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Police Terror Stops Increase Ten Times In Less
Than Ten Years
3.5% of entire population of Britain stopped in the
street by police in one year
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Newly released figures reveal that British police have used
anti-terrorism laws to stop and search almost 180,000 people
in the street.
The statistics, released via a Freedom
of Information request, show that the use of the
'stop and search' power has increased exponentially by over
ten times in less than ten years.
However, only 255 incidents have ever resulted
in arrest due to terror related offences, and a minuscule amount
have ultimately resulted in convictions.
The new figures follow on from Ministry
of Justice statistics, published last summer,
showing that from 2006-2007 police used their powers to stop
(but not search) nearly two million members of the
public and demand they account for their behavior or actions,
a rise of one third from the previous year.
This means that in just one year around 3.5% of
the entire British population was stopped in the street by the
police under suspicion of terror related offences.
Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman,
told the UK Daily Mail: "These startling figures suggest
the main effect of random stop and search, as opposed to searches
targeted at suspects by intelligence, is to annoy law-abiding
citizens."
"Rarely have so many police officers wasted so much police
time to achieve so little." the MP added.
The news comes in the wake of a scathing
House of Lords report warning that the surveillance
society in the UK is out of control, that the country ranks
amongst the worst in the world for privacy, and that the public
does not fully comprehend the implications of laws being passed
in the name of anti-terrorism.
(Article continues below)
Stop and search powers, which were initially conceived
only to be used in emergency situations, have proved controversial
since their introduction in section 44 of the Terrorism Act
2000. The government has consistently backed the powers as an
important tool in the fight against terrorism.
Since then, the powers, while not leading directly
to the prevention of any terrorism, have been most notably used
against: Kevin Gillan and Pennie Quinton for protesting
outside Europe’s biggest arms fair in London;
the 82-year-old Walter Wolfgang for heckling
Jack Straw at the Labour Conference; Sally Cameron
for walking
on a cycle-path in Dundee; the 80-year-old John
Catt for being caught on CCTV passing a demonstration in Brighton;
the 11-year-old
Isabelle Ellis-Cockcroft for accompanying her parents
to an anti-nuclear protest; and a cricketer on his way to a
match over his possession of a bat.
More recently, Scotland
Yard admitted that its officers have been photographing
children who are stopped and searched, even after they have
been found to be innocent, and keeping the pictures on a database
for "intelligence-gathering purposes".
In the past we have reported on instances where
police have admitted stop and search records are permanently
retained.
The Home Office guide to stop and search states
that "if they don’t find anything, your details will
be recorded
for monitoring purposes, and you’ll be allowed
to go."
Each one foot long stop and search form takes
an estimated seven minutes to fill in, meaning that police spent
the equivalent
of 25 years filling in the "stop" forms
in 2007.
The government has continued to
push for greater stop and search powers for police.
Section 44 of the Terrorism Act bestows exceptional
powers on the police to stop and search at random, once a particular
geographical area has been designated by a chief officer as
one that might be targeted by terrorists and authorised as such
by the Home Secretary. The government has since extended
this power to stop and search WITHOUT REASONABLE
SUSPICION to include "troubled areas".
How long will it be before the entire country
is designated a "troubled area"?
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