The Guardian view on stop and search: this can’t go on
Barely a month after two separate reviews of policing made the case for radical reform in light of growing risks, the Independent Office for Police Conduct has issued a fresh blast of criticism. The latest findings relate to the police’s approach to stop and search. The number of these searches carried out rose 24% to 695,009 in the year to March 2021. Almost 70% of stops – 478,576 – were drugs searches.
While the Met points to the seizure of 4,800 weapons as proof that stop and search is a valid tool, the IOPC rightly asserts that the service – which uses stop and search more than any other – must, along with the UK’s other 42 forces, “balance tackling crime with building trust”. This has fallen to alarmingly low levels after a series of incidents that have horrified even many of those who are usually pro-police.
The most extreme was the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving officer. More recently, reports of the strip-search of a 15-yearold girl, carried out at school with no teachers or parent present, provoked outrage. An official investigation found that racism was “likely to have been an influencing factor” in the way this black child was treated. Last week it was announced that the school’s headteacher has stepped down.
Racism is to the fore too in the stop and search review. In the year to March 2021, black people were seven times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched. Extraordinarily, the official police watchdog is now calling for people from black, Asian and other ethnic minority backgrounds to be “safeguarded” from the harms caused by biased policing. The Home Office and police chiefs should take up the suggestion of research into the trauma this causes, including to children and young people, and bearing in mind the disproportionate use of force including handcuffs. Allegations that one boy was searched 60 times over two years, starting when he was 14, are being examined.
Racism in the police, of course, is nothing new. Nor is sexism. Arguably, the sharing of grossly offensive images and views on social media – for example by disgraced officers at Charing Cross station, in Hampshire and West Mercia – has simply given an uglier edge to pre-existing attitudes and behaviour. But what has become clearer recently is that flawed leadership has allowed the situation to deteriorate.
The acting Met chief, Sir Stephen House, told MPs last week that his former boss Dame Cressida Dick had been wrong to blame the force’s problems on rogue individuals. Instead, it is “subcultures” that need to be rooted out – failures of supervision that must be faced. But while it is a relief to see this admitted – and it must always be remembered that police officers, like other frontline public sector workers, do a difficult job – it is impossible to have faith in any promised clearout.
The outgoing chief inspector, Sir Tom Winsor, believes the problems are structural as well as cultural. The architecture of the 43 separate forces is “far from fit for purpose”, his final report said. He also raised the threat of infiltration by organised crime.
Change is needed and the current home secretary, Priti Patel, is incapable of leading it. The opportunity is there for the government’s opponents to set out an alternative. Labour should take it. British policing needs an overhaul.