‘GENERATION OF ASIANS BEING CRIMINALISED’
South Asians three times more likely to be stopped and searched during pandemic
POLICE in England and Wales stopped and searched almost 10 south Asians every hour during lockdown, figures have shown.
Eastern Eye has found that from April 2020 to March 2021, authorities detained almost 86,000 south Asians – a rise of more than 47 per cent on the previous 12 months, and three times the national average.
The National Black Police Association (NBPA) said the findings were “of concern” as, overall, most crimes went down during lockdown. “Not only are their names going into the computer for having been stopped and searched, even though it was negative, there’s some of them actually being criminalised further down the field,” said NBPA president, Inspector Andy George.
“They’re ending up with criminal records for interactions which either don’t have to be done, or which could be done in a better way.
“It’s disappointing that more people from black and Asian backgrounds were being stopped and searched. Through the Home Affairs Select Committee and the work that was done in the Macpherson review, during Covid we’ve obviously seen more of those communities being criminalised through the issuing of Covid tickets as well.”
Dal Babu was a former chief superintendent in the Met, and he founded the National Association of Muslim Police. He supports the idea of stop and search.
Babu said he wasn’t surprised by the figures, but he was critical of the greater use of Section 60 of the Act. It allows officers to stop people if they have “reasonable grounds” to do so.
“There is a crisis at the moment in terms of confidence in stop and search, and that’s a challenge,” said Babu.
“It’s a valuable tool, but unless it’s used effectively, and unless it’s used in a responsible manner, there is a difficulty that people will continue to lose confidence.
“It makes political headlines – ‘we’re going to search more people’ – but you risk going back to the days of lack of confidence and you still need boots on the streets.
“So, the police say ‘we’re going to do all of these searches’, but where are the police officers that are going to be able to do it?”
Two years ago, home secretary Priti Patel
relaxed Section 60 of the stop and search laws because she said it would make it easier for officers to tackle violent crime. The Home Office said it had added an extra 9,000 officers to use this power.
But critics have told Eastern Eye this was a return to the despised “sus law”, part of the 19th century Vagrancy Act allowing police to stop people randomly.
The sus law caused huge racial tensions in the 1970s.
Former Metropolitan Police superintendent and former founding chair of the NBPA, Leroy Logan, told Eastern Eye that Section 60 was used simply to satisfy officers’ egos.
“Section 60s are sus law on steroids because of the dis proportionalities we’ve always spoken about,” he said.
“In stop and search, you’re nine to 10 times more likely to be stopped and searched if you’re black than if you’re white. Section 60s, it’s over 20 times more.
“You don’t see a commensurate conclusion in terms of tangible outcomes, whether a weapon is found, whether that person is arrested, or charged, or cautioned.
“It’s quite clear that those forms of enforcement are really to massage the ego of the police services to say, ‘we are doing something’.”
But the police have argued that stops and searches are intelligence-led and keep people safer.
Yet analysis of the data by Eastern Eye suggests this may not be true. The media, and it appears the authorities too, report stop and search figures, but they rarely look at or expose what happens to people as a result of being detained by the police.
Eastern Eye’s analysis showed that from April 2020 to March 2021, of those south Asians stopped and searched in 42 force areas, police took no further action against 76 per cent; arrested almost one in 10; but charged just 1.7 per cent.
Of these, this paper does not know how many were convicted.
The data suggests that during several lockdowns, more than 98 per cent of south Asians stopped and searched by police were innocent of any crime. This raises questions about the utility of the police’s actions.
It also backs the findings by academics writing in The British Journal of Criminology in 2018.
They concluded, “We found no evidence for effects on robbery and theft, vehicle crime or criminal damage, and inconsistent evidence of very small effects on burglary, non-domestic violent crime and total crime.
“The only strong evidence was for effects on drug offences.
“When we looked separately at Section 60 searches, it did not appear that a sudden surge in usage had any effect on the underlying trend in non-domestic violent crime. In other words, we found very little evidence to support any of our hypotheses.”
