Earlier, by John Derbyshire: Dame Cressida Goes To Parliament.
From The Guardian:
Met carried out 22,000 searches on young black men during lockdown
This article is more than 3 months old
More than 80% stop-and-search procedures between March to May led to no further actionJamie Grierson Home affairs correspondent
@JamieGrierson
Wed 8 Jul 2020Young black men were stopped and searched by police more than 20,000 times in London during the coronavirus lockdown – the equivalent more than a quarter of all black 15- to 24-year-olds in the capital.
More than 80% of the 21,950 searches between March and May resulted in no further action, according to analysis by the office of the home affairs select committee chair, Yvette Cooper.
The figures equate to 30% of all young black males in London, though some individuals may have been searched more than once.
The Met increased its use of stop and search during the lockdown, compared with a year ago. The force carried out 43,000 stops in May, compared to 21,000 a year earlier, and 30,608 in April, up from 20,981.
Katrina Ffrench, chief executive of Stopwatch, a charity that campaigns against the disproportionate use of stop and search, said: “The number is shocking and saddening. How do those young people feel when this is their city, they’re going about their daily business, could be caring for parents, all sorts of reasons as to why they’re out?”
The figures emerged after the commissioner for the Metropolitan police, Cressida Dick, apologised for the distress caused to the British athlete Bianca Williams when officers stopped, searched and handcuffed her at the weekend.
But Dick defended her force’s use of stop-and-search powers, saying black people were eight times more likely to be perpetrators of violent crime.
The committee heard that in May alone, about one in eight young black males in London were stopped and searched. Cooper said data showed 10,000 black males in London aged 15 to 25 were stopped and searched in May. Total population estimates for that demographic in London are between 70,000 and 80,000.
Cooper said: “That suggests in one month alone, more than one in 10 of young black men in London were stopped and searched and found to be carrying nothing and found not to be doing anything that required further action. That’s just in one month also at a time when actually most people would have been at home during lockdown.”
Asked if the figures alarmed her, Dick replied: “I’m not alarmed, I’m alert.”
Official figures show people who identify as black in England and Wales are nearly 10 times more likely to be stopped than people who identify as white. However, within some force areas, this is even higher: police in Dorset are 25 times more likely to stop black people than white people.
Dick told the committee that some of those searched and not found to have any illicit items were “very violent repeat offenders who happen not to have it there and then”.
“Some of them have stashed it, given it to the other boy or whatever. That’s a proportion of those people. Because what I can tell you is we’re focused in the right areas and focusing hugely on people that we know to be involved in violent crime.”
She said black people were not just disproportionately affected by stop-and-search powers but were more likely to be victims as well as perpetrators of violent crime in the capital. She said 72% of homicide victims under 25 were black, and that black people were four times more likely to be a victim of homicide and eight times more likely to be a perpetrator.
Would an American government official be allowed to keep his or her career after stating out loud that in 2019 blacks were eight times more likely to be homicide perpetrators than non-blacks?
… The force said it believed a more accurate measure of disproportionality is the so-called “positive outcome” rate – that is the proportion of stop and searches that identify criminality.
Over the rolling 12-month period to 31 May, the four main ethnic groupings all showed similar positive outcome rates – white 24%; black 21%; Asian 22%; other 22%.
