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 05 September 2008 06:09 BST

Call to search more black people

Sunday, 21 Oct 2007 12:16
Keith Jarrett calls for more black people to be stopped and searched.
More black people must be searched to stop gun crime, according to the head of the Black Police Association.

Keith Jarrett, outgoing president of the National Black Police Association (NBPA), is expected to press for police to use a stop and search approach with people from black communities in a speech at the NBPA's annual conference in Bristol this Wednesday.

Though Mr Jarrett's remarks are opposed to the NBPA's official stance, he said: "The black community is telling me we have to… look at this", reports the Observer.

Chief Superintendent Ali Dizaei, the NBPA's legal adviser, criticised Mr Jarrett's remarks, telling the BBC that increasing the use of stop and search would be "wrong".

"I think that will increase tension in the black community," Mr Dizaei said.

"Simply saying, 'Let's go out there and stop more black people' is ill conceived."

Increased use of stop and search tactics by police are widely thought to have played a major part in the escalation of inner-city race riots in the 1980s, while the Macpherson Report into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence strongly criticised stop and search.

Mr Jarrett told the Observer: "From the return that I am getting from a lot of black people, they want to stop these killings, these knife crimes, and if it means their sons and daughters are going to be inconvenienced by being stopped by the police, so be it."

"It's not going to go down very well with my audience, many of whom are going to be black," he admitted.

"We have talked about disproportionate use of stop-and-search in the past, but what I am proposing is quite the reverse," he explained.End of story


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