06/19/2009
Clayton Cramer describes this as being like "a really bad Monty Python skit"
He writes
The British police were given sweeping new powers to deal with terrorism a while back — including the ability to stop people in certain designated areas without probable cause for search. The problem was that because the left runs British policing, they apparently decided that it would be unfair to disproportionately stop people based on racial profiling.
Of course, the impetus for this was the London Bombings, which were committed by UK-born Muslims who looked like Muslims. But the police aren’t concentrating on anyone who looks like he might commit terrorism:
Terror law used to stop thousands 'just to balance racial statistics'
”Watchdog says officers misuse terror law” Home secretary to issue new guidance
Alan Travis, The Guardian, June 172009 Thousands of people are being stopped and searched by the police under their counter-terrorism powers — simply to provide a racial balance in official statistics, the government’s official anti-terror law watchdog has revealed.
Lord Carlile said in his annual report that he had "ample anecdotal evidence" of it happening, adding that such a practice was "totally wrong" and constituted an invasion of civil liberties.
"I can well understand the concerns of the police that they should be free from allegations of prejudice," he said. "But it is not a good use of precious resources if they waste them on self-evidently unmerited searches."
He said there was little or no evidence that the use of section 44 stop and search powers by the police could prevent an act of terrorism..
.. Examples of poor use of section 44 abounded. "I have evidence of cases where the person stopped is so obviously far from any known terrorism profile that, realistically, there is not the slightest possibility of him/her being a terrorist, and no other feature to justify the stop."
He later said that while the police should not discriminate racially, it was equally important that they should not balance the statistics. "If, for example, 50 blonde women are stopped who fall nowhere near any intelligence-led terrorism profile, it’s a gross invasion of the civil liberties of those 50 blonde women. [More]
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