Anti-terror driven Stop & Search 2004-05
Under the
Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984) stops could only be carried out by
police if they had 'reasonable suspicion'. But in Section 44 of
the Terrorism Act 2000 new powers were introduced to allow stops and searches in
order to prevent terrorism - no such suspicion was required.
To regulate the use of such wide powers, ministerial authorisation was set up to
restrict such stops to a limited place and time suggested by specific
intelligence to prevent terrorism. An authorising officer of Association of
Chief Police Officers (ACPO) rank had to issue an order with the reasons for the
authorisation. The order could last no longer than 28 days and the Secretary of
State had to approve the authorisation within 48 hours.
However, in practice, the Metropolitan police has had a continuous authorisation since February 2001, justified on the grounds that the whole of London is under permanent threat of terrorist attack. It was only during a court hearing into the policing of protests at an arms fair in the Docklands in October 2003 that it emerged that the Section 44 powers had, in fact, been renewed every 28 days since the Act came into force in February 2001 but the public had not even been told about this. The use of these powers has been secretive and non-accountable.
The
so-called 'code A guidance' on Section 44 advises first that: 'Officers must
take particular care not to discriminate against members of minority ethnic
groups in the exercise of these powers.' But it adds: 'There may be
circumstances, where it is appropriate for officers to take account of a
person's ethnic origin in selecting persons to be stopped in response to a
specific terrorist threat (for example, some international terrorist groups are
associated with particular ethnic identities).'[1]
This clause effectively entitles the police to stop and search people on the
basis of an 'ethnic' profile of terrorist suspects, what US civil liberties
activists would describe as 'racial profiling'.
Specifically, police forces
could use Section 44 to target people who appear to them to be Muslim. The Home
Office's Stop & Search Action Team Interim Guidance (2004) states that:
'There may be circumstances where it is appropriate for officers to take
account of a person's ethnic background when they decide who to stop in response
to a specific terrorist threat (for example, some international terrorist groups
are associated with particular ethnic groups, such as Muslims).'[2]
The authors of this document don't seem to know, there is
no such ethnic group as 'Muslims'.
Thus anti-terrorism being used to justify racial profiling against Asians,
Blacks and people of Middle Eastern appearance - whom police officers would tend
to associate with Islam. This may explain why Blacks and Asians were both four
times more likely than Whites to be stopped under these powers in 2002/03.[3]
Furthermore, the number of Asian and Black people stopped and searched in London
streets with such anti-terrorism powers increased more than 12-fold after the
July 7 bombings.[4]
In March 2005, Home Office
minister Hazel Blears stated that Muslims should accept as
'reality' that they would be stopped and searched more often than others.[5]
On the other hand, the Association of Police Authorities' Know your rights
leaflet, widely used as a guide for the public during a stop and search,
states that: 'You should not be stopped or searched just because of: your
age, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion or faith; the way
you look or dress, the language you speak.'[6]
Two different messages are being sent out here.
In the year 2002/3, police in England and Wales stopped and searched an average of 60 people a day as suspected terrorists, the majority while driving. That amounted to 21,577 stops and searches in one year under Terrorism Act powers. Whereas 13 per cent of stops and searches under normal police powers resulted in an arrest, the arrest rate for stops and searches on suspicion of terrorism was just 1.7 per cent. And the overwhelming majority of these arrests had nothing to do with terrorism. Only 18 arrests in connection with terrorism were made in that year as a result of the 21,577 stops and searches carried out. None of these arrests resulted in a conviction for terrorist offences.[7] In other words, although tens of thousands of people were stopped and searched under suspicion of terrorism, these searches did not lead to a single conviction. The figures recorded in the following year showed a similar pattern.[8] By 2004/5 when 100 people were stopped each day, 455 arrests were made out of 35,776 searches, a rate of 1.2 per cent.[9]
Police forces know anti-terrorist stops cannot be justified in terms of convictions. They now say that the stop and search act as a deterrent to would-be terrorists. Police authorities have given evidence in parliament that a terrorist who is planning to attack Westminster tube station, for example, may be deterred if he sees that he may be stopped and searched by police officers.[10]
But these powers were never granted on the basis of a general deterrent effect. Their use was tied to specific intelligence and used with a view to disrupting and arresting terrorists. Furthermore, any plausible deterrent effect would require a reasonable likelihood that any terrorist would be stopped and searched in the midst of carrying out a terrorist operation. That would require such a massive use of stop and search powers as to severely disrupt the daily lives of millions of people in London. And terrorists planning an attack are hardly likely to be deterred by the possibility of being stopped by a police officer.
The real impact of anti-terrorist stop and search is the criminalisation of entire communities and the placing of tens of thousands of innocent people under suspicion. None of the lessons of the past - in relation to policing Black and Irish communities - appear to have been learnt. Youth workers in areas where police are targeting large numbers of Asian youths for stops and searches, such as in Tower Hamlets, describe an increasing atmosphere of tension. Even before 7/7, there were numerous anecdotes of young Asian men being stopped and searched, getting abused, being accused of membership of al-Qaida or even being beaten up. In many communities, there is a growing climate of fear; underground stations and bus stops have become places where police and immigration officers stop everyone whose skin colour or accent marks them out as suspect.
Complaining that a police officer carried out a stop and search without any reason is pointless since 'reasonable grounds for suspicion' are not required.
When the Terrorism Act 2000 was presented to parliament, it was argued that its measures were essential to meet the threat of international Islamic terrorism. Yet its powers are being used today against people who are protesting peacefully against the government. The very loose definition of terrorism in the 2000 Act leads to a real danger of Section 44 stop and search powers being used to suppress political dissent. Section 44 was used to search protestors outside the DSEi Arms Fair at the Excel Centre in Docklands in October 2003 and against anti-war protestors on their way to the Fairford Air Base earlier in 2003. It appears that stop and search was used on both these occasions for no other reason than to intimidate legitimate protestors. One protestor at the Fairford military base, for example, was reportedly ordered by police to strip down to his vest and wait in the cold for twenty minutes during a search at night when the temperature had fallen to minus four degrees.
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