Do I look like a criminal?

Written by Lynne Featherstone and published in Ham & High on Mon 7th Jul 2003

Middle-aged, middle-class, white female - that's me! Not a description I am particularly keen on - especially the middle-aged bit. But I guess that if a police officer was walking along the road and saw me - that would be his (his - because most police officers are still male) first impression.

If he then clocked the way I was dressed (reasonable smartly), my location (Hampstead High Street), added in local crime intelligence and his own experience - I doubt whether he would give me a second glance - let alone stop me and search me. Unless, of course, he had particular intelligence to stop all middle-aged, middle-class white females because one such had just robbed the local jewellers and that was the description of the perpetrator.

So: have I have never been stopped and searched because I have never committed a crime or because I just don't look like the type of person who does? And who and how makes those judgements? What influences them?

If I was young, black, male and lived in Hackney, Tottenham or Brixton - would I have more chance of being stopped and searched - even though I had also never committed a crime? If I do - then that's making assumptions based on race. Is that what is happening?

Or are the police right to see stop and search as a vital tool in their work to cut crime and make London safe and are they right to say that the decisions on who to stop are based on intelligence rather than racial profiling?

Despite the police's staunch defence of this tactic, they - and the rest of us - actually know relatively little about what is really happening. What success rates do stop and searches have? What is success? Fairly basic questions - but ones that haven't been quantified or analysed successfully to date.

At the heart of the issue are two hot potatoes: is racial discrimination dictating who gets stopped and who gets searched? Or is race a guide to who should be stopped and searched?

Scary questions! That's the minefield that the Metropolitan Police Authority

(MPA) are stepping into with a scrutiny investigation into stop and search, for which I am the vice-chair.

But it's a minefield that needs clearing for all our sakes. The relationship between a community and the force that polices it is critical to all our well-being.

Many communities in London are incensed at what they see as a stop and search policy that is rooted in racial discrimination. A lot of work has been done since the tragic death of Stephen Lawrence and the McPherson Report. But stop and search is still causing widespread anger and resentment. Yet if it really is the critical tool the Met says it is - then we need to examine and expose all of the issues to inform the way forward.

We have had the first evidence session with senior officers from the Met. The real shock to me of that first witness session was how ad hoc it all seems. The IT systems of the Met seem not to have been able to deal with recording appropriate data and therefore there are huge gaps in the information that is needed to make judgements.

I have no doubt that as we progress through the next few months of this scrutiny more will be revealed - and it is important that it is - as we examine the truth behind stop and search.