We need more stop and search, admits Met chief who oversaw its decline

Lord Hogan-Howe blames higher crime numbers on increase in young men carrying knives in capital

POLICE should increase the use of stop and search to tackle soaring knife crime and violence in London, the former head of Scotland Yard who oversaw a huge decline in the use of the powers has said.

Lord Hogan-Howe, the head of the Metropolitan Police between 2011 and 2017 when Theresa May was Home Secretary, believes that the surge in violence means “we now need to increase the amount of stop and search again”.

Nearly 50 people have been fatally stabbed in London since the start of the year, while the overall number of knife offences in the capital rose by more than 20 per cent last year to 14,680. He also linked migration and higher birth rates in parts of London to increased violence because of the growing numbers of young men.

He said that “London is getting younger” and that there is a “high correlation” between areas which have seen a rise in the number of young men and violence. Speaking in the House of Lords last week, he said that one of the “large problems” in London is that so many people carry knives, that “too often an argument is turning into murder”. The use of stop and search peaked in 2008 when Boris Johnson was Mayor of London in response to a significant rise in violence.

The powers were used 600,000 times in that year, but reforms introduced by Mrs May led to a dramatic decline in their use. In 2015-16 they were used 160,000 times.

It came after Mrs May introduced changes in 2014 that meant police were only allowed to stop people when there were “reasonable grounds for suspicion” amid concerns that the policy was alienating black and ethnic minority communities.

Lord Hogan-Howe said: “In my time as commissioner, we reduced stop and search very significantly. I cannot blame the present Prime Minister for this, because I believe it was the right thing to do. Yet even though we reduced stop and search over the succeeding four years by 60 per cent, we arrested more people – rising from 43,000 to 45,000 people – and we saw crime reduce by 20 per cent, including knife crime and violence.

“I think we now need to increase the amount of stop and search again, but it must be intelligently targeted or its risks will outweigh its benefits.”

He also said the Home Office must help produce new scanning devices to make it easier for officers to find knives on people or in cars and he called for the development of facial recognition technology to make it easier for police to identify suspects and for more frontline police in parts of the capital that are struggling to cope with violence.