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Originally Posted by andyl
1. So do you seriously think we shouldn't be signed up to and abide by internationally agreed Human Rights treaties. And yes, sorry, I do blame sensational, not forgetting right wing, journalism.
2. The SUS laws are totally relevant because the tactics being suggested are exactly the same. The recruitment of more ethnic minorities to the Police is not particularly relevant as this exercise hasn't exactly been covered in glory, numbers remain dispropritionately low and many forces acknowledge they are institutionally racist (which makes policing by consent in ethnic communities more difficult; application of stop and search will aggravate this and, as a result there will be less, not more, communication between the police and the people they serve and less useful information being passed on to them regarding criminal activity generally.) If policing does not have the support and consent of the community, it is doomed to fail.
3. If we're talking reasonable suspicion as grounds for stop and search then I'm at a loss as to why innocent Muslims would be targeted. If there are reasonable suspicions of terrorist activity I would not expect your average Plod to be doing a stop and search. It's an extraordinarily blunt and ineffective tool.
Leaving the obvious discrimination issues aside, history tells us this tactic WILL NOT WORK.
Of course if you want to damage community relations and prevent the forestalling and detection of crime, do bat on.
I've had enough of this. Bat on. Graham for President.
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And you could also blame the disproportionate reporting of "institutionally racist police forces" on sensationalist journalism, and the same for your dredged up comments about SUS laws and the SPG.
As for the idea of "too low a proportion" of police officers from ethnic minorities, what do you suggest? We wait until the number is at a level considered good enough by lily-livered liberals, and then we start approaching the issues of policing ethnic morities? Or do we accept that "a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single footstep"?
Innocent people will be affected, as they always have been. But when you stop and search someone, you cannot be sure they are guilty. Hence, they may be innocent, and the stop and search may well prove that.
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Originally Posted by andyl
Parting shot:
STOPPED BY THE POLICE
Abdurahman Jafar, 32, London barrister
"My wife and I were driving through King's Cross. Police were stopping [non-white] people. I asked a policeman why. He said, 'There are a lot of people dealing drugs here'. I said, 'What's that got to do with me'? It was insulting. Just because I'm a certain colour ... the fact that he pinpoints me is horrible. It's humiliating. You don't feel part of the country you grew up in and love."
Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, 47
"Twice I've been stopped at British airports. Once I was travelling to the US from Heathrow with the Mayor of Lahore. We both had beards and brown skin. Out of 65 mostly white people we were picked out. The other time I was travelling from Birmingham to Saudi Arabia with my wife and was asked if I was taking any money with me. When I said I was, they wanted bank receipts to prove it was mine."
Michael Eboda, 41, editor of New Nation
"I was stopped and searched by 30 armed officers in 2003; I was told it was because I was black and driving a high-value vehicle. If it really was intelligence-led policing and improved communities that would be one thing, but it just antagonises people. The chance of stopping a person who is an Islamic terrorist is minimal. It is a waste of police time."
From today's Independent: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/leg...p?story=616329
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And there we have it... it's because they are black/Asian/coloured. Obviously. It couldn't be (in the first instance) that perhaps he fitted a description of a known or reported drug dealer?
I lived in an area where EVERY arrest of anyone from an Asian/black/ethnic minority background was touted as being racist, however guilty the person was. You get used to it. Us realists accept it as people chancing their arm; liberal types throw up their arms, as if the police just do it for kicks (when on occasion, that's what they end up receiving).