Stop and search with confidence, chief tells officers

Commissioner says surge in knife crime must be tackled despite police fears of being labelled racist

POLICE officers are reluctant to use stop and search powers that could tackle burgeoning knife crime because they are afraid of being accused of racism, the head of Scotland Yard has said. Cressida Dick said the powers were a valuable tool to fight a rise in stabbings and knifepoint crime and she was determined to encourage officers to use them properly on the streets.

But she said accusations of police racism for disproportionately focusing on young black men meant officers had lost confidence in using the tactic.

Officials figures released last month showed knife crime in England and Wales had jumped by a fifth in the past year, up to 34,703 incidents and the highest level for seven years. There was a particular increase in knifepoint robberies, while rapes or sexual assaults at knifepoint also rose.

The Metropolitan police commissioner told the BBC: “We have had probably a 20 per cent increase in the last year and that is not acceptable, so I am encouraging my officers to do stop and search as one of many things that will help to bring this number down.”

Theresa May curbed the use of the powers when she was Home Secretary because of fears it was undermining relations between the police and ethnic minorities. During Mrs May’s tenure, the number of checks fell from more than a million a year to fewer than 400,000. Before the powers were reformed less than 10 per cent of searches resulted in arrest, whereas recent figures show this has risen to 16 per cent, suggesting their use is more focused.

Home Office figures last year showed black people were six times more likely to be stopped than white people.

Ms Dick said: “As commissioner, I have said I want officers to use stop and search. Obviously they need do it lawfully, they need to have the grounds and they need wherever possible to be very courteous and they need to be held to account.”

“All those thing in place, I am very much in favour of stop and search and I have said so to my officers. I want them to feel confident to use it.”

Ms Dick, the most senior police officer in the country, said she believed the “vast majority” of the public supported her policy.

She said: “It’s an important power, it’s useful to use, it’s very helpful in all sorts of ways. It’s not the only thing that will bring down knife crime.”

Police find “something that you shouldn’t have” during one-in-three stop and searches, she said, which showed police were not just conducting “random work”.

She said: “The perception might be that we stop lots of, for example, young black men and we don’t find anything. We do. I’m sorry to say, we find the same rate among the people of colour and the people not of colour that we stop.”