Go Wisely – everything you need to know about stop and search

Music.

Caption - Stop & Search Go Wisely

Cindy Butts

What we’ve got to be clear about is that young people by and large don’t all walk around with hoodies on and stacked up with guns and knives. That’s not true - young people by and large are, are good young people, but we have had an increase in the number of fatalities and young people who are carrying guns and knives are getting younger and younger, that’s a fact.

Music.

Caption – Why Stop and Search

Saad Butt

The current climate that we’re in is perfectly reasonable and it’s justified and it’s logical and rational for police to be stopping and searching people.

Vox pop – not captioned

I think I’ve been conditioned to it, I don’t see, well I see what’s wrong with it but I live day to day with it. With the average day hunter that lives in that environment, it’s here, it’s normal and I’m the average day hunter that lives in this environment and I see it as normal.

Vox pop – not captioned

I don’t really see any guns and knives, I think it depends where you are really.

Vox pop – not captioned

Hispanic community are aware of what is happening they do agree with stop and search. But obviously historic distrust with the police in South America that’s where it's come from, the distrust back home.

Saad Butt

They’re just so glamorised in today’s society. You know, you’ve got rappers wearing bullet proof jackets, young people feel that it's cool, it's this idea of like it's cool to carry knives

Erinma Bell

And we have a national issue with guns in our societies, in our communities and unfortunately it’s our young people that are getting tied up and caught up in that, that web of gun and gang crime.

Cindy Butts

What we know is that young people are disproportionately the victims of gun and knife crime. It’s about young people carrying and using guns and knives who are prepared to use it on their fellow young people. So there is an issue about young people as victims and how much we protect young people as victims. And this is why Stop & Search is so important. Stop & Search is a useful tool but it’s only useful when it’s used in the right way.

Caption – The Terrorist Threat

Vox pop – not captioned

Well the threat of terrorism is pretty real all over the globe and I think it once living in Britain it’s very much there as well.

Commander Rod Jarman

The threat from terrorism at the moment is extremely serious. We’re at a level called Severe which means that we expect an attack to happen. And we’ve seen in the past three years the outcomes of some serious attacks on London which have been able to carry themselves right through to bombs on the underground in 2005 and to last years attack at Glasgow Airport and in central London. Now all of those attacks and all of the many others that we stopped in the same period have all had a similar process and approach. That is terrorists travelling around the country, meeting each other, planning, training, preparing, getting materials together to build devices and then carrying out reconnaissance and dry runs. And you saw on the July 7th bombings the video of them the week before going down the same route that they did on the day when they carried out the actual explosions.

Caption – Stop and search & the law

Peter Herbert

The powers to stop and search have existed for centuries in one form or another. The main powers of stop and search that are used now require reasonable grounds of suspicion, firstly under the Police and Criminal evidence act as to whether an arrestible offence has been committed. Secondly under the Misuse of Drugs act as to whether it’s reasonable grounds to suspect the person has unlawful drugs in their possession.

Sync

Hello sir, can you just turn the ignition off and come join me on the pavement please?

Peter Herbert

And thirdly under the Firearms act where most commonly it’s used to deal with offensive weapons, and again in all three cases reasonable grounds are required.

Sync

Yes, everything’s fine although I would like to do a search on your vehicle as well.

PC Vox pop – not captioned

You know if a person matches a description, fine, but there must be other reasons as to why you’re stopping them and more often than not there has to be other reasons why you’re searching them. You know one explanation sometimes isn’t good enough for young people and adults as well. You know there might something very specific, you know a scar, a tattoo, the size of somebody the build of somebody. You know all these things make up a stop and search, not just one thing. So it's all in the explanation and and how you talk, talk to people basically.

Peter Herbert

Parliament has recently introduced two pieces of legislation where reasonable grounds for suspicion are not required, the first is under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, in relation to the heightened level of use of guns and knives where offences of violence have occurred in a particular locality.

PC vox pop – not captioned

You act in, in in a way that you’d like to be treated yourself if you was, if you were in that position. I think that goes with anything that the police do. I don’t think there’s an issue with the, with how, how you do your job then.

