Inside this month issue
Sexual Therapy
Quran on the Clouds
ONE MILLION Issue: 14
May 2009
IN 12 MONTHS Police stood accused of misusing their counter-terrorism powers as latest figures revealed a huge rise in use of stop-and-search powers - with only a tiny fraction leading to an arrest. The number of suspects detained and searched by police using Terrorism Act powers more than trebled last year to 124,687 - equivalent to more than 340 per day. But the massive crackdown led to just 73 people being arrested for a terrorism offence - fewer than one in 1,700 of those stopped. Officers in England and Wales used Terrorism Act powers to search 124,687 people in 2007/8, up from
41,924 in 2006/7 (file picture of a stop and search) Use of the tactics rocketed in the wake of the attempted bombings in London’s West End in 2007, and almost 90 per cent of all the searches were carried out by the Metropolitan Police, which recorded a 300 per cent year-on-year increase. But civil liberty campaigners and opposition MPs warned that the vastly increased use of the powers threatened to alienate large sections of the community and undermine trust in Britain’s police - who are already reeling from the controversy over their handling of the G20 protests.
Use of ordinary stop-and-search police powers also rose sharply for the fourth year in a row to more than a million, reaching the highest figure since 1998. A total of 1,035,438 suspects were stopped and searched under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. In areas where police make most use of the tactic, particularly London, around one person in 19 was stopped and searched last year. But it was the sheer scale of the use of counter-terrorism powers which drew criticism. Out of 124,687 stopped, 1,271 Continued on Page 3