Media Guardian: Critical Investigation Related Article #1

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Black and Asian people targeted in stop and search surge

Number of black people stopped by police rose 322% after failed 2007 London bomb attack

Alan Travis

Media Guardian, Thursday 3 April 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/30/black-asian-stop-search-police-terrorism

Black and Asian people were disproportionately targeted by police in a surge in the use of stop and search under counterterrorism laws in the wake of the failed 2007 London bomb attack, according to official figures published today.

The Justice Ministry statistics showed that the number of black people being stopped and searched under counterterrorism laws rose by 322%, compared with 277% for Asian people and 185% for white people.

Corinna Ferguson, a barrister at human rights charity Liberty, said: "A threefold increase in anti-terror stop and search is the clearest signal that these powers are being misused. Only six in 10,000 people stopped were arrested for terrorism, let alone charged or convicted.

"And the disproportionate impact on ethic minorities is even greater than in previous years. This is why Liberty has been challenging these powers since 2003, and is taking the fight on to the court of human rights."

The Metropolitan police were responsible for most of the increase in the use of counterterrorism stop and search powers, which nationally rose from 37,197 in 2006/2007 to 117, 278 in 2007/08.

The Justice Ministry said the large rise in street searches under the terrorism laws was directly attributable to "the robust response by the Metropolitan police to the threat of terror-related networks in London since the Haymarket bomb in 2007".

The figures also disclosed a 19% increase in the use of what is called "section 60 powers", which give the police the right to stop and search anybody for 24 hours in a designated area where serious violence may take place. The power allows police to carry out the searches without having to have grounds to suspect that the person is carrying a knife or a weapon. The figures showed that there were 53,000 section 60 searches in 2007/08 with most of them in London, Birmingham and Liverpool.

There was a 64% increase in the number of black people searched under this section 60 power compared with a 41% increase for white people. In London over half of those stopped were black.

The rise in the use of counterterror powers fuelled an 8% increase in the general use of stop and search by the police in England and Wales with a total of 1,035,438 incidents recorded in 2007/08 – the highest level for 9 years. The main reason for conducting most stop and searches was for drugs.

The figures published today showed that 10 years after the official Macpherson inquiry report into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence black people are still eight times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people. This is actually an increase over the previous year – 2006/07 – when black people were seven times more likely to be stopped.

The number of racially motivated incidents has risen, according to the British Crime Survey, from 184,000 in 2006/07 to 207,000 in 2007/08, but the number recorded by the police fell by 7% over the same period.

The Justice Ministry figures on the representation of black and ethnic minority people in the criminal justice system showed that little progress had been made in the past year in reducing the ethnic bias in outcomes within the police, courts and prison and probation services.

Black people are still four times more likely to be arrested and less likely to get a caution than a white person. They are more likely to be imprisoned on conviction, and black and minority ethnic groups now account for 27% of the 83,000 prison population in England and Wales.

The Justice Ministry said that, however, the police and prison services had increased the proportion of minority ethnic staff they employed, with 7% of all police officers from a minority ethnic group.