:
"But I know routinely black youths are stopped simply because they're black. Senior officers in the police service in London have said to junior officers, 'You will go out and you will stop black youths wearing these clothes and in this age group because they are the ones that are committing robberies'. Now that is institutionally racist."
maybe it's out of context but if they're looking for black youths that are commiting robberies then searching black youths wearing certain clothing sounds like a good plan.
they're hardly going to say black youths are committing robberies in this area so stop and search chinese pensioners.
i know black youths in the area probably get pissed off (especially the ones with stolen goods on them) but maybe the next day they did stop and search chinese pensioners while trying to crack an illegal mah-jong gambling racket.

[Bikerboy]

If I was a cop, and I was cruising the streets and had been told to look out for anti-social behaviour, my concentration would mainly be on groups of male youths. Why? because I know it would more than likely turn up the better result in the end. (I am aware this prejudice).

So if I'm a cop and I get told to look out for terrorist activities or suspects, stopping some kid with his cap at 90degrees and his trackies tucked into his socks isn't gonna be my point of concentration is it? More than likely I would be looking out for a teenage - middle aged male who was apparently of the muslim faith. As I said above I am aware that this is prejudice/racist behaviour, but what works? Should we make sure our police stop an equal number of white christians so that the statistics look better? no because that is racist in itself.

I hate posting this, cos someone is bound to think I come across as some mini skinhead or something, but shit like this winds me up. It was like that crack with the kids being dressed as monkeys, not letting them play that role suggests that you have racist stereotypes in your head and therefore are a 'racist' as a result.

Note: I know not all terrorists are male Muslims. examples eh.