New police powers for stop and search
Article published: Monday, February 25th 2008
A return to the notorious ‘sus’ law for British police
The police continue their run of good fortune, with yet another blow to civil liberties announced by the government yesterday. Home secretary Jacqui Smith raised concerns over gang related violence as justification for added powers given to officers to undertake stop and searches.
At present, officers must provide evidence of reasonable suspicion before carrying out a stop and search, and provide the person undergoing the search with a copy of a form stating the reasons for the action.
Government proposals entail a return to sus laws allowing police to undertake searches on the basis of suspicion alone in designated areas. Instead of completing the lengthy forms that provide the accused with some means of holding officers to account, police operatives will be freed up, and only required to take an oral record on a digital voice recorder.
The sus laws were removed in 1984 with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, following uprisings from victimised ethnic minority groups.
Their return doesnt bode well for these communities. Black people remain 7 times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people (up from the 2004/5 ratio of 6 times). A representative from the black police association predicted that the police will use wider measures not to prevent crime but to exercise ‘more control’ over minority groups.
Another minority group almost certain to suffer the effects of the new laws are political protesters. With local police commanders given powers to designate stop and search hotspots for temporary periods, marches and assemblies are likely to face further intimidation. Besides the matter of using clumsy punitive measures to address poverty fuelled social ills like gun crime often being self-defeating, it seems likely as we have seen with anti-terror legislation that the laws will take effect on areas of public life far beyond the original stated aims.
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