Originally Posted by Xaccers

To determin any racism behind it, they need to investigate what proportion of people stopped are then arrested, and how many of those arrested are actually charged and end up in court.
If the majority of those arrested end up in court, then no it's not racist, it's catching criminals.
If a larger proportion of non-blacks arrested end up in court, and only a small proportion of blacks arrested end up in court, then it would suggest something is wrong, as it means more innocent black people are being arrested.
Course if they're stopping more people of one ethnic group, then they'll find more dodgy people to arrest, however, is that a bad thing?
It's well known that black kids in general do worse at schools, similarly it's well know that poor kids in general do worse at schools, and the two are often linked.
Therefore you could gain statistics showing that the police stop more poor people than reasonably comfortable people.
Looking at the prison population though, the majority by a long way are still white.
The problem with reports or ineffective action on these reports is that your average decent bobby who's not racist but stops people because alarm bells ring, may now be over cautious of stopping black people for fear of appearing racist, even if alarm bells go off.

Originally Posted by superbiatch

I have to agree with this, given the amount of black people in my area, there will be very few black people being searched - are we getting a true picture?