UK: Racial profiling encouraged

How bad must it be in Britain for a senior police officer, the President of the National Black Police Association, no less, to be calling for a dramatic increase in the use of a policy which amounts to racial profiling?

The story from Guardian UK:

Speaking at the group’s annual conference, Keith Jarrett will ask Police Minister Tony McNulty and Sir Ian Blair, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to consider escalating stop-and-searches among black people to reduce the number of shootings that have claimed the lives of another two teenagers in the past week.

The disputed use of stop-and-search has arguably caused more conflict than any other modern policing tactic and first achieved national notoriety during the Eighties, when it was blamed for precipitating inner-city race riots. Black people are four times more likely to be stopped than white people, according to Scotland Yard’s figures, which continues to give rise to charges of police racism.

Jarrett admitted he was braced for a negative backlash during his headline speech in Bristol last Wednesday. It is the first time that a senior black officer has called for an increase in stop-and-search among the black community.

Traditionally the association, which has 8,000 members ranging from senior figures such as Tarique Ghaffur, assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan police, to backroom staff, has pointed to the ‘alarming’ and disproportionate numbers of black people who are stopped and searched.

Jarrett told The Observer: ‘From the return that I am getting from a lot of black people, they want to stop these killings, these knife crimes, and if it means their sons and daughters are going to be inconvenienced by being stopped by the police, so be it. I’m hoping we go down that road.