Black police officer calls for more stop-and-search powers on ethnic minorities

Keith Jarrett, president of the National Black Police Association, is to call for an increase in the policing strategy in black communities to combat inner-city gun and knife crime.

The Observer reports that in a speech at the group's annual conference in Bristol this week, Mr Jarrett will ask Police Minister Tony McNulty and Sir Ian Blair, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to consider increasing stop-and-searches among black people to reduce the number of shootings that have claimed the lives of another two teenagers in the past week.

The association, which represents thousands of officers from ethnic minorities, has previously questioned the high proportion of black people stopped and searched by police.

The Macpherson Report in February 1999 into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence condemned the use of stop-and-search.

The tactic was blamed by many for precipitating the inner-city race riots of the 1980s.

Mr Jarrett told The Observer: "From the return that I am getting from a lot of black people, they want to stop these killings, these knife crimes, and if it means their sons and daughters are going to be inconvenienced by being stopped by the police, so be it.

"I'm hoping we go down that road.

"I am going to be pressing him (Blair) to increase stop-and-search. It's not going to go down very well with my audience, many of whom are going to be black.

"We have talked about disproportionate use of stop-and-search in the past, but what I am proposing is quite the reverse.

"The black community is telling me that we have to have a look at this."

Mr Jarrett told the newspaper he would not oppose a random use of stop-and-search when officers had "reasonable suspicion" an offence had been committed.

MP Keith Vaz, chairman of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee and head of Labour's Ethnic Minority Taskforce, said Mr Jarrett's comments were "extremely unhelpful".

Mr Vaz told BBC Radio 4's World This Weekend: "The committee recently conducted an extensive report into crime and young black people. We concluded that the benefits of stop-and-search are outweighed by the negative consequences in terms of the willingness of young people to communicate with and help the police.

"Stop-and-search is not a notably productive means of tackling crime, particularly if it is done in an uninformed way. We need to look at alternatives to stop-and-search - the better engagement between police and young people."

Mr Vaz questioned whether there was a demand for more stop- and-search from within ethnic minority communities: "I have been in politics for 20 years, I represent many black and Asian people and this has never been put to me.

"We have to look at the facts, and the facts show that very few stop-and-searches lead to arrests.

"The hit rate is only 7 per cent, so 93 per cent of the people stopped are not subjected to any kind of further action."