Peter Herbert

The other is under Section 44 of the Anti Terrorism Act where again reasonable grounds of suspicions are not required, but police officers are required in both circumstances to tell the individual why they have been stopped and why they are being searched.

Sync

We’ve had information from our CCTV cameras, every now and again we've seen you lift your cam... your phone up, and they think that you’ve been taking photos on your camera.

PC vox pop – not captioned

For me Stop & Search is necessary, and Stop & Search done the right way can be the best police tool, but Stop & Search done the wrong way can be the worse police tool.

Music.

Caption - The Argument For and Against

Vox pop – not captioned

I was just walking minding my own business.

Vox pop – not captioned

I was walking out of my house, walking down to my car.

Vox pop – not captioned

I was hanging around with my friends.

Vox pop – not captioned

They came, they grabbed us, they put us against the wall, there are cameras even this time I don’t know why.

I don’t know something serious must have happened. They weren’t clear about what happened, they just said something’s that’s happened, you fit the description, what’s your name, where are you from, da, da, da, da, da, da, they start firing away their questions.

Vox pop – not captioned

What we was doing er what we’d been up to erm what we was going to do, simple questions like that.

Vox pop – not captioned

They spoke to me in a correct manner, they spoke to me as an adult, but it wasn’t, that wasn’t really the plan you know 'cos like I haven’t done nothing and no you’re just stopping and searching me, but they did speak to me in a good tone.

Vox pop – not captioned

Stopping and searching’s like really, like really good. I think it’s good that they just the police can just pull you over and stop you well like just go up to a group of kids or a gang or even just a single person, ask them to well because of, if they have got something and I’m walking down the street and if they’ve just stopped them and...

Vox pop – not captioned

It is for your safety and I think that if it’s done for our safety then I think that is correct.

Vox pop – not captioned

Somebody might have a knife and then the police have just stopped them and you walk around the corner, you could have been a victim.

James Welch

Well I think that the problem is that one person’s reasonably grounds maybe not the same for somebody else.

Chief Inspector Raj Singh Kohli

Officers spend 18, 20 weeks at training schools and further two years honing their skills in Stop & Search. Stopping and speaking and searching somebody is notoriously difficult and you’ve got to have your grounds. I know there is, there is a perception that people go on fishing expeditions, but in reality you’ve got to write all your grounds down, those grounds are examined by a supervising officer. And if those grounds don’t exist you can be disciplined, you can be spoken to, you can be given further training.

Police Officer

We’ve just been flagged down by a member of the public who’s come across an elderly lady who’s been grabbed from behind by a young black teenager. He was, he dragged her into some bushes and stole her handbag and he’s run off. We’ve searched the area onto the estate to see if we can find him.

We did stop and speak to two young youths on the estate but it turned out they weren’t the people we were after. We’re still searching the estate to see if we can find the suspect at this stage.

James Welch

Everybody expects to be able to go about their day to day business without interference by other people or by police officers. And any use of stop and search powers against individuals is going to be unpleasant, interfere with you going, or what you want to do, going to make your late, gonna involve an intrusion of your privacy. Our particularly concern is that over the last 15 years parliament has seen fit to start granting powers that do not depend on reasonable suspicions directed against individuals. These are powers under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Using those powers police officers are allowed to stop and search people without having any suspicion er directed against those individuals. Those powers are excessive; they’re disproportionate and in our view should be done away with.

Superintendent Nick Jupp

There’s a call from the community in response to the growing trend of knives and guns on the streets of London, not only by adults, but by young people as well. They want to have the right to actually move around London freely without fear from people who have got knives and guns and that’s why we have the powers to stop and search, a response from the community and through legislation.

Peter Herbert

One of the things that is a feature though is that very little intelligence is gained from stops and searches and virtually no intelligence is gained from either Section 44 Anti-terrorism stops or Section 60 stops.

