Concern as figures show black people experienced 12% of incidents despite being 3.3% of England and Wales population

Black people in England and Wales are disproportionately more likely to have force used against them by police officers, especially firearms and Tasers, the first national statistics show.

The figures, published by the Home Office (pdf) on Thursday, show that black people experienced 12% of use-of-force incidents in 2017-18, despite accounting for just 3.3% of the population, according to the 2011 census.

Black people were subjected to an even higher proportion of incidents where police used firearms (26%) and those where officers used Tasers or AEPs (20%). AEPs (attenuating energy projectiles) are soft-nosed impact projectiles fired from a single shot launcher.

By contrast white people, who experienced 73% of of the 313,000 use-of-force incidents, were proportionately less likely to be subjected to use of firearms (51%) and Tasers or AEPs (67%). White people constitute 86% of the population of England and Wales.

Gracie Bradley, policy and campaigns manager at Liberty, said: “We are really concerned about racial stereotyping, especially when one of the listed impact factors for use of force is ‘size/build/gender’. Stereotypes and perceptions of black men being ‘stronger’ or more ‘threatening’ than they actually are may well influence police decisions about when and how to use force.”

Deborah Coles, director of Inquest, said the figures raises “questions about discriminatory assumptions and attitudes towards certain groups of people”.

Civil liberties and human rights groups raised similar concerns about the proportion of use-of-force incidents involving people with mental health problems (13% of the total), including 18% of those where Tasers or AEPs were used and 8% of those involving firearms.

In 9% of incidents in which force was used and 6% in which firearms were used, the subject was aged 11 to 17.

Bradley said: “We would question why people with mental health problems are having so many interactions with the police in the first place. Is it, and should it be, the job of the police to be first responders to people in mental distress?”

There were 15,000 use-of-force incidents in a medical setting last year and in 12,000 cases, the outcome was detention under the Mental Health Act.

Oliver Feeley-Sprague, Amnesty UK’s police and security programme director, said the charity was “particularly concerned at the alarming rise in overuse [of Tasers] against vulnerable and minority groups, including on people with mental health issues and BAME people”.

In total the number of recorded incidents in which Tasers were used was 17,000 in 2017-18, up 51% on the previous 12 months. Spit hoods, another controversial piece of equipment which has proved lethal in the past, were used 2,600 times (no previous figures available).

Referencing David Lammy’s report on racial bias across the criminal justice system, Matt Twist, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for restraint, said the use of force against black people was part of a wider issue.

He defended the use of spit hoods and Tasers, insisting that their use was restricted to where a threat was posed to officers or public safety.

Police forces in Britain have been required to keep a detailed record of each time an officer used force since 1 April 2017. The Home Office described the statistics as “experimental” and said they should be interpreted with caution given that the reporting by the 43 forces was of varying quality.

The number of incidents does not tell how many individual people experienced force as when three officers restrain one individual, all three officers will log a use of force incident. Use of Tasers or firearms does not mean the weapons were discharged.