General Chat

[foreveryoung]

8 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

If they stop tens of thousands of people with no reasonable suspicion, taking up the time of tens of thousands of innocent people, mostly based on prejudice, but stumble upon one weapon, you think it's justified?

Perhaps you'd feel slightly differently if you were being targeted, Can the police rummage through your possessions? Just in case mate. How about once a month or so? It's just, some people that look a bit like your type committed some crime, so you know, we think you're probably a wrong 'un as well.

 

So what's the alternative. Not do it at all, or just search the odd person who has previous. Cause people are still getting stabbed in large numbers. 

[Davkaus]

1 minute ago, Demitri_C said:

If it stops one murder of course. That could be your loved one! (Touch wood)

 

I disagree with this. Of course we all want to stop murder, but there's an associated cost, right? If you think it's worth any and all possible infringement of civil liberties to reduce murder by 1, we simply have to disagree. As an extreme, we could massively reduce violent crime by increasing police funding 100 fold and strip searching as many people as possible per day, with no suspicion of offences, just to catch people potentially hiding weapons. It'd be ridiculous, but it might keep 1 person alive...

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If its trained and implemented properly with no discrimination then i have no issue with it. As i said in my previous post the problem is its not done correctly. 

I agree, its implementation is discriminatory and incredibly problematic, but how do you think it ought to be conducted "correctly"? What does "good" look like? Because the powers that a lot of people object to are allowing the police to stop and search an individual with no specific suspicion of wrongdoing. In my view, that power should be completely removed, and to search someone, the police should need to have a reasonable suspicion of a specific crime that they can justify in court (note that doesn't mean the person needs to be guilty, the suspicion just has to be one with a reason that they can back it up with).

[Davkaus]

Just now, foreveryoung said:

So what's the alternative. Not do it at all, or just search the odd person who has previous. Cause people are still getting stabbed in large numbers. 

Search people that you can back up having a reason to suspect of a crime other than being black without due care and attention.

[Davkaus]

23 minutes ago, Brumstopdogs said:

 

Don't be fooled by the chinos, there's probably a shank in that popcorn. 

[sidcow]

 

[foreveryoung]

7 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Search people that you can back up having a reason to suspect of a crime other than being black without due care and attention.

I agree certain communities were being disproportionately stopped and searched. But unfortunately it was because they were disproportionately carrying knives. 

We can do it better, ofcourse we can, but I doubt its going to stop people from still having issues with it. 

[Davkaus]

5 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

I agree certain communities were being disproportionately stopped and searched. But unfortunately it was because they were disproportionately carrying knives. 

We can do it better, ofcourse we can, but I doubt its going to stop people from still having issues with it. 

You seem to have missed my post asking if you could support this claim, and asking if you have any reason to believe that the policy was effective

How far above the per capita/demographic rates does a group of people need to be committing offences before you think it's reasonable to target them with police searches without reasonable suspicion?

[foreveryoung]

4 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

You seem to have missed my post asking if you could support this claim, and asking if you have any reason to believe that the policy was effective

How far above the per capita/demographic rates does a group of people need to be committing offences before you think it's reasonable to target them with police searches without reasonable suspicion?

It's obviously effective if carried out correctly. 

What is classed as reasonable suspicion. A gang of lads on a unlit street corner just chatting. Or a guy with duffel coat on, running and not stopping when asked to. Or a man in a suit with a holdall bag. It's a bit idealistic to justify what's suspicious and worth a search.

[Davkaus]

12 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

It's obviously effective if carried out correctly. 