Chief Inspector Raj Singh Kohli

As a senior police officer I’m privy to some quite sensitive intelligence from both from within the community and and from you know MI5, MI6 and Section 44 when implemented isn’t just at the whim of the senior police officer. It goes all the way up to the highest echelons of government and a lot of work is done and you know questions, difficult questions are asked - "do you really need that power?". And so we’ve done all the background work, we’ve produced the intelligence picture for London and because there’s a genuine threat then Section 44 is granted. Terrorism is a continuing threat, quite clearly London’s a continuing threat. We we won the 2012 Olympics and the day after we won it, we were blown up.

James Welch

I think the latest statistics produced by the Ministry of Justice show that only just over 10% of reasonable suspicions stop and searches results in arrests. The statistics don’t say what percentage of those then result in a conviction and I think that is rather, perhaps rather telling that that statistic has been omitted.

Chief Inspector Raj Singh Kohli

I mean the most obvious way of measuring the success of Stop & Search is how many people have been arrested. But that’s really, that’s the top of the iceberg because it’s not just about arrests, it’s about the number of people that are cautioned, the number of juveniles that we’ve taken home and said to their parents look you know this is what we’ve caught your son doing, caught what your daughter’s doing, you might want to intervene. And it’s the deterrent fact it’s about, it’s about disrupting criminal activity so that the criminal goes out on the street you or she thinks well the cops might be round, I might get turned over and they might find the drugs in my pocket, the knife in my pocket, the firearm in my pocket.

Superintendent Nick Jupp

Statistics are a strange creature... Officers will occasionally stop a vehicle and they may very find within the vehicle a knife and that there maybe 4 people actually are in the car or some drug-related paraphernalia. And what officers will do, well they will have search each one of them and that will distort the figures. So whereas you’ll find that one person actually has the drugs on them the three others do not. But unfortunately we have to go through the process whereby we stop and search all four of them because we have the reasonable grounds by finding the paraphernalia in the car.

Vox Pop

It appears that these powers are used disproportionately certainly against certain ethnic minority groups.

Saad Butt

There’s two views here, the first one is like young people generally feel that the police are going out of their way to stop and search young people and in, in particular black young people, black young males. But then the second thing is there’s people within the black community, like black young males and females who feel that their, the provision of stop and search is actually a necessity in today’s society. They feel like they need, it’s there to keep them safe, they feel safe when young police officers are stopping and search young people, you know because at the end of the day it’s preventing crime and it’s deterring people from committing crime.

Carole Atkinson

Another issue the community monitoring groups raise is the ratio of black and white people being stopped to the census which is 7 years out of date. But we need to take into account that. 
 In the census there’s elderly people and children and they’re not gonna be searched. It's obviously people in the street that are going to be searched which is the younger people. So we need to do the proportionality on the people being on the street, the street population.

Chief Inspector Raj Singh Kohli

And if go around statistics, then we’re saying then perhaps X percent of people that we stop and search should be 70-year-old men, X percentage should be 10-year-old boys. I think what we’re looking at who we stop and search and why we stop and search and that’s about street population as opposed to who lives in our cities, who actually goes out on the streets.

Superintendent Nick Jupp

When police officers are engaged in activity they only stop people in public places and that when we actually focus our attention in hot spot areas, areas of high crime then you can see that the, the proportionality of people in that area differs from residential populations.

Carole Atkinson

As a member of a Community Monitoring Group, what we have to do is to question when there appears to be disproportionately, because it may actually be based on discrimination and that is not allowed. So what the Community Monitoring Groups do is we look at the figures, we look at where people are stopped, why their stopped, look at their ethnicity, age and so on to see if there’s any hint of discrimination and if there is then we would take that up through to the borough commander. If there isn’t then the disproportionately is as it is because the people being stopped are being stopped with reasonable grounds and suspicion and so on.

Kathy Evans

Sometimes charges relate, result from in, you know their resistance to that process or or an.. anger that overspills within that context. So it’s, it’s not just about whether Stop & Search uncovers crimes that it wouldn’t uncover, sometimes it can be at risk of you know inflaming anger or tension particularly for young people who feel unreasonably targeted.

