“Well, he looked like a religious nutter, Sarge” - no, that’s Andrew Brown, you berks
Good grief. If Andrew Brown can be stopped and searched by the police under the Terrorism Act, then truly We Are All Suspects.
You must read the whole post, because the payoff is tremendous, and the bit in the middle doesn’t disappoint, and the start is enjoyable too. I can wait. (Stares at ceiling..)
Andrew one day, Arifa Akbar not so long before (article - a good one - paywalled, but you get the gist from the first para that’s up there)… they have something against people who are, or have been, Independent employees, don’t they? I am going to have a shave and stick a neon-illuminated flashing crucifix on my head at once, so that they’ll have to stop me to balance out the religious extremism stats. Andrew was balancing out, well, hmm, quite a lot actually - he was on the far end of about 20 different Bell Curves in the police stats. Perhaps he should be a professional stoppee so as to make their “who we stopped lately” curves match the population demographics.
And as he says, they were amazingly incompetent in the search. Not asking where you’re going is the first rule if you really want to know if someone is who they say (or their documents say) they are.
(I’d just like you to know I created the whole new category of “Unbelievable” for this post.)
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- Perhaps if she had called it "The Da Vinci Emporium"? (14 March 2005; score: 73.9%)
- On directions and eyewitnesses: what you see is not what you report (29 August 2005; score: 40.4%)
- And like magic, the phone disappears! (27 August 2004; score: 40.24%)
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March 3rd, 2006 at 9:14 am
What bit of the word random causes you so much trouble?
Sorry to be so unamused by your little group giggle.
But if the subtext is that you would prefer innocent black and Asian
people to continue to be disproportionately stopped and searched…
…well, I disagree.
March 3rd, 2006 at 10:48 am
Well, let’s see. First, random tests are conducted on objects that come from factories to see that they’re remaining to standard. That’s where the concept comes from. So are the police trying to find out if we’re up to standard?
Surely it is a better use of police time - of all our time - if there is some targeting, of whatever type. It doesn’t have to be ethnic, or religious, but it should be about whether someone’s behaviour is out of context. Perhaps Andrew looked like the Unabomber that day, but I doubt it really. I don’t want innocent anyones to be “disproportionately” stopped. I do question the whole principle, though. Better intelligence-gathering would be an improvement.
..then again, you have to have stop-and-search going on so that you could force the out-of-context behaviour, don’t you? It’s Catch-22. Or Catch-1984, maybe.
March 3rd, 2006 at 11:10 am
I don’t mind being stopped for the sake of the statistics. It may actually do some good, though it won’t easily persuade anyone black or Asian looking that they were not stopped because that’s how they looked. If I am mistaken for a religious fanatic, I can only assume this is one of God’s little jokes.
But genuinely random searching is clearly never going to catch terrorists, and if they were so frequent that it did, things would be very much worse than they are now. In Belfast in the early Eighties, as in Jerusalem last year, you couldn’t get into any enclosed space without being professionally searched, whoever you were.
These guys were clearly just trawling for less glamorous offences. The conversation about drugs was a giveaway. I think that Charles is actually pretty high risk the next time he goes through Liverpool street ina watch cap, three days’ stubble, and an expensive leather jacket.
March 3rd, 2006 at 11:25 am
I think that there are complex reasons for random searches. I’m no expert, but I can see a number of ways in which they might usefully add to security. They might:
…reassure passengers, reduce anxiety and fear, make it hard to do dummy runs, increase public awareness and alertness to suspicious packages or behaviour, improve general scrutiny and be useful in intelligence gathering….
Clearly, the activities are expensive and a nuisance. But I don’t assume they are worthless.
What does worry me is alienating minorities - for obvious reasons. You say you are not in favour of it, but it is already happening:
“The number of Asian and black people stopped and searched in London streets by police using anti-terrorism powers increased more than 12 fold after the July 7 bombings, The Guardian has learned.”
&
“The increase is more than twice the rise recorded by the Met for white people stopped in the two months after the attacks.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1673834,00.html
March 3rd, 2006 at 2:51 pm
…reassure passengers, reduce anxiety and fear, make it hard to do dummy runs, increase public awareness and alertness to suspicious packages or behaviour, improve general scrutiny and be useful in intelligence gathering….
Remind me - were there random searches for “terrorists” when the IRA was blowing up chunks of the UK mainland? I don’t think so.
Random searches don’t reassure, because it makes one think that (a) hey, there might be a bomb on this very [form of transport] - look, the police are checking someone, they must know! (b) or you think “what a waste of time - why are they checking that old lady?” Ditto for “anxiety and fear”. Public awareness about suspect packages is done by posters and announcements. It might improve general scrutiny, but you could just watch people to do that. Intelligence gathering.. well, what does a null result tell you, then?
Compare the US’s “No-Fly” list, which has completely undermined peoples’ confidence in the No-Fly list. Stop’n’search does much the same, I think. I await the day when someone is stopped who is “carrying”.
March 3rd, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Journos who should know better
They can be an arrogant lot, journalists. And blissfully unaware of it. Here’s an account by Andrew Brown, a BBC and broadsheet freelance, about being randomly stopped and searched under 44 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act….
March 3rd, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Remind me - were there random searches for “terrorists” when the IRA was blowing up chunks of the UK mainland? I don’t think so. quote from Charles
The IRA didn’t use suicide bombers or, generally, detonate bombs in civilian areas without leaving a warning.
When someone who is “carrying” is stopped, they usually detonate their explosives. Security officers die - as many have, protecting the public. I don’t await that day. I hope that measures, like random stop and search, continue to reduce the chance of it happening.
March 3rd, 2006 at 6:25 pm
Hmm, random search (which is what they are mostly) at customs hasn’t stopped smuggling has it?. I fail to follow the logic of the last sentence in #7 - you stop someone and they detonate their bomb (which is what they were going to do anyway). How has random search reduced the chance of this happening? Indeed it may have even increased the chance of an explosion, since the bomber may actually decide that there isn’t a suitable time or place and not detonate their bomb? Let’s face it, “random” search rarely is, whatever anyone says. It’s one of these “Oh god, we have to be seen to be doing something” solutions that appeals to the political mind.