 

Yet it doesn't seem to be. E.g.,

https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/news/stop-and-search-has-no-impact-crime-new-report

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We found little evidence of an effect of stop and search on violent crime. The only statistically significant result was the net effect of s1 and s47 weapon searches at the weekly level, and the effect here was very small indeed: a 10 per cent increase in stop/search led to 0.01 per cent decrease in non-domestic violent crime. Similarly, we found very little effect of stop and search on weaponenabled non-domestic violence, and no effect whatsoever when it came to ambulance incident data for calls related to ‘stab/shot/weapon wounds

There was no evidence of an effect of stop and search on robbery and theft (separately and together), vehicle crime or criminal damage. Finally, we were able to take advantage of the sudden increase in the use of s60 searches by the MPS during our data period to conduct a quasiexperiment comparing the periods before and after s60 searches became commonplace (see Figure 1). We examined whether the trend in nondomestic violent crime during the period when s60 powers were being used was significantly different to the trend in the preceding period, when they were used much less often. Since nondomestic violence was generally declining over the study period, if s60 powers were effective in reducing violence then we would have expected the rate of decline to have increased after the introduction of widespread use of s60. In fact, there was no statistically significant change in the trend in non-domestic violent crime from the ‘pre’ period, when the s60 powers were used less, to the ‘post’ period when they were used more (

Happy to read any evidence you have to the contrary. You've got some, rather that gut feel, right?

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What is classed as reasonable suspicion. A gang of lads on a unlit street corner just chatting. Or a guy with duffel coat on, running and not stopping when asked to. Or a man in a suit with a holdall bag. It's a bit idealistic to justify what's suspicious and worth a search.

It's not just idealistic, it's one of the cornerstones of policing by consent - the police should leave you alone unless they have a reason to believe you've done something wrong - you specifically, not just people of your ethnicity. To do otherwise seems a lot like collective punishment.

The police have powers to detain people they suspect of a crime. It's not a massively onerous threshold - wearing suspicious clothes in certain whether, leaving a property of a known person or being a known person in certain circumstances. Why are you so happy for them to have the powers to just ruin someone's day based on nothing but skin colour? Would you be happy to just see every black person searched once per day to ensure they're not up to no good?

I'm fortunate enough to be a white chap with a vaguely middle class demeanour, so the police tend to leave me alone, but I've encountered more than enough shit cops who want to take their bad day out on innocent bystanders to wish them on anyone.

Edited June 4, 2022 by Davkaus

[DCJonah]

I love VT but it's just another example of that pride of ignorance and lack of empathy that anonymous Internet users display. Its quite depressing at times. 

What the **** wrong with people. 

[KentVillan]

2 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

| guess it's hard to not be discriminatory when a bigger percentage of the people who carried knifes were black. it's attitudes towards the police too. Watched too many rap videos.

Imagine what it's like if you're a hard working, ambitious, intelligent, law abiding person who happens to be black. How would you feel if you kept getting stopped and searched purely because of your skin colour?

Do you think the "fact" (very very doubtful) that other people with your skin colour carry knives more often would make you think "ah cool, I'll just let these policemen stop me again and rummage through my belongings"? Or do you think you'd start to feel a very deep resentment about the way they go about their work?

There are other ways of doing this that don't make entire groups of people feel victimised.

Countries with low crime rates don't achieve it through aggressive policing. It starts well before that in the way you structure your society, and the opportunities you give people, and the way you look after people. It's so sad that people view this entirely as a policing issue. All the evidence says policing isn't the critical factor.

Edited June 4, 2022 by KentVillan

[TheAuthority]

22 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

I love VT but it's just another example of that pride of ignorance and lack of empathy that anonymous Internet users display. Its quite depressing at times. 

What the **** wrong with people. 

Lack of education and a media that deliberately dumbs down issues to sell papers/clicks.

 

[villa4europe]

8 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

| guess it's hard to not be discriminatory when a bigger percentage of the people who carried knifes were black. it's attitudes towards the police too. Watched too many rap videos.

There's a rap video for you 

[blandy]

10 hours ago, Davkaus said:

Do you have the stats to back this up?

This article is quite helpful as it provides stats (for that London) and good context and comment

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/living-on-the-edge-the-real-reasons-why-black-boys-are-falling-to-violent-crime-in-london_uk_5c405edae4b0a8dbe16df465

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When initially approached for comment, campaigner Garvin Snell questioned HuffPost UK’s motives for covering this topic. He expressed concern over the frequent media inference that black males are predisposed to criminality.

