Why so few arrests with supposedly "intelligence led" Terrorism Act stops and searches ?
How many times have Home Secretaries stood up in Parliament and assured the public that the draconian anti-terrorist laws are "proportionate" and are only intended to be used in exceptional cases, where there are clear "intelligence led policing" grounds for suspicion ?
The official Home Office figures (.pdf) show a vastly different picture of what actually happens in practice (no figures given for Scotland and Northern Ireland)
Text of the Terrorism Act 2000
"Vehicle searches under Terrorism Act 2000 s 44(1)
2001/2002: 7804 searches leading to only 20 arrests connected with terrorism and 149 for other reasons
2002/2003: 16761 searches leading to only 11 arrests connected with terrorism and 280 for other reasons
Pedestrians searched under Terrorism Act 2000 s 44(2)
2001/2002: 946 searches leading to zero arrests connected with terrorism and 20 for other reasons
2002/2003: 4774 searches leading to only 7 arrests connected with terrorism and 79 for other reasons"
These figures are available in more detail, and show the disproportionate concentration of stops and searches involving various ethnic minorities, and the more explainable prominence of urban city police forces covering the highest population densities.
If tens of thousands of stops and searches lead to only a handful of arrests for terrorist related offences, all that this policy is doing is alienating the public, especially, young Muslims, and helping to recruit them into extremist groups. This policy is playing into the hands of the terrorists and is actually a threat to our national security and must be stopped. Has nothing been learned from Northern Ireland ?
The police force with the worst record of abusing the Terrorism Act powers
appears to be the City of London Police:
"Vehicle searches under Terrorism Act 2000 s 44(1)
2001/2002: 3408 searches leading to only 9 arrests connected with terrorism and 83 arrests for other reasons.
2002/2003: 4327 searches leading to zero arrests connected with terrorism and 96 arrests for other reasons.
Pedestrians searched under Terrorism Act 2000 s 44(2)
2001/2002: 86 searches leading to zero arrests connected with terrorism and 8 arrests for other reasons.
2002/2003: 275 searches leading to zero arrests connected with terrorism and 11 arrests for other reasons."
How many of the Vehicle Searches, especially those by the City of London Police, are prompted by Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) systems ?
There do not seem to be any figures for the number of "lucky" terrorism related arrests which are a result of a "normal" stop and search under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act or other legislation. Is this due to the "elite" Special Branch anti-terrorism squads "nicking the credit" from lucky or observant police officers who were not looking specifically for terrorism related activity when they conducted the stop and search ? Or are there simply very few or possibly none of these cases ?
N.B. the rate of actual conviction of those arrested for Terrorism Act offences is tiny, well below the average for other serious crimes. The official statistics would look even worse, if they were simply for actual Terrorism Act offences and not "arrests connected with terrorism"
So what does the Home Office propose to do to rectify this situation ? They plan too extend the limited scheme whereby every stop and search is recorded and a wriiten or printed note is given to the person who is being searched, giving details of when, where, why and by whom someone has been stopped. The fact that this is not already a national scheme, means that the actual number of stops and searches conducted by the police could be even higher than the figures show, as there are likely to be many stops and searches which are not recorded at all.
This has massive implications for the proposed Compulsory Biometric National ID Register and ID Card and the IMPACT and PLX national "soft intelligence" sharing plans.
On the one hand a proper ID Registry audit trail, where a person has access to the full version of their own records, could be used to prove or disprove allegations of racially biased harrassment. It seems more likely that this, together with IMPACT and PLX will be used to put a permanent "terrorist suspect" black mark on the electronic secret police records of the vast majority of innocent peoplewho are being caught up in these Terrorism Act stops and searches.
This will have dire consequences for their employment prospects in various sensitive jobs, and when they choose to travel abroad.
Comments
Bear in mind, too, that arrests are not the same thing as convictions. Of the massive 18 terrorism connected arrests (one supposes this means arrests using Terrorism Act Powers) following from such searches in 2002/3, how many were of the quality of this recent example:
http://argument.independent.co.uk/letters/story.jsp?story=535288
Posted by: Guy Herbert | July 5, 2004 12:55 PM