Emergency inspection found four forces were still breaking rules aimed at ending discrimination against black people

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Four police forces have made “unacceptably slow progress” to comply with government rules aimed at eliminating discrimination in stop and search, a report has found.



An emergency special inspection by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary found that forces in Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire, Northamptonshire and Derbyshire were still breaking the rules when visited in November 2016. This was despite previous findings that they were in breach of reforms they had agreed to make in 2014 and the government having made its displeasure clear.

Since the inspection four months ago, Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and Northamptonshire had carried out the changes demanded of them and now obeyed the rules. Derbyshire remained the only one of 43 forces in England and Wales to still not comply with the rules.



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Black people are four times more likely than white people to face a stop and search, most of which result in no detection of criminality.



When she was home secretary, Theresa May considered legislating to stop police using stop and search powers against innocent people, amid claims prejudice was behind some stops.



The government scheme set five standards that police forces had to meet. Past inspections found most of the 43 forces were breaking the rules, but naming and shaming them led to improvement in most cases.

In Derbyshire, the force collected data showing how often a search found something potentially suspicious, but failed to make it public, as it had agreed to do.



The report said: “Non-compliance predominantly involved the inability to publish data showing the connection between the outcome and object searched

for. This is an important feature of the scheme as the rate at which items searched for are actually found helps to show the strength of the grounds on which stop and search encounters are based.”

It said an HMIC inspection in February 2016 found 32 forces were failing to obey the the five rules. The 13 worst offenders were then reinspected and found to have improved.



The report, published on Thursday focused on 19 other forces, and found 15 were obeying the government scheme when HMIC visited in November 2016.

HMIC said in the report: “We are extremely disappointed to find that Derbyshire constabulary, Greater Manchester police, Northamptonshire police and South Yorkshire police were, at the time of our revisit, still not complying with certain features of the scheme.

“The public has the right to expect that forces signed up to such a scheme should be complying with it. Our findings represent unacceptably slow progress on improving an important aspect of policing that we know has the potential to erode police legitimacy in the eyes of the public.”

HMIC’s lead inspector, Mike Cunningham, said: “Stop and search powers are some of the most intrusive powers the police have, and, used correctly, are a legitimate form of combating crime. However, used incorrectly, they can erode the relationship between police officers and the communities they serve. That’s why it’s so important that all forces scrupulously demonstrate that they use this tactic appropriately.”

HMIC said it would inspect every force this year to “assess the reasonableness of recorded grounds for the use of stop and search powers”.



With some forms of crime rising, police leaders face some pressure to use stop and search more.



Within government and among police chiefs there is a recognition that its wide-scale use and the fact that the majority of the time it is used against innocent people, damages community relations and the legitimacy of the police.



Since 2010, the number of stops being carried out nationally has reduced.