Stop and search BBC news report

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Black people are now eight times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than white people, new Home Office figures show.

Officers have also begun to carry out more stop and searches, following two years of decline in the wake of the 1999 Stephen Lawrence report, which branded them "institutionally racist".

The figures show that during 2000-2002 there were 714,000 stop and searches recorded in England and Wales of which 12% were of black people, 6% Asians and 1% of other ethnic minorities.

Black police leaders said the Home Office figures were evidence that some officers were reverting to their "old ways" as the impact of the Lawrence inquiry began to fade.

Ravi Chand, president of the National Black Police Association, said he was "concerned" at the continued disproportionate nature of stop and searches.

"What's the picture going to be like in the next eight to 10 years? Are you only going to be stopping black people?" he said.

Home Office Minister John Denham said a unit would be set up to examine the statistics and identify why ethnic minorities feature so heavily in all aspects of the criminal justice system.

He said the unit would identify why "a disproportionate number of black people are arrested".

The minister also announced that seven police forces will, from April next year, begin issuing certificates to every person they stop in the street, even if they do not search them.

'Wasting money'

The procedure was recommended in the Macpherson report which followed the Lawrence inquiry.

The father of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence welcomed the idea of the certificates but said the scheme should be implemented nationwide.

Neville Lawrence said money would be better spent on this than on the special unit to analyse crime figures.

Speaking at the National Black Police Association conference in Nottingham, he said: "We know what the problem is and we don't need another team to sort it out.

"That is just wasting money - put that money into implementing the programme for certificates for stop and search."

Karl Josephs, a Birmingham disc jockey, said that in the past 10 years he had been stopped more than 40 times but had never been charged with an offence.

He has one conviction - for driving down a no-entry street, for which he was fined.

"It's a nightmare. Ten years of it, a decade, it's like 10 years of my life has been ruined.

"Every time I see a police car, it's like - are they going to stop me or are they going to carry on what they're doing," he said.

Mr Josephs is taking West Midlands Police to court - for the fourth time - claiming he is being stopped simply because he is a young black man.

The force said it would vigorously contest Mr Josephs' claims in court. It pointed out it had won the last case, although Mr Josephs claims to have won the first two hearings.

It also said its approach to stop and search had changed, to being more intelligence-led.

New Home Office figures reveal a rise in black and Asian people being stopped and searched by police. As Barnie Choudhury reports, it was the key issue at a national gathering of black police officers.

They belonged to men and women gathered for the fourth annual National Black Police Association conference.

This year the 500 delegates met on the day the government published the latest stop and search figures for England and Wales.

The omens were not good.

Numbers had gone up for the first time since the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.

They showed that black people were eight times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people; Asians were three times as likely.

The government has now set up a new unit to try to pin-point the problem.

Race relations

In one corner of the conference room was a figure the nation should recognise quite easily.

He stands tall and speaks to anyone who asks him his opinion.

Yet there is a look of world weariness about him.

Neville Lawrence has every reason to feel this way.

His teenage son Stephen was murdered, sparking the biggest examination into race relations in Britain since the Scarman Inquiry.

This idea of a new unit is a waste of money, he said.

He told me that nothing has changed and that the government and police are letting people down.

"They're failing everybody because they are the law of the land, they are the ones who keep the peace," he said.

"They're the ones who make sure that people go about their daily duties and make people feel safe and they're not doing that."

New scheme

Black police officers have no problems with stop and search - as long as it is intelligence led.

But the disproportionality of the figures bugs them.

Many feel entire communities are being failed. Some tell me their trust is being lost.

The worrying thing, say NBPA officers, is that more black and Asian people are likely to be stopped and searched - whether the total numbers go up or down.

From April, seven police forces will pilot a new scheme where people will be given certificates every time they are stopped - even if they have not been searched.

It was one of the recommendations in the Stephen Lawrence report.

Ravi Chand, the President of the NBPA, described the pilot scheme as a "wonderful delaying tactic".

"The reality is we've been led down the garden path," he said.

Ethnic minority communities will be scrutinising future figures more closely than ever.

The government still has a long way to go to win them over.

Mother-of-four Janet Bishop tells how she feels little has changed in 10 years, when she says her only black son was singled out for police questioning on a regular basis.

As someone who gave lessons in equal opportunities, Janet Bishop was well aware of the problems her adopted black son might come across in life.

But even she was amazed to find her son singled out as a potential troublemaker by police, who she said stopped and searched him "innumerable times".

Mrs Bishop, who now lives in north Yorkshire and has grown-up children, says she is appalled that nothing seems to have changed since their experiences in the early 1980s.

Problems

"When all our children were young, none of our white children were ever stopped by the police, but our black son was stopped innumerable times," she said.

The Bishops lived in an affluent district of Cambridge, having moved into the city from a small village in the county.

They had adopted their youngest son, who was nine when they moved to the city. She has asked that we do not name him.

"In the village he was the only black person - East Anglia is a predominantly white area - yet even in Cambridge itself, although he was not alone in being black all his friends were white.

The problems began as her son entered his teens, she said.

"He used to be stopped for little things, like riding his skateboard and was told by police he shouldn't be doing it - when he wasn't doing anything wrong.

"Later he was stopped and searched on numerous occasions. Yet other white friends of his were never stopped, he was the one pinpointed.

"When he was asked where he lived the police did not believe he lived in the middle class area where our house was situated," she added.

Things came to a head when her son, then aged in his early 20s, was stopped while putting his bike away in the shed by his house.

Stopped

Mrs Bishop said two police officers stopped her son, who was coming home after a few drinks in the early hours of the morning.

"A police car had stopped him from across the road and as he started pushing the bike towards the house they stopped him.

"He said they suspected him of trying to rob the house and when he said he lived there they did not believe him."

He asked for the officers' numbers but they refused, said Mrs Bishop.

"We were woken up by the shouting," she said.

The incident resulted in the Bishops making a complaint to police. This was taken up and a senior officer visited their home.

We were sent a letter saying the officers had been reprimanded for not giving their numbers and the force would review its procedures for racist training.

"But the letter said my son was not stopped because he was black."

Mrs Bishop said the incident had left the family on a low, her son in particular.

Changes

"After that incident, he told us more things that he'd kept back about being stopped and searched by other police officers. He hadn't said anything because he was afraid he would be picked on.

"It made him feel very distrustful of police and quite angry."

Mrs Bishop said two of her other children lived in London and the fourth in Reading yet none of them had ever been stopped by police in the same way as her black son.

Now grown up and never having been in any trouble with the police, her youngest son still lives in East Anglia.

Mrs Bishop said she wants to see better training for police and their relationship with ethnic minorities.

"It's been over a decade since my son was young and there have been a lot of changes in that time, yet still the statistics are saying more black men are being stopped.

"You don't want this kind of thing to happen to your own child - you don't want the police to be racist."

Other articles 

Troubled history of stop and search http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2246331.stm Includes graphs.7th Nov 2002 

Scottish report that police are afraid of being branded raciest  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/1704310.stm 11th DEC 2001

Other links

The Stephen Lawrence enquiry report http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/4262.htm 

Government report this is based upon stop and search 7th Nov 2002

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