The Metropolitan police’s use of force has risen sharply in the last year, with black people far more likely to be subjected to such tactics than anyone else, the Guardian can reveal.

The UK’s largest police force deployed methods ranging from handcuffing to use of stun guns, CS spray, batons and guns 41,329 times in April to August of this year – 270 times a day on average – according to Guardian analysis of official figures. That compares with 23,118 in the corresponding period last year – a 79% rise – and 62,153 in the whole of 2017-18.

On 39% of occasions in which force was used by Met officers in the first five months of the financial year, it was used on black people, who constitute approximately 13% of London’s population.

Charities and MPs have raised alarm about officers increasingly resorting to such tactics and black people so often being on the receiving end. The police officers’ union said that cuts to resources, increasing violent crime and a new reporting system were behind the stark figures.

But Deborah Coles, executive director of the charity Inquest, said: “Ever increasing use of force carries ever increasing risk of serious injury and death. The use of force should only be a last resort and has to be proportionate. Increasing numbers suggest that routine use of force is becoming the first, rather than the last response, and that raises important questions about training and police culture.

“This also provides yet more evidence about the overpolicing and criminalisation of people from black and minority communities. It begs important questions about structural racism and how this is embedded in policing practices.”

White people and Asian people were underrepresented in the statistics, making up approximately 59% and 18% of the capital’s population but accounting for 42% and 11% of occasions respectively in which officers deployed force.

The Labour MP David Lammy said: “Systemic racism still permeates each stage of the criminal justice system. More needs to be done to root out this bias, if we are to build trust between the police and the communities they serve.”

The Met’s deputy assistant commissioner, Matt Twist, said officers only used force when a threat was perceived to public – or their own – safety and said that the figures should not be compared with population demographics.

He said: “The collation of these figures is still in its early stages, and as this is new data, there are no previous benchmarks to compare it to. Therefore any conclusions drawn from them must be carefully looked at against this context, and should only be compared with those individuals who have had contact with officers, rather than the entire demographic of London.”

He said the demographics of boroughs with higher rates of violent crime should be examined and that a large proportion of the uses of force recorded were at the lowest possible end of the scale, such as compliant handcuffing.

The data shows wide variety in the use of force between boroughs, from 2,826 incidents in the City of Westminster, to just 373 in Merton in the first five months of the year. Occasions when force was used more than doubled, compared with April to August last year, in 11 boroughs. In only one, Sutton, was there a reduction in the use of force, while in Tower Hamlets force has already been used on more occasions than in the entirety of 2017-18.



Simon Kempton, of the Police Federation, said the new recording system played a large part in the rise, but added: “If we intervene in violent crime, we are more likely to use force, which goes without saying, I guess.

“One of the things that concerns officers the most is being single-crewed, so working on their own and not with another officer … When you are single-crewed, you are also more likely to use force … so a lack of police officers could also be a factor, simply because where there are more than one of you, even if you do have to use force, the level of force you use is much lower.

“The cuts have forced us to do our jobs slightly differently, and that is one tangible difference.”

Figures released earlier this year showed the highest number of police-related deaths in more than a decade. In 2017-18, the Independent Office for Police Conduct recorded 283 deaths in England and Wales following police contact, 23 in or following police custody, four police shootings – three of which were terrorism-related – 29 road traffic incidents, 57 apparent suicides following custody, and 170 “other” deaths following police contact.

Lammy said the rapid rise in the use of force was a sign of the police stepping up the ill-advised war on drugs at a time when gang crime was exploding across the country, particularly in London. “The unfortunate truth is that escalating the use of force has proven to be futile,” he said. “As the use of force has gone up, so has crime.

“The war on drugs has failed and we need to seriously begin considering alternatives. A public health approach to drugs, as used in other advanced economies, must be a starting point.”

Police forces in Britain have been required to keep a detailed record of each time an officer used force since 1 April 2017 and publish the information quarterly. Before that, data was contained in evidence notes rather as part of a consistent, formal procedure across all forces. There were concerns that the previous system was deficient and did not provide comparable data. “The old recording system was not adequate,” said Kempton.

Home Office statistics show that black people were more than three times more likely to be arrested than white people in England and Wales in 2016-17 and, in London, 52% of people arrested were from Asian, black, mixed and other minority ethnic groups combined.