Stop & Search (Muslims)

Stop & Search (Muslims)

Yesterday, in desperation and frustration, I shouted “Fuckity Fuckity Fuck!” at my television set. More specifically I shouted “Fuckity Fuckity Fuck!” at the mentally retarded, intellectually stunted, ideologically confused, political commentator warning the government that the police “stop and search” tactics which will be used in an attempt to foil more suicide attacks should not target a disproportionate number of Muslims, and particularly young Muslim men of Asian or African origin. The comments came on the back of a statement by Ian Johnston, Chief Constable of the British Transport Police, in which he openly acknowledged that he would be asking his officers to concentrate on certain categories of commuters as terrorist suspects. There was a furious backlash that has left me, amongst many other common sense loving people, a little bewildered. Something just didn’t add up. Are these people missing what to me is an obvious fact? Allow me to illustrate with a quick quiz.

Who bombed the London underground on 07/07? Was it:
(A) a bunch of rogue circus clowns with exploding noses?
(B) a little old incontinent lady with her zimmer-frame riddled with semtex?
(C) Muslim men of Asian or African origin?

Who was it that attempted to repeat this performance two weeks later? Was it:
(A) The A-Team?
(B) a group of Benedictine monks?
(C) Muslim men of Asian or African origin?

Who is committing 99.99% of all suicide attacks around the world? Is it:
(A) Elvis impersonators?
(B) Donald Duck?
(C) Muslim men of Asian or African origin?

Who flew aeroplanes into the Twin Towers four years ago? Was it:
(A) Biggles?
(B) Migrating Geese?
(C) Muslim men of Asian or African origin?

The debate is insane. Muslim fanatics are mobilising around the world and we are asking ourselves whether our attempts to find, stop and deter them should focus more on the Islamic community than on other groups. Has someone been putting Stupid Powder in the water system? I feel like I’m living in a Monty Python Sketch, only this just isn’t funny at all. It’s surely a no-brainer that the police certainly should focus, albeit not exclusively, on those people who are most likely to be carrying bombs and plotting to kill men, women and children on buses and trains. Unfortunately history tells us exactly which group such nutters are most likely to be members of. In our current context this requires the police to stop and search a “disproportionate” number of men or women of Asian or African origin who are carrying packages or wearing jumpers and bulky coats on a sunny day.

It is obviously true that most people who will be stopped will be entirely innocent. But, why should people feel insulted for being singled out? Shouldn’t they be grateful that the police are doing their utmost to protect them? Shouldn’t they be comforted by the fact that the police are not wasting their time searching little old ladies as they come hobbling out of Harrods? The inconvenience of being searched from time to time is a small price to pay if it helps to deter terrorists from carrying out further attacks. The police must deter and hinder terrorists, something which is more likely to be achieved by targeting those socio-ethnic groups from which the offenders are coming. Innocent Asians and Africans wearing bulky clothing, carrying suspicious looking packages or wearing backpacks are as much at risk from suicide attacks as the rest of us. After all, terrorists do not engage in profiling their victims - anyone will do.

Despite this Hazel Blears, the Home Office Minister, bumbled her way through an interview trying to imply that the police should stop and search anyone else just as much as young Muslim men of Asian or African origin. Obviously her point that the police stop and search strategy should primarily be “intelligence lead” rather than “racially lead” is a valid one, but she seemed to think that this wouldn’t or shouldn’t mean that more Muslims, and particularly young Muslim men, would be affected. Jumping on the loony-bin bandwagon, some commentators have suggested that the police should have to record the race and ethnicity of every single person they stop and search, in order to guarantee that equal numbers of people of all races and religions are affected. I can’t help but think that a number of villages have lost their idiots. Or perhaps that our lunatic asylums should tighten their security. I wonder should we apply this policy to the arrest and imprisonment of people too. For every Asian arrested must we also arrest a white man or woman? If we stick an African in jail must we bang up a white man too? Policing and justice is not concerned with “equality” in this sense. Policing and justice is concerned, rightly, with finding and punishing the people who committed the crime. If more Africans or Asians commit crimes then it is just and right that there would be more arrested and imprisoned.

The fact of the matter is that so-called “profiling” is and has, rightly, long been a standard aspect of policing. For instance, when the IRA was fully engaged in its terror campaign the police were right to pay more attention to Irish and Northern Irish people in Britain rather than wasting their time holding stake-outs at the homes of Welsh farmers or Scottish highlanders. In fact, during the height of the IRA terror campaign you were more likely to be stopped and searched in London if you were a young white male driving a van. And rightly so. Also, when it comes to certain sorts of sexual crimes the police engage in what could be called “gender profiling” - since most sexual crimes are committed by men. Alternatively, “age profiling” might be used in robbery investigations, since very few pensioners scale house walls and climb through open windows. It would be a completely ludicrous waste of time and an abrogation of responsibility if the British Transport Police or the Metropolitan Police were to work on the dishonest assumption that anyone was as likely to be a suicide bomber as the next person.

Unfortunately some bleeding-hearts seem to view “racial profiling” as some obvious sign of “institutional racism.” The fact of the matter is that racial profiling is not a matter of unfair discrimination, nor a matter of racial harassment. It’s simply a matter of probability, of playing the odds. No one is saying that the police target only people of a certain profile. The police should also prepare for the unexpected. It is not inconceivable that a woman might be recruited to the al-Qaeda cause, or that an older person might get a taste of religious zeal, or that a deranged white Anglo-Saxon decide to blow himself to bits on a bus. It would be a good policing strategy, and a shrewd exercise in public relations, to target a number of people “outside the box.” But, for the most part the police are right to focus expensive and limited resources on the group from which all suicide bombers have thus far come from: young Muslim men of Asian or African origin.

The lives of members of the public cannot be put at risk simply to satisfy the sensitivities of any particular group in society. It might be easy for me to say this, since I'm not a young Muslim man of Asian or African origin, but I certainly think that when such crimes are committed mostly by grumpy young blog-writing males, then I will gladly co-operate with the police myself.

Stephen Graham B.Th (Hons)