Hertfordshire police are to face a high court legal challenge over their decision to stop recording the ethnicity of people who are targeted for stop and search.
Allegedly, the decision demonstrates a "complete lack of will to tackle potential racism".
It is brought by a Mr Hugh Diedrick, who alleges that he was subjected to a stop and search simply because of the colour of his skin.
"These statistics are distributed to assist chief constables to tackle potential racism within their force yet, instead of ensuring that steps were taken to remedy the disproportionality, most opted to eliminate the only means of identifying that there is a problem" said solicitor Sarah McSherry, representing Diedrick.
If successful, the case could call into question plans by a further 21 police forces who are to scrap the recording of ethnicity during stop and searches in order to save time and money.
One figure of particular interest is that the most recent figures available for stop and searches show that just over two thirds of those stopped in Hertfordshire were white.
According to the Herts and Essex Observer, this is despite whites making up "90 per cent of the county’s population".
So, what about areas in Herts?
Figures from recent 2007 school census reports inform us, for example, that Watford has 40.8% of pupils belonging to a Black Minority Ethnic group. In 2001 that was 24.4%. Pakistanis made up 10.9% of Watfords population at the time of the census.
BME pupil numbers in other areas such as Hertsmere (25.7%), St Albans (22.1%), and Three Rivers (21.5%), certainly indicate that many areas are most definitely not 90% white, or at the very least that a significant number of children/youth/those of child bearing age are not white. Ethnicity aside, it is well documented that age group would also play a significant factor in who was committing local crime.
One has no idea whether Hugh Diedrick was targeted on 'racist' grounds, but it's certainly inaccurate to use a generalised 90% of population is white figure (which one very much doubts is accurate anyway considering the tsunami of colonisation inflicted upon us in recent years) as a 'benchmark' either county or nationwide when certain areas are anything but 90% white, and younger generations are most definitely nowhere near 90% white.
The only two relevant factors would be local population, and who is known to be committing crimes locally. If, for example, black gangs are robbing people at knifepoint, search more blacks. If it's white gangs, search more whites. Simple. And, no doubt, hideously racist in a climate where diversity and tackling prejudice rate far higher than common sense or tackling crime.
As minorities make up more and more of the population as a whole, and younger generations in particular, one would expect stop and search statistics to reflect that. "Disproportionate" as the race Gestapo would say, but in reality just an obvious result of a population changing beyond all recognition.
Minority may well be minority nationally, or even county wide, but on many local levels it is not, it is whites who are already minority or who are fast approaching it, especially among younger generations.
Stop and search statistics will reflect that, and stifled by the cries of racism will be the fact that the figures will really be charting our own march towards minority.
*As a footnote, recording of ethnicity is important - far from scrapping it, one would like to see the ethnicity (and crime/s committed) of every single offender published annually on an easily accesible central database. Not so that people could howl racism, but so that we, the British people, could see a much clearer picture of the avalanche of foreign/minority crime which is blighting our nation.
