Sunday 8 April 2018

Return Of Sus Laws To Stop Crime

It is hardly surprising that the Government don't find their cutting of 27,000 Police Officers and massive cuts to Police budgets to blame for rising crime as the Home Secretary explained this morning from the sandpit where her head was firmly buried.
'Falling police numbers are not to blame for rising violence and a new approach is needed' the Home Secretary said before announcing new laws to be introduced.
The Offensive Weapons Bill will be introduced within weeks and will also make it a criminal offence to possess a corrosive substance in public without good reason or to decant a corrosive liquid from its original well-labelled bottle into any other receptacle.
The sale of acid to under-18s and tougher restrictions on buying knives online are amongst the new measures but the most controversial part is the extension of the police stop and search powers.
'Stop and search is a vital policing tool and officers will always have the Government's full support to use these powers properly' she said but there is the rub in the 'use the powers properly' because those of us of a certain age remember the previous 'sus laws', where police had the power to stop and search anyone if they had a suspicion of an offence had, or is, about to take place.
The suspicion law was scrapped as it revealed that black people were six times more likely to be stopped than whites and the police where condemned for 'institutional racism' for using the law to harass mainly young black men and ethnic minorities.
The new laws are welcomed but the reintroduction of the sus laws which did so much to alienate and target non-whites should be carefully reconsidered and only apply where evidence can be produced and not just left to the whim of the officer who can stop and search anyone they don't like the look of, and history shows that they are anyone who is not white.

3 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
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Falling on a bruise said...

It's the creeping back in of the sus laws which caused so many problems previously which I am concerned about, the further knife and acid restrictions I can support.

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.