Police revive stop and search amid explosion of violence by youths
MINISTERS have been forced to revive stop and search as a police tactic following an explosion in youth violence.
rocketing figures have seen 20 crimes a day being reported in London alone.
Use of the controversial power halved when Theresa May was home secretary.
She had ordered forces to curb its ‘excessive and inappropriate’ use amid concerns the practise was fuelling resentment among ethnic minorities, who complained they were disproportionately targeted.
But yesterday her successor Amber rudd offered the tactic her full backing, as new figures emerged suggesting that limiting checks on youths had fuelled rocketing knife and youth crime.
Statistics released yesterday by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) show that almost 650 victims of serious youth violence are recorded by police each month in London, an increase of 49 per cent since 2013.
This comes as the number of stop and searches performed by police in London have dropped by 60 per cent, from more than 360,000 in 2012/ 13 to under 155,000 last year.
Overall the number of police stop and searches in England and Wales have plummeted from more than a million a year in 2015/16 to fewer than 400,000.
Criminologists have blamed the decline on a rise in knife crime across 37 of the 44 police force areas. Knife crime rose 20 per cent from 28,800 incidents to 34,703 in the year to March, the highest in seven years.
Yesterday Mrs rudd said: ‘Officers who use stop and search appropriately, with reasonable grounds and in a targeted and intelligence-led way, will always have my full support ... It is a vital tool to keep the public safe.’
Her comments echo those of Scotland Yard Commissioner Cressida Dick, who yesterday wrote in The Times: ‘I want officers to feel confident to use this power. It must, of course, be lawful, done courteously and subject to proper scrutiny.’
The rules state officers can only stop and search people if they have ‘reasonable grounds’ to suspect they are carrying items such as drugs, a weapon or stolen property.
Figures show about one in three stop and searches result in something being found.
Before the 2014 overhaul, less than 10 per cent of stops led to an arrest. Now 16 per cent result in arrest. This is the highest level in 14 years, suggesting that their use is more focused.
But the tactic has inflamed community tensions as black people are six times more likely than white people to be stopped. Yesterday Miss Dick said: ‘We need to fight that perception; we are absolutely not doing that. It has no place in modern policing. Our outcome rate – one in three positive – is the same whether you are black, white or whoever you are.’
Ex-Met officer rory Geoghegan, head of criminal justice at the CSJ, said: ‘The reality of rising street crime ... finally appears to have been recognised. From my own experience, using stop and search gets results.’
‘Vital tool to keep public safe’