If folks were wondering why the US BoR matters:
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessionid=JBWCVFXQGK3RACRBAE0CFEYKEEATGIWD?type=worldnews&StoryID=684315
By Kate Kelland
LONDON (Reuters) - The British government told police
Monday
to "stop and search" more suspects on the streets in
a crime-busting
move that critics say is racist.
The government hopes an increase in random searches
will cut street
crime and restore public confidence, even if critics
say the powers
could be used to intimidate ethnic minorities.
Home Secretary (interior minister) David Blunkett
said he wanted a
"stop and search program that has the confidence of
the police and
the confidence in the police by the community."
Worried by a surge in violent street crime and stung
by police
complaints that the legal system makes it hard to
convict criminals,
Blunkett is trying to change the perception that the
ruling Labor party
is soft on crime.
Opponents of his order fear that the police,
particularly in London,
may abuse their power by singling out young blacks.
Home Office data show black people are five times
more likely to be
stopped and searched than white people.
London's Metropolitan Police force has come under
close scrutiny
since being branded "institutionally racist" in a
1999 inquiry into its
handling of the murder of black London teen-ager
Stephen
Lawrence, stabbed to death by a gang six years
earlier.
It has since worked hard to clean up its image,
reducing the number
of "stop and search" actions and insisting that a
culture change had
swept through its ranks.
Last year, police in England and Wales stopped and
searched some
853,000 people, down 17 percent on 2000.
Blunkett said Monday he wanted to reverse that trend.
"Used in a
targeted, intelligence-led way, stop and search can
be particularly
effective against street robbery, gun crime and drug
dealing," he said
in a statement.
Michael Eboda, editor of the black newspaper New
Nation,
disagreed, saying he considered stop and search to be
a "an
incredibly inefficient way of cracking down on
crime."
"The problem is that when you harass innocent
individuals -- and we
have to remember that 82 percent of those who are
stopped and
searched have actually done nothing wrong -- then all
you do is
alienate those people," Eboda told BBC radio.
--
Trade with all, make treaties with none, and beware of foreign
entanglements.
-George Washington
