David Lammy is right to express scepticism about the mayor of London’s recent enthusiasm for the increased use of stop and search (Lammy says Khan wrong to increase use of stop and search, 15 January). For five years Londoners have been told that stop and search was being better targeted. Yet last year black people were stopped by the Metropolitan police on 30,000 occasions without any further action being taken. That’s hardly “intelligence-led” policing.

Polling by YouGov for the Criminal Justice Alliance found that three quarters of black, Asian and minority ethnic Londoners aged 16-30 think that stop and search is targeted unfairly at their communities. Almost one in three say it deters them from thinking about working for the police.

It’s possible that the mayor, notwithstanding his own history of fighting racism, feels he must accept the advice of the Metropolitan police commissioner, having had reportedly frosty relations with her predecessor. It would be a tragedy if that pragmatism led to a return of the fractured community relations of the 1980s.

Ben Summerskill

Director, Criminal Justice Alliance

• David Lammy MP and the black community have to recognise that it is they and their families suffering most from knife crime and acid attacks. The focus of stop and search on black people may be “inherently unfair”, but it’s black kids being killed and disfigured. Stop and search will not prevent all such crime, but how else will it be stopped?

David Reed

London

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