Are we losing confidence in our police? We may be – according to the head of the official police watchdog.
Public confidence in the police has been “severely shaken” by incidents such as the apparent campaign to force Birmingham MP Andrew Mitchell out of his cabinet job, says Tom Winsor, Chief Inspector of Constabulary.
Mr Winsor issued the warning in his first annual report into the state of the nation’s police services.
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But he also highlighted another issue – the use of stop and search powers, which critics say promote mistrust between police and ethnic minority communities.
His report warns that officers don’t always realise the strong feelings that demanding someone submit to being searched might provoke.
It said: “Such things must be done with care, and only on lawful grounds. The absence of such treatment inflames resentment and may damage or even lose the consent of the community to the manner of policing which is being operated for them and on their behalf.”
A similar point was made by Sutton Coldfield MP Mr Mitchell. The Conservative MP was forced to resign from his cabinet job in 2012 after he was accused of calling police officers “plebs”.
But there has been growing concern that he was the victim of a police plot to discredit him. Metropolitan Police officer PC Keith Wallis was sentenced to 12 months after pleading guilty to misconduct in a public office, after it emerged he had sent an email claiming to be a member of the public who witnessed the incident when he had not in fact been present.
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And earlier this year, Mr Mitchell said African-Caribbean staff working with his GP wife had told her that their families – and particularly sons – were targeted by police. He said: “As an elected politician, I am ashamed of having not fully understood the truth of this before. I understand it now.”
Official figures do show that you are more likely to be stopped and searched if you are black or Asian.
West Midlands Police stopped and searched 36,763 people using powers given to them under Section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 in 2011-12, according to official figures.
These statistics, published in December 2013, are the most recent available.
Of these, 18.059 self-identified as white, 5,192 as black and 9,336 as Asian. Given that there are more white people in the area served by West Midlands Police, you’d probably expect more white people to be searched.
But the Home Office also publishes figures for the number of stops and searches per 1,000 people. These show that there were 10.5 searches of white people for every 1,000 white people in the region served by West Midlands Police.
But there were 38.4 searches of black people for every 1,000 black residents, and 23.4 searches of Asians for every 1,000 Asian residents.
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Searches under Section 1 can usually only take place if a police officer has “reasonable grounds” to suspect you’re carrying illegal drugs, a weapon, stolen property or something which could be used to commit a crime, such as a crowbar.
Police can also conduct searches under Section 60 of the Act, which allow them to search anyone in a specific area even without reasonable grounds for suspicion.
But searches under Section 60 are much rarer. In 2011-12, West Midlands Police conducted 699 such searches.
Are the searches justified? West Midlands Police made 2,456 arrests as a result of stops and searches in 2011-12, according to the Home Office. That means seven per cent of searches resulted in an arrest.
I suppose whether that seems reasonable or not can only be a matter of opinion.
But remember that the overwhelming majority of those searches were justified only because police claimed to have reasonable suspicion that the person being searched carried an illegal object or substances, or carried something that would be used to commit a crime – yet fewer than one in 14 searches resulted in an arrest.
It should be stressed that while these are the latest figures published by the Home Office, they may be out of date because West Midlands Police has been working hard to improve its stop and search procedures.
Reforms led by Police and Crime Commissioner Bob Jones include introducing mandatory stop and search training for all front line police officers and experimenting with the use of miniature cameras attached to uniforms, so that encounters are automatically recorded.
I have been stopped and searched once in my life – as a teenager, as I made my way to a music festival campsite carrying a crate of beer.
I wasn’t too upset. And today, I’m rather pleased when I see a copper. I feel safer.
But would my view of the police be different today if, as a young man, I’d been stopped on a regular basis, by officers demanding I answer questions and let them go through my pockets? Would I be pleased to see police on the beat if I thought they were likely to behave that way towards me as a matter of course?
I rather doubt it.