It does not surprise Logan, who wrote about the devastating experience stop and search had on him when he was 13 in his autobiography, Closing Ranks.
The book, which earlier this year was made into a BBC One TV film by Oscar-winning director, Steve McQueen, explains Logan’s experiences in the Met, and his accusations of the force being institutionally racist at the Macpherson inquiry.
He told Eastern Eye, “There’s never been a correlation between if you increase stop and search, you reduce knife crime, or other forms of crime, and if you reduce stop and search, those crimes go up.
“Even the Home Office data unit has said that categorically. So, when you hear senior officers say, ‘Well, in my experience, it’s a very useful tool’, balderdash, it isn’t.
“It has been shown to be more harmful to communities that you are trying to police in a positive, citizens-focused way, because of the experience they have through excessive use of Section 1 and Section 60 stop and search. So, it’s totally counter-productive.”
But the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) disagreed.
“Officers use stop and search to allay or confirm their reasonable suspicion that a person has a prohibited item on them, often avoiding the need for arrest,” said its national lead, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Amanda Pearson.
“Using charges as a way to measure the effectiveness of stop and search does not give a full picture, as it’s impossible to know how many crimes have been prevented.”
The NBPA said it would present Eastern Eye’s findings to the police minister, Kit Malthouse.
“Whenever we look at the myths and misinformation which are around the black community, representations are low in the police service,” said George.
“Those key decision makers at a more strategic and senior level are not representative of all the communities we serve, so there’s less understanding, less cultural awareness around the issues in those communities.
“As they move around the national decision-making model, that information intelligence gathering from a variety of sources, whenever it’s only coming from majority white viewpoint, then they’re prone to make decisions that work to the detriment of black and Asian communities.”
Logan told Eastern Eye that unless senior bosses hold their rankand-file officers to account, disproportionality would not be cut.
But a recent experience also concerned him.
Officers stopped him while driving for a motor violation he did not commit.
Only after they pulled him over did they ask him to step out of the car so they could search his vehicle and him. He challenged the decision, and once they realised that he was a former senior officer, the officers let him go.
Logan is convinced that the police are now putting down road traffic violations as the excuse for stopping ethnic minorities rather than the actual reason – which is stop and search.
“I don’t think you can leave the police to police themselves or monitor their own conduct, because over the last 10 years, that’s what’s happened,” he said.
“Prior to that, after the first 10 years on Macpherson, we had independent oversight of all of the recommendations, in particular stop and search.
“Subsequent Labour home secretaries were able to hold chief constables to account, asking what are the outcomes, not just the number of people, but what are the outcomes?
“Where are the results to show it is a tool that’s being used properly, objectively and intelligence based and it’s not seen as a fishing expedition, arresting people unduly and, as a result of that, causing community tension and reducing trust and confidence in the police.
“Until you get that independent oversight, you will not get an improvement – whether it’s Section 1 stops, Section 60. The police are not capable of being objective in this because they’re so steeped in that power.”
The Metropolitan Police rejected this allegation.
“There is no evidence to support the allegation that stop and searches are being wilfully under-recorded,” said Temporary Deputy Assistant Commissioner Jane Connors. “The claim of deliberate under-reporting has been repeatedly made without substance and regular HMICFRS [the regulator] inspections and reports from scrutiny bodies have not uncovered any evidence of this.”
She also defended the use of Section 60 powers.
“The decision to authorise Section 60 orders is not taken lightly. It is only done when there has been significant, serious violent crime and there is a real threat of further violence taking place.
“The effectiveness of Section 60 orders should not only be taken into account if any criminality was detected, but also consider whether any incidents of further violence were prevented, whether individuals were discouraged from carrying weapons, and how safe the community felt as a result.”
Eastern Eye asked the Home Office a series of questions, including the claim by the former chair of the NBPA, but it refused to answer our specific questions.
“She [Patel] needs to revisit this position she’s taken,” said Babu. “It comes from somebody who’s never had practical experience, and I’m not entirely sure it’s going to make a great deal of difference.”