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WALTHAM FOREST: Concern over stop and search

9:51am Friday 23rd January 2009 in


TOO many innocent people in London are being stopped and searched using powers under the Terrorism Act, it has been claimed.

Figures released by the Metropolitan Police show 157,000 stop and searches took place in the 12 months up to September last year.

But only 1,200 of those incidents resulted in an arrest.

Young people in Waltham Forest have voiced concerns about a perceived over-use of stop and search and some say the approach of some police has caused increased mistrust.

The force insists that it is using stop and search properly bit is aware of the sensitivities.

Barrister Sebastian Gardiner has called on the police to curb its use of the power under Section 44 of the Act and says it is being used when terrorist activity is highly unlikely.

A Metropolitan Police report, published in 2004, said the power “trampled on the basic human rights of too many Londoners.”

The police say very few complaints have been received from the public over stop and search.

Comments(7)

Touchwood says...
12:49pm Fri 23 Jan 09

Having seen the behaviour of a lot of 'young people' in the Borough I can quite understand the actions of the law enforcement services! Using the excuse of 'Human rights' is responsible for a lot of criminal activity!!

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InsolentMinx says...
3:31pm Fri 23 Jan 09

so what's the issue here?

if you're innocent you've nothing to worry about.

i've been stopped and searched a few times when i was a photographer under the Terrorism Act. It takes 5 minutes and the Police were very pleasant about it.
if you make a fuss then they're going to think you're hiding something.

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Walthamster says...
6:21pm Fri 23 Jan 09

Terrorist activity isn't unlikely in London. We've already had a string of attacks, one of them killing 52 people. Or weren't their rights "trampled on"?

Also, I'm in favour of stop-and-search if it can cut down the number of teenagers being stabbed to death.

It's not the police that are oppressing teenagers, it's other teenagers. Stop-and-search gives police a chance to find who's carrying knives. It's one of the few ways we've got of reducing the death toll. Opposing it is helping the killers.

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Walthamster says...
6:24pm Fri 23 Jan 09

To make that clearer, I don't want more people arrested for carrying knives, I want more of them to think it's not worth carrying a knife in case they get arrested!

In other words, success isn't measured in number of arrests. Success means preventing crime. But that more useful result is hard to measure, so the pen-pushers can't deal with it.

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will2670 says...
8:42pm Fri 23 Jan 09

I've been searched today just walking down the road. I close to 40 and white.. the typical face or terrorism.

I guess the trouble is where the rights of the police should stop. how about just knocking on your door and searching your house? or arresting people demonstrating?
further I feel it’s a waste of police time. 157000 searches 1200 arrests… not a good ratio really. I would like to see my police dealing with knife crime, drugs, etc. just searching randomly people is just ****.

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Claridger says...
1:33pm Sat 24 Jan 09

The Police get out of control when they are given too much power and should be more selective.

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bewildered,e17 says...
10:29pm Sat 24 Jan 09

will2670 wrote:
I've been searched today just walking down the road. I close to 40 and white.. the typical face or terrorism. I guess the trouble is where the rights of the police should stop. how about just knocking on your door and searching your house? or arresting people demonstrating? further I feel it’s a waste of police time. 157000 searches 1200 arrests… not a good ratio really. I would like to see my police dealing with knife crime, drugs, etc. just searching randomly people is just ****.
what are you talking about! i bet most of the 1,200 arrests were for drugs and weapons. what do you want the police to do exactly? i am also a 40 year old white male and i was stopped and searched two weeks ago, it took five minutes and the police explained why they were searching me, no problem. some people just like to blame the police because their an easy get out, walthamster is right its teenagers oppressing each other thats the problem with knife crime, as for terrorism how are we supposed to prevent further attacks before they happen without stop and search, the threat is from muslims so muslims need to be stopped, the vast majority of muslims are decent people but, those that are not are extremely dangerous, most youths who carry knives are young black males so young black males need to be stopped, most football football hooligans are white males so on match days white males need to be stopped, its called targeting and anyone from any group should not complain about it, prevention is better than consequence.

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