[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by Nidge

Don't search them just shoot them, they can't complain then can they??

Shoot who? The people who brought this legal action? (both stopped at random while on the way to attend a lawful & peaceful protest - one was a peace protester, the other was a journalist attending the protest to film it)

Do you think that Section 44 should be changed, so that instead of the police having the power to stop & search people at random without the need for any reasonable suspicion at all, they should instead have the power to "just shoot" random people without the need for any reasonable suspicion at all?

Perhaps this person who was stopped & searched under s.44 for that dastardly act of taking a photo of a Fish & Chip shop in Chatham High Street should simply have been "just shot"?

Perhaps all those other photographers, random innocent members of the public, and tourists, who have been stopped & searched under s.44, should simply have been "just shot"?

---------- Post added at 20:11 ---------- Previous post was at 20:01 ----------

Ruling

Press Release

Originally Posted by Maggy J

I would still like to know just how many terrorists have been caught by stop and search?

Originally Posted by ECHR ruling

84. In this connection the Court is struck by the statistical and other evidence showing the extent to which resort is had by police officers to the powers of stop and search under section 44 of the Act. The Ministry of Justice recorded a total of 33,177 searches in 2004/5, 44,545 in 2005/6, 37,000 in 2006/7 and 117,278 in 2007/8 (see paragraphs 44-46 above). In his Report into the operation of the Act in 2007, Lord Carlile noted that while arrests for other crimes had followed searches under section 44, none of the many thousands of searches had ever related to a terrorism offence; in his 2008 Report Lord Carlile noted that examples of poor and unnecessary use of section 44 abounded, there being evidence of cases where the person stopped was so obviously far from any known terrorism profile that, realistically, there was not the slightest possibility of him/her being a terrorist, and no other feature to justify the stop.

85. In the Court's view, there is a clear risk of arbitrariness in the grant of such a broad discretion to the police officer. While the present cases do not concern black applicants or those of Asian origin, the risks of the discriminatory use of the powers against such persons is a very real consideration, as the judgments of Lord Hope, Lord Scott and Lord Brown recognised. The available statistics show that black and Asian persons are disproportionately affected by the powers, although the Independent Reviewer has also noted, in his most recent report, that there has also been a practice of stopping and searching white people purely to produce greater racial balance in the statistics (see paragraphs 43-44 above). There is, furthermore, a risk that such a widely framed power could be misused against demonstrators and protestors in breach of Article 10 and/or 11 of the Convention.

Originally Posted by martyh

have the court said the law is illegal or the way it's being used ?

Originally Posted by ECHR ruling

87. In conclusion, the Court considers that the powers of authorisation and confirmation as well as those of stop and search under sections 44 and 45 of the 2000 Act are neither sufficiently circumscribed nor subject to adequate legal safeguards against abuse. They are not, therefore, “in accordance with the law” and it follows that there has been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention.