Analysis: Officers' fear of being branded racist has done little to reduce bias over suspects

Home Office figures cast doubt on police response to Macpherson inquiry, with growing number of young black men being stopped

It was the aftermath of Notting Hill Carnival, a little over two years ago, and two people were dead, 19 had been stabbed, 69 injured and 129 arrested.

The statistics were shocking but so was one of the explanations for the violence given by an influential police leader in a radio interview.

Glen Smyth, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said officers were scared of tackling black criminality out of fear of being branded racists or starting a riot, in the period after Sir William Macpherson's damning report into the way the police handled the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

Mr Smyth said: "They [senior officers] are asking officers to exercise their discretion and think very carefully [first] about what the effects could be."

The clear message – that black criminals were free to act with impunity – was quickly picked up by other police commentators who claimed that a similar "hands-off" policy was being adopted on the streets by officers patrolling Britain's large cities.

The reality was somewhat different. In spite of the picture of police helplessness in the face of a politically correct response to their bungled investigation of the Lawrence murder, the stopping and searching of black suspects has continued at hugely disproportionate levels.

Figures released by the Home Office yesterday showed that black people were now eight times more likely to be stopped than whites, compared with only six times more likely when the Macpherson report was published.

While it is true that the numbers of black suspects stopped fell slightly in the wake of the inquiry (from 118 to 81 per 100,000 of population in 1999-2000), senior officers said at the time that this was as a result of switching to a more targeted approach to searching.

This appears to be borne out by the fact that stops of whites also fell (from 20 to 16 per 100,000), as did those of Asians (from 42 to 26 per 100,000).

But during the past two years, as police have continued to complain about lack of manpower, crippling amounts of red tape and low morale, officers have stepped up their stops of blacks and Asians at a marked rate.

While stops of the white population have fallen even further (from 16 to 13 per 100,000), those of blacks have risen (from 81 to 86 and now to 106 per 100,000). Stops of Asian suspects have also climbed sharply (from 26 to 35 per 100,000). A report in April, called Policing for London, compared deteriorating relations between police and Pakistani and Bangladeshi youths to tensions between officers and young blacks.

After all the police service's commitments to equality in the wake of the Macpherson inquiry, how could such a situation have happened?

Some expert commentators took the view yesterday that there could be no legitimate explanation of such discrepancies.

Paul Cavadino, chief executive of the crime reduction charity Nacro, said: "Despite all the excuses and rationalisations, these figures are indefensible. No one can seriously claim that black people commit eight times more crime than white people."

But John Denham, the Crime Reduction minister, warned against jumping to the conclusion that the figures resulted from police racism. Mr Denham said stop-and-search was a "legitimate tactic" which was being used by police in a "targeted way".

Speaking on BBC Radio4 yesterday, the minister said: "We have got to move the debate beyond the sterile argument there usually is whenever you have figures about race and the criminal justice system, with one set of people saying 'Well, it's all about criminality isn't it?' and the other set of people saying 'It's all about racism'."

Mr Denham said the Home Office was setting up a new unit to examine the causes of the ethnic differences in stop-and-search and other areas of the criminal justice system. "We need to understand why it is that more black and ethnic minority people are stopped than white people," he said.

Some of the answers to Mr Denham's questions can be traced to sources very close to his own office.

For more than a year, Home Office officials have been constantly chasing the chief constables of the largest urban forces, urging them to do more to tackle street criminals.

Mobile phone robberies, snatch thefts and other street offences are held responsible for driving up the public's fear of crime and exposing the Government to criticism that it is weak on law and order.

In September last year, Tony Blair went before the House of Commons to promise that the problem would be brought "under control" inside a year.

The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, announced last month that the number of street crimes between March and September had fallen by 10 per cent compared with the same period last year.

The successes against street crime – a separate Home Office study yesterday showed that violent offences fell 1 per cent in 2000-01 – have been achieved at a price. Despite the use of targeting, forces have also swamped robbery "hot spot" areas – often inner-city neighbourhoods with large Afro-Caribbean populations.

The tactic has led to comparisons with Scotland Yard's use two decades ago of the controversial "Sus" search law, which was a trigger for the inner-city rioting of 1981.

Police and civil servants argue that they are merely trying to help honest citizens. But for a service that is also trying to meet tough government targets to increase ethnic minority recruiting, the stop-and- search figures are not good PR.

Patricia Lamour, assistant director of the anti-racist charity The 1990 Trust, compared the latest Operation Safer Streets initiative in London with previous crackdowns, Operation Eagle Eye in the Nineties and Operation Swamp at the start of the Eighties. She said that in spite of the police's equal opportunities rhetoric, officers were encouraged by such operations to see young black men as "the enemy".

She said: "The impression is always given of a thin blue line, holding back a tide of crime that's implicitly and explicitly described as black."

To some senior officers, such as the Met's deputy commissioner, Ian Blair, the facts on street crime are incontrovertible. He told a conference last month that 63 per cent of mugging suspects in some areas of London were black and that the Afro-Caribbean community had to face realities and "engage" with the police.

The Home Office published figures yesterday showing one area of progress, with the number of ethnic minority officers recruited rising by a record 14 per cent last year to 3,386.

But the process will be hindered by the apparent unfairness of stop-and-search tactics, warns Sergeant Ray Powell, general secretary of the National Black Police Association. "It will reaffirm people's beliefs that the police service is institutionally racist," he said.

The situation is likely to become worse. The latest anti-street crime initiatives – which took place in 10 urban forces – only reached their peak after the collation of the stop-and-search figures; the next set of data will probably show even larger discrepancies between black and white.

To shore up confidence in the system, the Home Office announced it was piloting in seven forces a Macpherson inquiry recommendation to give every person stopped a "certificate" explaining the reasons for the police action.

But the idea may have been scuppered already. As soon as the plan was first mooted, last April, the Police Federation denounced it as too bureaucratic and unworkable.

TARGETS OF POLICE HARASSMENT WHO SPOKE OUT

DELROY LINDO

Delroy Lindo, 42 – a civil rights activist and friend of Winston Silcott, who was cleared of murdering a policeman, Keith Blakelock – took legal action against the Metropolitan Police after being stopped and searched more than 37 times in eight years. A damning internal report by the Metropolitan Police last year upheld his complaints of harassment. The report said his family had been wrongly targeted, although it added: "On occasions their response to police officers' behaviour inflamed situations."

JOHN SENTAMU

Police have stopped and searched the Bishop of Birmingham eight times. The Right Rev John Sentamu, 53, who arrived from Uganda in 1974, was part of Sir William Macpherson's inquiry team, which investigated the murder in 1993 of Stephen Lawrence. He was particularly upset that when police realised who he was, they became deferential. "They should treat everybody with respect," Dr Sentamu said.

CARL JOSEPHS

Carl Josephs, 30, a Birmingham caterer, was stopped 34 times in two years despite having a clean driving licence and no criminal record. He became so fed up he gave his documents to West Midlands Police for safekeeping. Mr Josephs sued the force and was awarded £1,000, though Birmingham County Court ruled he had not been the victim of racial harassment. He has since said he will go to the European Court of Human Rights.

LEROY MCDOWELL

Leroy McDowell and his friend Wayne Taylor, who both suffer from the blood disorder sickle cell anaemia, successfully sued the Metropolitan Police for assault and false imprisonment.

They were stopped by police in Hackney, east London, and their car searched because police said they "were in a drugs-related area". Their pleas that they suffered from a serious condition were ignored and they were placed in cells without receiving medical attention.

They were charged with public order offences, which were later rejected by a court. The two men were awarded £38,000 by the Central London County Court in 1997.

TREVOR HALL

In the past 17 years, Trevor Hall, a senior civil servant, has been stopped and searched by police on 44 occasions, 39 of which were in London.

Mr Hall, who is in his fifties and who retired earlier this year as a member of the Home Office's Community Relations Unit, acted as a consultant to ministers, advising on community and race relations policy and the prison and probation services.

GARTH CROOKS

The BBC sports broadcaster and former Tottenham Hotspur striker Garth Crooks was first stopped and searched at 18, when an officer subjected him to a torrent of racial abuse.

The officer was called off by a colleague who recognised him as a rising star at the local club, Stoke City. Mr Crooks has since said: "Just wearing a baseball cap or driving a Mercedes are not good enough reasons to stop somebody."