Superintendent Nick Jupp

Our stop and search powers are given by acts of parliament and that with a, an act of parliaments comes the codes of practice and that’s our interpretation of how we conduct, it gives us guidance around it. So we cannot stop any person purely and simply on appearance. Every police office has a, a supervisory process internally. Externally we also have monitoring processes whereby you can make a complaint if you feel that any of those codes of practices have been breeched.

Kathy Evans

It’s young people who are most likely to be victims of crime on the streets, they’re the, they’re the young people who are most exposed to some of the threats and the bullying that erm that a minority of young people do, do create. So most young people have an interest in seeing the streets effectively policed.

Vox pop – not captioned

A lot of people try to, you know they try and avoid that issue, you know I mean try and dance around it, beat around the bush, but it’s, it’s a reality and yeah a lot of young black males are caught up in whatever but again there’s a lot of young black males who are doing positive things, you know trying to better the community. You know what I mean because it’s, it’s our community at the end of the day and it’s, without that understanding with the police you what I mean we’re, we’re gonna go nowhere. We need the police as well as they need us.

Vox pop – not captioned

Certainly I don’t as a law abiding citizen I don’t think so an infringe to my human rights you know and if I’m a law abiding citizen I will cooperate with the police and why not you know. It doesn’t bother me in any way.

Vox pop – not captioned

But they say for my own business you won’t get any trouble, if you ain’t got nothing you ain’t gonna get in trouble. But if go outside and you go out and get in trouble, you know what I mean.

Vox pop – not captioned

And if I see a police officer I will, I will engage with them because I know it’s the right thing and I can actually speak to, I wouldn’t say an ignorant but a person who has the lack of understanding, I’d say look they’re just doing their job, just, it’s only gonna be 5 minutes let’s grin and bare it and then we’ll get through it.

Peter Herbert

You have to be very careful that the communities, particularly the minority communities, who’s assistance in terms of anti-terrorism you most need, you will likely to loose that cooperation and particularly the cooperation of young people if they themselves feel they are being targeted in an unjustifiable or a discriminatory manner.

Erinma Bell

We personally did quite a bit of research primary research with young people as to you know as to their attitudes towards the Stop & Search powers and not one young person said you know it should not be used. They all felt the police should use the stop and search powers, however the problem and the issues that they do have with it is the way it’s carried out.

Vox pop – not captioned

The same as me, if you never had that badge on the street it would be different. Do you know what I’m saying, so when you’re approaching an individual it’s like more of respect and more you know what I mean, I don’t mean cos you’re officer you have to give less respect, it makes no sense. You know what I mean we’ve both human being, it don’t make no, obviously you’ve got the right to do what, what you’ve got to do you know what I mean but in a more respectful way.

Barbar Maddeldrof

I’d like to be treated with respect. I’d like to be treated as I would treat other people. And I would like them to try and communicate with me to the best of their ability. They wouldn’t perhaps recognise the cane that I have, they might assume that I was blind but they would not know that the red bits on my cane tell them that I'm deaf. 
 They wouldn’t be able to identify themselves to me. If they put their hand on my shoulder I wouldn’t know who it was and I would think I was being attacked. In a wheelchair it’s very obvious that the person has a disability but there are so many people with have got hidden disabilities. People who shout suddenly, people who wave their arms about because they’re deaf and they’re speaking British sign language. They’re not rioters they’re actually people communicating.

Gordon Glean

If police officers do not understand the community that they’re policing or the community don’t under policing then you know you’re, you’re, you’re gonna be at loggerheads all all the time. You have to bring the, the police to the community, the police need to feel as, as though they’re part of the community the community need to have trust and confidence in the police.

Vox pop – not captioned

If you know your rights then you know how the situation's meant to be handled and you know what’s meant to happen, you know what, what’s not meant to happen.

Music.

Caption - Know your rights

Chief Inspector Terry O’Connor

This is fairly typical of how a Stop & Search encounter may begin. Either acting on information received that a lad has been seen with a knife or it maybe something that the officer has seen themselves that’s raised their level of suspicion.

