Police Stop White People to Provide 'Racial Balance' to Terror Search Statistics

Liberal Democrat Peer and QC Lord Carlile, the independent reviewer of Britain's anti-terrorism legislation, has accused the police of abusing their stop and search powers simply for the sake of statistics.

From the Mail:

Police are making unjustified and 'almost certainly' illegal searches of white people to provide 'racial balance' to Government figures.

Lord Carlile, the independent reviewer of terror laws, said he knew of cases where suspects were stopped by officers even though there was no evidence against them.

He warned that police were wasting time and money by carrying out these 'self-evidently unmerited searches' which were an invasion of civil liberties and 'almost certainly unlawful'.

The searches of, for example, 'blonde women' who fit no terrorist profile come against a backdrop of complaints from rights groups that the number of black and Muslim people being stopped by police is disproportionate.

Lord Carlile suggests whites are being needlessly stopped in order to balance the books.

Last year, the number of whites searched under anti-terror laws rocketed by 185 per cent, from 25,962 to 73,967.

Whites made up around two-thirds of all those stopped, although, compared to the overall population, blacks and Asians remain far more likely to be stopped and searched.

We have to accept this disproportional slant. however. The fact of the matter is that certain ethnic groups are much more likely, statistically, to be involved in certain types of crime - depending of course what part of the country we are in.

The article continues:

Lord Carlile condemned the wrongful use of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 in his annual report on anti-terror laws.

He said police were carrying out the searches on people they had no basis for suspecting so they could avoid accusations of prejudice.

Lord Carlile wrote: 'I have evidence of cases where the person stopped is so obviously far from any known terrorism profile that, realistically, there is not the slightest possibility of him/her being a terrorist, and no other feature to justify the stop.

'In one situation the basis of the stops was numerical only, which is almost certainly unlawful and in no way an intelligent use of the procedure.

'I believe it is totally wrong for any person to be stopped in order to produce a racial balance in the Section 44 statistics. There is ample anecdotal evidence this is happening.

'I can well understand the concerns of the police that they should be free from allegations of prejudice, but it is not a good use of precious resources if they waste them on self-evidently unmerited searches.

'It is also an invasion of the civil liberties of the person who has been stopped, simply to 'balance' the statistics.

'The criteria for section 44 stops should be objectively based, irrespective of racial considerations: if an objective basis happens to produce an ethnic imbalance, that may have to be regarded as a proportional consequence of operational policing.'

Lord Carlile later said the number of Section 44 searches could be cut by half in London without damaging national security.

He added: 'If, for example, 50 blonde women are stopped who fall nowhere near any intelligence-led terrorism profile, it's a gross invasion of the civil liberties of those 50 blonde women.

'The police are perfectly entitled to stop people who fall within a terrorism profile even if it creates a racial imbalance as long as it is not racist."

Exactly.

But while we're at it, why don't we remove fears of being branded 'racist' from all spheres of public life, along with all ethnic quotas and other such Orwellian nonsense.

That way, workers of all kinds might be able to focus on things which actually matter.

For the time being it's good to know that one liberal establishment figure realises that national security and reality come before hurt feelings, however.