UK Metropolitan Police publishes new charter governing stop and search power News
Philius, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
UK Metropolitan Police publishes new charter governing stop and search power

The Metropolitan Police published a new charter on Thursday governing stop and search tactics. The charter guides how the police force should use the tactic.

Some 8,500 Londoners were engaged in producing the report, with the Met hosting events across 32 London boroughs to seek the opinions of those affected by the policy. The Met stated that the tactic captured 17,500 weapons off the streets over the last four years. The force’s efforts to tackle racial tensions arising from the tactic come after Baroness Casey’s review, published in March 2023, found the Met to contain “institutional racism, sexism and homophobia.” The review recommended the creation of such a charter after Baroness Casey described stop and search as requiring a “fundamental reset.”

The charter commits the Met to developing its approach to stop and search, by improving the quality of searches, providing better training for officers, and using artificial intelligence to identify trends in searches.

The Commissioner of the Met, Sir Mark Rowley, stated that the charter “is not about doing less stop and search. It is about doing it better by improving the quality of encounters, informed by the views of the public it is intended to protect.”

Stop and search is a statutory power that allows the police to stop and search someone without necessarily arresting them. Section 1  of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 governs suspicion-based stop and search powers, where a police officer must have “reasonable grounds” for such searches.

Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 created the power to search individuals without having reasonable grounds to suspect that the individual is carrying an offensive or dangerous instrument:

Section 60(5): A constable may, in the exercise of those powers, stop any person or vehicle and make any search he thinks fit whether or not he has any grounds for suspecting that the person or vehicle is carrying weapons or articles of that kind.

The Public Order Act 2023 expanded on suspicion-based and suspicionless stop and search powers by introducing protest-specific offences. For example, an officer may stop and search someone “whether or not the constable has any grounds for suspecting that the person or vehicle is carrying a prohibited object” under section 11(7), with a “prohibited object” being defined as something made or adapted to be used in connection with a protest offence listed in s.11(1)(a).

In 2023-2024, 15,016 knife or sharp instrument offences were recorded in London.

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