Black and minority ethnic people four times more likely to be stopped and searched in Dorset

Campaigners have claimed stop and search is racist due to the disproportionately high number of BME people subjected to it. However police chiefs have insisted on its importance in fighting violent crime and drug crime.

Data from Dorset Police shows that 1,954 stop and searches were carried out between August 2017 and July this year, the most recent 12 months for which data is available.

The figures show that in the cases where the ethnicity of the suspect was recorded by officers, 13 per cent were BME.

Ethnicity data was recorded in 95 per cent of cases.

Just four per cent of the population in Dorset identify as BME, according to 2017 population estimates.

Andy Cooke, the National Police Chiefs Council’s lead on organised crime,

“This is about criminality not race. It is about disruption and putting the fear back on criminals – that visible approach to stop-searching those individuals who our communities know are causing the most harm, damage or violence.

“Those people should regularly be getting stopped and searched on our streets.”

In more than two thirds of cases in Dorset suspects were searched on suspicion of drug possession. Suspicion of carrying offensive weapons, such as knives, accounted for nine per cent of searches. Just 20 searches were for firearms.

Chief Inspector Pete Browning, of Dorset Police, said the force applied stop and search based on intelligence "a test of reasonable suspicion" and did not carry out racial profiling.

"During incidents and investigations, arrests are made solely on the basis of intelligence and evidence and someone’s ethnic background is not relevant in this assessment," he said.

Ch Insp Browning said the figures should be viewed with caution as they relate only to the resident population within an area.

"Dorset, like other rural counties, has a number of active organised crime groups known as county lines involved in drug supply that are based outside the county but target our local communities.

"The areas that these groups come from represent a much broader diversity than is reflected in Dorset.

"Interventions against these organised crime groups are intelligence-led to target those that offer the greatest risk of harm, such as from the use of violence or dealing drugs."

"A practical example of this discrepancy occurred during a festival last summer where 24 people were arrested on suspicion of possessing drugs with intent to supply.

"Of the 24 people arrested, 13 individuals were BAME but did not live in Dorset.

"The benefit of effectively using stop and search as a tactic is evidenced by the disruption to organised gangs and the associated safeguarding of our communities."

Across England and Wales use of stop and search powers peaked in 2008 and 2009, when 1.5 million were carried out each year.

There were fewer than 270,000 over the past year however.

Chief Constable Cooke, of Merseyside Police, recently said the reduction in stop and search use across England and Wales had fuelled violent crime.

“I think criminals feel safer carrying weapons to cause harm, or weapons to commit acquisitive offences,” he said.

“They feel far safer carrying them now because they know there are less police officers, and even if there are police officers there is less chance they will be stopped and searched for them.”

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said: “When we do stop and search, if we stop a young black man we are equally likely to find something on the young black man as we are on the young white man – a knife or drugs or stolen property.

“There is no difference there in the likelihood of success. If you are a young black man you are about four times more likely to be stopped than a white person, and that does upset people.

“But what I would say is actually the result, the success rate, is exactly the same, which shows to me that we are in fact using the power intelligently, we are targeting the right people.”