Stopped & Searched

I disagree with your sentiment. In reality, no stop and search programme is going to have a significant chance of intercepting a terrorist unless it is universal and continuous: that would mean we were all searched several times daily while going about our normal business, as happened in Northern Ireland – despite which terrorists still managed to bomb and shoot with depressing regularity. Please consider these statistics:

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/centreright/2009/02/todays-statisti.html

Out of 360,000 Section 44 searches, not a single terrorist related arrest in 2008. If you think 360,000 sounds like a lot, it is roughly the same as searching 1 in 20 Londoners once per year, or one person per planeload at Heathrow.

It is far better to devote money to infiltrating terrorist cells. That’s called targeting criminals – and it works, even though it can’t guarantee to catch them all.

Targeting members of the law abiding public antagonises them, and indignation spreads to their friends and relatives. Indeed, by doing so it makes us less safe, as those who really know of potential terrorists are more likely to side with protecting them rather than shopping them to the authorities. Encouraging someone to take such a step requires a bond of trust, as they may well have a close relationship and family attitudes to contend with.

We have a government that seems to take pride in being an enemy of the people. It is not an attitude to be praised or emulated. It is the attitude of the worst kinds of government from dictatorship to totalitarian regime (be it communist or fascist).

Thanks (it doesn’t add up) for the stats good stuff.

It is worth recalling that our Party was the subject of a cynical attack during the Party conference of 1984. If such a thing happened again, and the Police were deemed to be negligent the whole nation, not only the middle class would rightly be outraged. It does sound as though security was rather more in evidence,(at this years conferance) but I think we can all agree that such an attack could happen again. MP’s indeed have been targeted and remain at risk.

When Airey Neave, was at home at Asbury Oxon, I would sometimes be stopped and searched, three or more times, in the space of a three mile walk through that Village
On my way home to the little hamlet of Idstone. Sadly he was still killed, but ironically on his way out of parliament.

Security has to walk a thin line between diligence and overkill, maybe they were just a little to cautious at this years conference. The risk though is very real indeed, and may worsen as a result of the economic mess Labour has inflicted, and the policies we have to enact to deal with that mess, assuming of course that we win the GE

Also published at conservative home.

I don’t know, Walaa! I am in two minds about all this. On the one hand your point that terrorists do not have the word tattooed on their forehead is very true – yet on the other hand there is something profoundly UN-British in the way the Police are now stopping citizens randomly when going about their lawful business – even if and possibly especially if they appear the sort who would never be engaged in illlegal activities, particularly related to terrorism.
I think that the most effective anti-terrorism work is done undercover – in other words by the infiltration of terrorist groups and millieus by those working for the security services and Police. To my mind we need to concentrate on this and less on the “Sledgehammer to crack a nut” approach which I think random stops and search epitomise!

But on what basis do you define the sort of people who would NEVER be engaged in illegal activity, because so far we had terrorist from wide spectrum of backgrounds, and here is where the problem lies. I too know how you feel and why you feel the way you do. Maybe I am a little more resilient and somewhat empathetic to the police because of where I grow up (the police here still calls members of the public sir and mam treats them with respect and say please and thank you.

I also feel that maybe we are unfairly pointing the finger at the police while all they are doing is implement laws that our “elected” representatives has passed on our behalf.

The intelligence services tell us they are tracking about 2,000 terrorism suspects in the UK (doubtless from many different walks of life, and most of whom will turn out not to be terrorists but merely sympathisers or completely innocent). Since the Good Friday Agreement at most a few dozen have been convicted of terrorist offences which remain rare. Government statistics show an average of about 1.5 plots per year being disrupted (“a dozen plots in eight years”).

We have a population of over 60 million. The proportion of terrorists within it is miniscule. The chances of intercepting a terrorist via stop and search are truly minute, unless you make it a totally oppressive and pervasive regime, the cost of which would pay for a lot of improvements to the rate of unnecessary deaths in the NHS, saving many more lives than are lost through terrorism.

Police resources would be better spent on dealing with gang violence and murder rather than Section 44 stops. That’s a problem they are much better equipped to tackle – and it would make us feel genuinely safer.

I find it interesting that in the 178 page document on the CONTEST anti-terrorist strategy from the Home Office, Section 44 only gets the following brief mention:

“Several police powers which are
important to the Pursue workstream
have attracted negative comment
from some communities. They
include Section 44 (police stop and
search powers) and Schedule 7 (stop
and search powers at ports). The
Government is engaging in community
consultation about these powers,
which need to be retained but in
a way that commands support.”

There is no explanation or justification for the powers offered, yet there are pages and pages of justification for other actions. Police campaigns against particular groups, such as trainspotters and serious amateur photographers, really are not at all helpful. If you were a terrorist, knowing about the police obsession, would you disguise yourself as a trainspotter or use a very obvious SLR camera, or would you choose some other disguise? If you were the police, wouldn’t you rather have the trainspotters also keeping an eye out for suspicious people with large rucksacks at Luton station in between noting down engine numbers, or have a pin sharp photo of a real terrorist suspect that puts CCTV to shame?

It doesn’t add up…. again thank you, and I think your idea of using trainspotters to help stop any suspicious characters is a clever one.

I feel that we seem to point the finger at the police while the body we should question is the legislators and law makers. They are the ones who are responsible for this mess, and not the police, who all they are doing is execute the law as it was passed to them.