HAMSTRINGING THE POLICE

That a Home Secretary should need to defend the right of police officers to
detain potential criminals is a measure of how distorted the debate has become.

When the Macpherson report was published three years ago, we predicted that
it would lead to a rise in crime. Unfortunately, we have been proved right:
street crime, especially in London, has risen almost directly in proportion
to the decline in stop and search.

Accordingly, David Blunkett has made a statement of what ought to be the
obvious. "Used in a targeted, intelligent way," he said yesterday, "stop
and search can be particularly effective against street robbery, gun crime
and drug dealing."

What other insights can we expect from the Home Secretary? That car alarms
can be particularly effective against vehicle crime? That prison, used in a
targeted, intelligent way, can prevent convicted criminals from reoffending?

Yet the sad truth is that, even as he utters his platitudes, Mr Blunkett is
making stop and search so cumbersome that it is likely to fall into disuse.

As we revealed on Saturday, he intends to force police to record, not only
every stop and search, but every stop - of which there were more than four
million last year. The bureaucracy involved is mind-boggling.

Detaining a suspicious character is already unpleasant enough for a
policeman: he risks verbal abuse and possible violence. Add in a few hours
of form-filling and he is likely not to bother at all.

We would not be contemplating such a move were it not for the injection of
racial politics. During and after the Macpherson inquiry, stop and search
assumed a totemic value.

Changing the rules, or even removing the right altogether, would be the
clearest possible sign that the police had been humiliated by their
traditional enemies on the radical Left.

These agitators wrongly took the support of the black community for granted
- - indeed, the most common instance of racism in the aftermath of Macpherson
was the assumption that most black people were somehow anti-police.

It is true that a relatively large number of black men have been stopped
and searched; but it does not follow that their number is disproportionate.
Proportionate, after all, to what? To the number of black men in England
and Wales as a whole? Or Greater London? Or to the numbers involved in
crime in a particular area? Or to the number matching a suspect's description?

If, in order to demonstrate their egalitarianism, the police decided to
stop and search as many middle-aged women as young men, most of us -
including most young men - would be outraged. And so it is, according to
the editor of Britain's largest black newspaper, with most black people.

It is better, to adapt Sir William Blackstone's observation, for 10
innocent men to be mildly inconvenienced than for one mugger to go
undetected. What is vital is that the police are sensitive, and as civil
with black teenagers as with middle-class whites.

Good behaviour by the police would be encouraged by devolving
responsibility to divisional level and, where possible, to individual
officers. That is how New York solved its crime problem.

Instead, in the police reform Bill currently before the Lords, Mr Blunkett
is going in the opposite direction. Trust the police, Mr Blunkett. They
generally know what they are doing.