Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Police seize gun from boy in search
POLICE seized a gun from a 16-year-old boy during a stop and search.
The incident was one of a number revealed in new data on stop and searches by Police Scotland.
A total of 1,159 searches were carried out by officers in Dundee between April last year and March – almost unchanged from the 1,134 carried out in the previous year.
Of the searches, 460 resulted in a “positive” outcome, meaning that illegal items such as weapons and illicit substances were found.
It means nearly 40% of all searches carried out since the introduction of a new stop and search code of conduct have had a positive result – up from 35% the previous year.
Drugs accounted for half of all successful searches.
Officers seized Class A, B and C drugs, as well as a small number of new psychoactive substances (NPS) – a category that can include the synthetic cannabis known as spice.
Elsewhere, police seized 21 weapons such as blades, along with a single firearm from the 16-year-old boy.
Stop and search routines also resulted in the retrieval of 123 pieces of stolen property.
The youngest person to be stopped was 13 and the oldest was 84.
Stop and search has been criticised by civil liberties groups such as Liberty and Big Brother Watch. In the past, officers have been able to carry out searches based upon their own gut feeling that they had “reasonable grounds” to do so.
However, this was abolished i n Scotland with the introduction of a new code of conduct in May last year.
The new code was compiled with the assistance of researchers from Dundee University and Edinburgh Napier, who said stop and search should be used as a “last resort”.
Assistant Chief Constable Bernard Higgins, pictured left, the officer in charge of the policy, said: “We recognise that stopping and searching people is a significant intrusion into their personal liberty and privacy and, as such, all stop and search activity must be appropriate in line with the code of practice for stop and search.”