“Why does it [the disproportionality] matter? Is it going to change the way that people deal with the situation?,” he said.

In August, Snell created a viral video that purports to teach self-defence techniques against a knife attack. He tells viewers he is going to show his son the best way to defend himself against an attacker, then when he picks up a knife and waves it, his son runs away.

It is a humorous way of making the very serious point that the best defence is to flee. The video has been viewed over two million times, receiving praise from police officers all over the country.

“It gets my back up sometimes, I think people say ‘knife crime is a black problem and we [wider society] do nothing about it – because it’s not our problem’,” he said.

“It almost feels like it’s another dig at the black community. We need to have an attitude that it’s a problem which affects all of us, so we all play our part.”

 

[Demitri_C]

10 hours ago, Davkaus said:

What does "good" look like? Because the powers that a lot of people object to are allowing the police to stop and search an individual with no specific suspicion of wrongdoing. In my view, that power should be completely removed, and to search someone, the police should need to have a reasonable suspicion of a specific crime that they can justify in court (note that doesn't mean the person needs to be guilty, the suspicion just has to be one with a reason that they can back it up with).

Well there is no right or wrong way if we are reporting people on their skin colour. In my view you can only base it on a suspect description. If you have enough evidence to suspect the person e.g witness states person was white wearing a purple hoodie with purple trainers  specific hairstyle with two others that to me is enough to warrant a stop and search. I dont agree with random stop and searches unless there is a plausible reason e.g a murder and the person described by witnesses is similar.

Police have a very very difficult job. 

[Demitri_C]

19 minutes ago, blandy said:

This article is quite helpful as it provides stats (for that London) and good context and comment

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/living-on-the-edge-the-real-reasons-why-black-boys-are-falling-to-violent-crime-in-london_uk_5c405edae4b0a8dbe16df465

 

So double the murder suspects in london are black  then that explains why more black people are stopped and searched in this region.

If it was reversed and white people were 48% then white people should have bene stopped and search more.

Furthermore if 13% of london is black people and 48% of those are murder suspects thats a big problem we have down here.

Obviously this is just london in other areas it could be different 

Edited June 5, 2022 by Demitri_C

[blandy]

34 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Obviously this is just london in other areas it could be different 

It is different

https://news.sky.com/story/black-murder-victims-and-suspects-london-v-uk-11443656

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Nationally, 3% of the population is black, 5% of murder victims are black and 13% of murder suspects are black.

White people make up 86% of the country, 89% of the UK's murder victims and 81% of its murder suspects

 

[chrisp65]

From my own personal lived experience as a white person that lived in the wrong post code, the police can be a substantial part of the problem.

They can be poorly trained, poorly motivated, subject to their own bias.

I mean, c’mon, look at the state of The Met from top to bottom. 

We need the police, we need more police. Better educated, better trained, fitter, and more responsive to people wanting local issues sorted.

 

Oh, and if you’ve got nothing to hide, if you’re innocent and want to help prevent murders, perhaps you should accept random searches of your nice house on your nice street? With a quick police check of your internet history. And your tax affairs. If it helps society. I mean, we all had our tax checked regularly and we all had our internets checked regularly, then there would be more tax revenue for more police and less time needed tracking down nonces. It would be a virtuous circle, if we just accepted random house and data sweeps. Nothing to fear if you’re innocent.

 

 

 

[Demitri_C]

9 minutes ago, blandy said:

It is different

https://news.sky.com/story/black-murder-victims-and-suspects-london-v-uk-11443656

 

Those numbers are mad, i didnt know the white to black ratio was such a difference.  But of course if the majority of the population is white there will be more white murder suspects

[Seat68]

12 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Those numbers are mad, i didnt know the white to black ratio was such a difference.  But of course if the majority of the population is white there will be more white murder suspects

Yet as you say more black people are stopped as part of stop and search.