Jane Fae Ozimek reports:
When it comes to wasting police time, the biggest offenders appear to be…the police. That, at least, appears to be the conclusion of the Home Office. Its official statistics, published today, show that while police stopped over 100,000 individuals last year to “prevent acts of terrorism”, there was not a single arrest for a terror offence as a result of these stops.
This perhaps is the final nail in the coffin for the widely criticised section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which gives police forces powers to stop and search individuals – in so-called “designated areas” – to prevent acts of terrorism without the need for reasonable grounds of suspicion. According to today’s report: “In 2009/10, 101,248 stops-and-searches were made under this power.
Read more in The Register.
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