WestMids - Stop and Search + survey

[Mr Oblong]

"sorry sir, we won't be able to stop and question anybody because in the heat of the moment of getting stabbed you could not paint a perfect verbal representation of the suspect. Did you still want that ambulance?"

lol, harm.

What a silly scenario, but I hope you felt good typing that out.

Maybe. It's a difficult balancing act. S&S is a very useful method to deal with hard-line criminals, but has collateral damage. When it works, it's the returns are big, but I don't deny that especially when it's used improperly, it does have negative effects that ultimately reduce confidence in police. From my own anecdotal evidence, it seems that the threshold for a search seems to be lower in metropolitan areas such as London than where I am. Although, the crime that S&S is designed to help combat is more prevalent in London than where I am. There are no easy answers here.

I get that.

Thanks for at least acknowledging there are issues of risk:reward to consider here. Some people aren't used to nuance and compromise in their thinking.

 

[Burnsy2023]

I guess it comes down to whether that bias is fair or not.

Be weary of trying to draw conclusions on that. If you only search black people, don't be surprised if you only find black people carrying weapons. My point is to be careful of what the stats and methodology actually show.

 

[The Running Man]

The police officer seemed too wet IMO, very unassertive and woolly.

Exactly, would probably help if they went in batons swinging with a pack of k9s to sniffer the drugs and stolen items....

 

[Burnsy2023]

The police officer seemed too wet IMO, very unassertive and woolly.

Do you think changing her approach would have changed the outcome?

 

[The Running Man]

Be weary of trying to draw conclusions on that. If you only search black people, don't be surprised if you only find black people carrying weapons. My point is to be careful of what the stats and methodology actually show.

The actual number of searches was as follows in 2019/2020 in london.

White 114,000
Black 121,000
Asian less than 60,000

https://www.statista.com/statistics/865693/stop-and-searches-in-london-by-ethnicity/


The fallacy trap that white people are not being stopped is one you just fell into.

 

[Jez]

Do you think changing her approach would have changed the outcome?

The upside i suppose would be limited only to reducing the amount of time that it took. I do feel as though they came across as a little timid as if they were scared (fair, but shouldn't be shown?) to do it.

 

[The Running Man]

Infact in 2018/2019 over 100 000 more stop and searches were conducted against white people than black plus mixed...

 

[Burnsy2023]

Infact in 2018/2019 over 100 000 more stop and searches were conducted against white people than black plus mixed...

You're posting stats that support my point that people of a minority ethnicity are searched disproportionately more than white people. I'm not sure what your point is.

There are underlying societal reasons for it being disproportionate such as social-economic background, but that doesn't account for all of the disparity.

 

[The Running Man]

You're posting stats that support my point that people of a minority ethnicity are searched disproportionately more than white people. I'm not sure what your point is.

There are underlying societal reasons for it being disproportionate such as social-economic background, but that doesn't account for all of the disparity.

But you said that the reason for a higher % of knife crime from ethnic minorities was due to how many get stopped etc.

Twice as many white people get searched overall but in London only account for less than 1/3 of knife crime although they get stopped only 10% fewer times in absolute terms...

Ergo there is no relationship between the number of stop and searches and the outcome of the knife crime stats. The knife crimestats are disproportionate based upon who is commiting them alone not bevause they are being stopped more significantly.

You cant have it both ways.

Don't start making up excuses, you dont fully understand them and socioeconomic circumstances don't explain them. There are more white people with poor socioeconomic circumstances and in terms of ratios there is a higher proportion of Asian people in 'poverty ' in the uk but they don't commit the same amount of knife crime, even proportionally..

Banding around socioeconomics is easy to do but doesn't explain the underlying issues.

 

[TheVoice]

Wow, really insightful ... but missing the point.

Just because someone's been a victim of crime, you don't create justice by clumsily stopping youths en masse (which the evidence suggests happens, regularly). There's a lot of academic literature that undermines the efficacy of stop and search in reducing crime overall (as opposed to spot-reductions for very limited types of crime in very specific areas).

Harassing people on the street undermines the relationship between police and the citizens they serve. That really hurts when you need a community to co-operate with an investigation, be witnesses etc., because the assumption becomes "they're out to get us".

It's not as pragmatic as some seem to think.

On the other side of the coin, speak to anyone who was a cop with Strathclyde Police when Glasgow was suffering huge issues with knife crime and they might disagree somewhat. They stopped and searched anything that moved, and it worked, alongside a number of other well-documented programmes and approaches to the issue.

