Police officers ‘step back from stop and search’
THE Home Secretary has been confronted over the use of stop and search – and quizzed on whether there is a link between fewer police officers using the power and a rise in violent crime.
Ch Supt Simon Ovens, the Met Police’s Borough Commander for Harrow, said he had seen a “disengagement amongst my officers, and a step back from using the power” for fear of being disciplined.
He also said he is seeing “an increase in the belief amongst young people that it’s okay to [carry] a knife and drugs now because the chance of you actually being caught with them on you is far less”.
Speaking at the Superintendents’’ Association of England and Wales Annual Conference, Ch Supt Ovens (pictured) said when the Government said the misuse of stop and search was going to become a specific disciplinary offence “then it’s no wonder that the reaction is that way.”
He added: “I can report for my community, and I work for Harrow in the north of London, which is the most racially diverse borough in London now, the community message to me is that my residents who are now 80% non-white are worried about young people on the streets with knives and drugs.
“The message they are feeling from the Government is that ‘we don’t want to use stop and search because of the effect it has on community relations’ where it seems to be having the opposite effect in my part of London.”
He asked the Home Secretary: “Do you see a connection between the marked reduction in stop and search with the increase in serious youth violence on our streets?”
Mrs May said she was “clear that stop and search is an important tool for the police,” and that “it is a tool that the police should be using.”
However the Home Secretary said “stop and search was creating barriers between the police and certain communities” and that “about a quarter of stops and searches were effectively being conducted illegally.”
She said: “You cannot tell me that that is a situation that should be allowed to continue.”
Mrs May added: “When stop and search is used well, when it’s targeted, when it’s intelligence led, when it has community support, it is more effective. And I think that is very important.
“The problem that has now developed, and if I may say it’s one of the frustrations that I find in a number of areas, is that because we’ve said ‘you mustn’t use stop and search in the way that you were doing it previously where 25-27% of stops and searches were effectively being done illegally’, you’ve got police officers saying ‘well I can’t stop and search then’. That’s not what we want.
“I would say that it may be a job to be done in saying to individual police officers that what the Government has done is not about saying don’t use stop and search, it’s about saying use stop and search properly.”