STOP and SEARCH, is it an effective tool used by the Police to prevent crime or is it used to discriminate against the BAME community?
The Metropolitan Police announced that they had given Police Officers the powers to stop and search individuals under section 60 during the 2018 Notting Hill Carnival they say that they based the enhanced powers on the recent spate of violence in the capital and intelligence that they had received. Stop and search is extremely controversial, in particularly within various BAME communities because of the disproportionate number of black and Asian people stopped. I attended the carnival and could not believe the number of black men and boys that were stopped and searched by the police. It was frustrating and heart breaking to say the least because many of the young boys did not have anything illegal on them but felt humiliated because they were cornered, draped up by the police and treated like thugs. I was told by a reveller that it was probably because they were in groups however, they were not the only ethnicity in groups at the carnival a...