‘Data collection should be uniform’
THE government’s figures show that between 2009 and 2019, drug offences were decreasing until 2016. Then in 2017, they went up sharply. While they have been steadily going down for white offenders, the opposite has happened for black and Asian people in 2018 and 2019.
The data obtained by Eastern Eye under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, shows that police forces are not collecting the statistics in a uniform way. It also appears they are not analysing the figures in a way which would spot patterns to alert them where extra resources may be needed.
Superintendent Rich Agar, the West Midlands Police lead for county lines said, “We don’t target particular parts of our community for our drug enforcement or safeguarding activity. We take action where the intelligence directs us to target drug offenders and protect vulnerable people.”
Eastern Eye could only analyse two aspects from all the FOI responses – actual arrests in terms of ethnic groups and the percentage change year-on-year.
Even then, because of the way ethnic groups are labelled by different forces, Eastern Eye could only split them into three main groups: white, black and Asian. Wherever possible, any group not specifically south Asian was removed.
While the data collected is of some value, the lack of a uniform approach may mean the police are not getting complete intelligence, said Lord Patel of Bradford.
“Let’s assume there’s a particular ethnic family in a northern town that’s dealing drugs, and there are several arrests from there. But the supplies are coming from a village in Pakistan, and that family has extended family around the Midlands, or in the south, and the drugs are coming in there as well.
“If you’re collecting that ethnic background [data], there’ll be a pattern that emerges. You could probably then intervene to ask, ‘well, who’s the main dealer here? Where’s the hub of this?’
“Otherwise, you’re just dealing with isolated pots of ‘we’ve got fewer arrests here and there’, without understanding that higher level drug dealing market, which I believe it’s come to now.”
In West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Nottinghamshire and the Met, Asians topped the percentage change year-on-year. In Nottinghamshire, for example, that rise was 25 per cent.
Greater Manchester Police (GMP), which is under special measures, promised to work with Eastern Eye to report this story.
Detective superintendent Daniel Inglis, of GMP’s department of serious and organised crime, said, “Although a rise in arrests may understandably initially appear as a concern for some people, it does highlight the proactive approach GMP is taking to combatting the supply of drugs and getting them off our streets.
“Reasons for possession of illicit substances can vary significantly, meaning that we cannot look at one set of data for the root cause.”
In the West Midlands, the numbers of white people arrested went down by 1.3 per cent, while they rose by almost five per cent for black communities and nearly 13 per cent for Asians.
In Derbyshire, the year-on-year arrest figures decreased for all three ethnic groups, but the lowest fall was among Asians.
In Leicestershire, although more white people were arrested yearon-year, Asian arrests also rose during that period by 38 per cent.
Leicestershire Police told Eastern Eye they did engage with south Asian communities, but there would always be gaps in intelligence. “There’s intelligence gaps across every community. Trust in policing, trusting people our partner agencies speak to, the impact of speaking to law enforcement, may be some of the reasons. But we see the issue of intelligence gaps and coverage around all of our communities as a common theme.”