The Metropolitan police commissioner has defended the use of controversial stop-and-search powers after she reported a more than fourfold increase in their use in London over the last year.

Cressida Dick said there had been 106 uses of section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act in the year to March 2018, compared with 23 in the same period a year earlier.

Section 60 allows officers to stop and search any person without suspicion within an area designated by a senior police officer if they believe violence has occurred, or is about to occur. For every use of section 60 several people could be searched.

The legislation was criticised by Theresa May in 2014, when she was home secretary, for damaging community relations. Statistics have repeatedly shown stop-and-search powers are disproportionately used against black and minority ethnic people.



Dick said police would use the power sparingly, but rising arrest rates supported its use. Her comments come against a backdrop of more than 50 murders in London so far this year.

“We’re absolutely determined that our stop-and-searches will be professional, captured on body-worn video [cameras] by well-trained officers who are using intelligence, and that it is of course lawful to do it,” she said.

Leaflets and social media, such as Twitter, are used to advise the public of section 60 authority areas when the power is implemented.

Dick said: “We also make sure local people are aware of what we’re doing, particularly when section 60 is in place. We put messages out across the community about what we either fear is about to happen or what has just happened which is putting fear into the community.”

Her comments in support of the powers contradict findings in the government’s serious violence strategy. Documents detailing the measures, unveiled on Monday to great fanfare amid a rise in knife and gun crime, said changes in the level of stop-and-search use had had a “minimal effect”.

“Personally I’ve looked at a lot of the research over the years and I think that it is conflicting, that’s for sure,” Dick said. “I don’t think anybody has done the definitive piece of work.”

She said, however, that officers knew “absolutely” that for certain types of crime in certain areas the tactic was effective. “We scrutinise the levels of stop-and-searches all the time and involve local people in looking at what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and I can tell you the public are overwhelmingly supportive of it.”

The serious violence strategy unveiled by the home secretary, Amber Rudd, said data did not support claims that a reduction in the overall use of stop-and-search was behind an increase in violent crime.

“Research by the College of Policing and the Home Office has also shown that changes in the level of stop and search have only minimal effects – at best – on trends in violent crime, even when measured at the local level,” the document read.