Terry O’Connor

The officer has reasonable grounds to suspect that the behaviour of the lad...

Synch

Lads, can you just stay there for a second?

Terry O’Connor

...suggests he might be the lad with the knife.

Sync

Yea, what’s wrong?

Sync

I just need you all to stay where you are, the reason why we’ve stopped is that as we’ve driven past we’ve seen a shiny silver object in your hand, Ok? For that reason you’re all being detained for the purposed of a search, my name’s PC xxxxxx, the purpose of the search is to find the silver object which I believe to be a knife.

Terry O’Connor

In other circumstances police officers can search for stolen or prohibitive articles such as guns or controlled drugs or for articles that someone might use to commit criminal damage.

Sync

Guys, can you just stay back from me? Just stay, stay back.

Sync

He might have reasonable suspicion that the young lad is involved in terrorism but I think under the circumstances it’s highly unlikely. The police are not allowed to single someone out because of the way they look or because of their age, sex, gender or ethnicity or because of the clothing or hairstyle they may have, unless they have reliable information that they match the subscription of the suspect.

Sync

What have you got in this pocket here?

Terry O’Connor

When a search takes place in public an officer may search your pockets or a bag that you may be carrying. They may also ask you remove an outer coat, jacket or gloves.

Sync

This is what we have seen when we went past…

Terry O’Connor

If an even more thorough search is required again this must take place out of public view and only in the presence of an officer of the same sex. People can get upset or offended but if they are innocent of any wrong doing and the encounter is managed effectively there’s no reasons for emotions to escalate and for that person to be arrested. When he’s completed the search the officer is required to complete a form detailing, when, where and why the search was conducted. It may seem like just red tape and there are suggestions that the form maybe shorted or an electronic version maybe introduced. The detail provides information of gender, ethnicity and other important information. This is used to monitor Stop & Search procedures by parliament, community groups, civil rights groups and the police themselves. You can take a copy of the form then and there, or may apply to have a copy within 12 months. Powers to stop and search must be used fairly, responsibly and with respect. If these fundamental principles are not observed, Stop & Search maybe called into question.

Music.

The Last Word

Commander Rod Jarman

What we have been doing for the past few years is working closely with partners, with the police authority and with local communities to try and improve trust and confidence by changing the way that we use the power by making the outcomes actually more visible to people, so they can see it is really effective part of dealing with crime and criminality.

I think the other issue is we’ve got to involve the community far more in the monitoring of what we’re doing and I know in London the whole development of Community Monitoring Networks, the working with community and the communities coming in to see what we do has really helped the community to see, and individuals to see that we do use this, this power to prevent and detect crime and we do use it in a way which is proper and proportionate.

Cindy Butts

The, the police authority is independent of the police. We work closely with them and we are there to monitor and to scrutinise them and it’s really really essential that people talk about Stop & Search and I think it’s important that local communities and individuals actually approach their local police or their police authorities to talk about Stop & Search about their experience of it, good and bad, 'cos I think that helps getting an understanding that we’re doing things in the right way and also assisting training purposes and it’s so important not just to identify bad practice, but also good practice.

Saad Butt

And see the police as a force for change, as, as a friend you know and be a critical friend for them and you know speak out.

Cindy Butts

What we need to be doing is making Stop & Search as good as it can be and in order for that to happen we need to make sure we monitor it correctly, we need to make sure it’s not unduly disproportionate and we need to make sure it is intelligence led and carried out in a sensitive and courteous way.

If you have a circumstance where you’re stopped and search and you’re not happy with the way that you’ve been treated, you will actually get a form and at the back of the form that will detail all the ways in which you can complain about the treatment that you’ve had. You can complain to a police officer at any police station, you can also complain to your local police authority, to the Citizens Advice Bureau or you can complain to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Stop and Search is a useful tactic when used right and used sensitively, when used with an intelligence led approach. It ain't perfect.

Send an e-mail linking to this page

Feedback