Key to safe policing

As London prepared to host a spectacular fireworks display to welcome in the new year, the capital was gripped by darker forces away from the heavily policed set-piece events. Elsewhere, four young men were stabbed to death in incidents across the city, further evidence that the police, in London and other conurbations, need to get a grip on rising violence.

These deaths raise serious questions, and not just for the police, whose primary function is to keep order on the streets, not to be sidetracked in pursuing long-dead alleged perpetrators for ancient crimes. Politicians must also answer for their decisions. When she was home secretary, Theresa May made clear her concern that stop and search was being used disproportionately against black and ethnic-minority suspects and should be scaled back. Yet this is a key police tool for keeping people safe, including many young black men who are also disproportionately victims of stabbings. Cressida Dick, the Met Police commissioner, recently said many front-line officers believed a substantial decrease in stop and search since Mrs May’s reforms has been a contributory factor behind the recent rise in knife crime.

The greater use by police of body-mounted video cameras, which can record their interactions with suspects, is intended to encourage officers to use stop and search without feeling they are always having to watch out for a disapproving tut-tut from a virtue-signalling politician or human rights lawyer. Picking on people solely because of their colour is wrong; but hampering the use of a critical crime-fighting power so that politicians can burnish their liberal credentials is irresponsible.