 

[Burnsy2023]

But you said that the reason for a higher % of knife crime from ethnic minorities was due to how many get stopped etc.

Twice as many white people get searched overall but in London only account for less than 1/3 of knife crime although they get stopped only 10% fewer times in absolute terms...

Ergo there is no relationship between the number of stop and searches and the outcome of the knife crime stats. The knife crimestats are disproportionate based upon who is commiting them alone not bevause they are being stopped more significantly.

When you say "knife crime" what you mean, from the full fact link you added, was convictions. The fact that BAME suspects are more likely to be charged and convicted than white people skews these stats, so your conclusion isn't valid on the evidence presented.

 

[Mr Oblong]

On the other side of the coin, speak to anyone who was a cop with Strathclyde Police when Glasgow was suffering huge issues with knife crime and they might disagree somewhat. They stopped and searched anything that moved, and it worked, alongside a number of other well-documented programmes and approaches to the issue.

I'm not saying it can't work, but there are many documented issues with it. I'd like to think we can consider both.

 

[The Running Man]

When you say "knife crime" what you mean, from the full fact link you added, was convictions. The fact that BAME suspects are more likely to be charged and convicted than white people skews these stats, so your conclusion isn't valid on the evidence presented.

Well if you read the document, there are factors such as bame in almost 50% more likely pleading not guilty...compared to white people

Bame adults being less likely to be proceeded against etc.

I suspect attitude and repeat offences probably explain many of these stats..

 

[Malevolence]

He should have been arrested on the spot for his constant use of double negatives. And I wonder why she didn't look inside the plastic yellow Kinder container?

 

[The Running Man]

He should have been arrested on the spot for his constant use of double negatives. And I wonder why she didn't look inside the plastic yellow Kinder container?

Sealed,waterproof, floats, caught walking in suspicious area at suspicious time next to canal.

No idea what could be in it...

 

[Skunkworks]

I’m not sure of the law on searches like that, but as she’d already specified money and an iPhone would it have been unlawful to look inside the Kinder egg? If so, perhaps she shouldn’t have talked so much.

 

[Angilion]

agree.

also, should question your decision making if you find yourself wandering around in the AM getting questioned by the rozzers on a regular basis because you are in a close proximity to crime.[..]

That happened to me when I was younger. Not on a regular basis, but certainly at least the 3 times per year that a previous poster referred to as an unacceptably frequent occurence. I was a young man often out at night in a less than lovely neighbourhood. I suspect that sometimes I was stopped just for those reasons and sometimes I vaguely matched a vague (and probably inaccurate) description of someone suspected for something.

They were polite to me, I was polite to them, we went on our seperate ways after a few minutes. Sure, it would have been more convenient if I could have told them my name and they could have seen that I'd been stopped and questioned a dozen times before without any issues and I wasn't a problem. But it wasn't a problem. I wasn't being thrown in the back of a van and beaten for jollies. I wasn't being taken away to a gulag. I was being politely questioned and my responses (verbal and otherwise) assessed by people doing a difficult job as well as can be reasonably expected.

I'm so "white" I glow in the dark.

Clearly this obviously and absolutely proves systemic anti-"white" racism in the police in the UK, going back at least as far as the mid 1980s.

 

[Angilion]

[..]
If the public give us better descriptions, then we'll have more to work with, but ultimately it's more often than not the public giving us these limited details.

How often are they wrong even in the vague details? I'm betting on "a lot of the time". I have only slight and indirect experience from working in a club, but that leads me to believe that most people (including me) are very bad at accurately recalling details of pretty much anything that happened. If I ever planned to commit any crime in front of witnesses, I'd do so wearing a noticeable item of clothing that I'd discard afterwards, to give witnesses a detail to remember so they'd forget other details.

 

[Dis86]

If the public give us better descriptions, then we'll have more to work with, but ultimately it's more often than not the public giving us these limited details.

Ah yes, those damn victims of crime not being able to recollect traumatic experiences perfectly!

 

[potatolord]

I used to get stopped regularly when I was younger. I got searched a few times, but mostly just questioned vaguely about what I was up to. I've even been randomly searched on holidays abroad, much to my girlf's annoyance.

To be fair, I did look horrible. Also, I lived in a terrible area and didn't drive, so went everywhere on foot. And lots of my mates were... characters.

Only once were the cops less than formally polite with me. I just put that down to the one cop being an idiot, though in hindsight it might have been at the end of a long day for him.