Police need to use stop-and-search more, cops and mayor warn

Mayor Sadiq Khan wants greater use of police stop-and-search powers to help stop more Londoners from dying in the street.

The 47-year-old backed calls for police to search more people to quell the city’s escalating violent crime wave that has claimed 55 lives so far this year.

Dramatically fewer people have been searched since Theresa May watered down laws as Home Secretary in 2014, coinciding with an increase in violence.

Mayor Khan promised to reverse the downward trend and make more arrests with a ‘more targeted, intelligence-led’ approach to the ‘invaluable tool’.

‘What you will see over the next few weeks and months is stop-and-search based on suspicion of carrying an offensive weapon going up,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today.

‘[There will be] more arrests as a consequence of this intelligence-led stop-and-search going up and hopefully our city becoming safer.’

His support for the controversial powers came after National Police Chiefs’ Council chairwoman Sara Thornton said police were not using them enough.

The former chief constable said backlash against the controversial powers had gone too far while rates of gun and knife crime surged.

‘I fear some of it is down to a chill effect where officers feel overly cautious about using a power that has been subject to so much political debate,’ she wrote in the .

Fifty five people have been murdered in London so far this year and there were six non-fatal stabbings on just Thursday night into Friday morning.

The use of stop and search fell dramatically with section 60 powers used in London 1,429 times in 2011/12 and failing to only 23 in 2016/17.

Met Police carried out 19,931 stop-and-searches in January and February this year, a drop of some six per cent compared to last year.

Its use also fell just under six per cent in the second half of last year compared to the previous year. 

Met Police Chief Cressida Dick had to insist the force had not lost control of capital’s streets as an extra 300 officers were deployed to badly-hit parts of London.

Ms Thornton, a former chief constable, called for police to be supported in their use of stop-and-search powers in areas worst-hit by violent crime, insisting they were an ‘important tool’ in helping to protect the public.

‘This power may have been used too freely in the past, but the pendulum has now swung too far in the opposite direction,’ she wrote.

‘Our officers must know that we back them to use their powers — lawfully and respectfully, but with confidence.’ 

The rising wave of violent crime meant the number of suspected murders in March was higher than that of New York.

Mayor Khan called on family members and friends of people carrying knives to help tackle the problem.

‘You could be a mum or dad, big brother, big sister, a friend, a girlfriend, a boyfriend who knows somebody carrying a knife, leaving their home with a knife, involved in criminality — there’s no honour in keeping that a secret,’ he said.

‘You should try and prevent that person carrying a knife, leaving home with a knife.’

He defended his actions over the past few days: ‘I have been here working, grappling with this issue, working closely with the Met Police Service and the deputy mayor for policing and crime.’  

On Friday a 30-year-old man was arrested in Hackney over the murder of Tanesha Melbourne-Blake, 17, who was gunned down in Tottenham on Monday.

The teenager was killed in a drive-by attack as she sat chatting with friends in a killing that shocked the capital.

Ms Dick said the spate of violence in the capital was ‘very worrying’, describing the spike as ‘unusual’.

She defended the Met’s record of bringing criminals to justice and said she believed the perpetrators of the recent killings would face the courts.

A section 60 order, granting police stop and search powers across the Borough of Newham, was announced on Friday afternoon.

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