My daughter has been mugged twice at knifepoint! My son mugged once at knifepoint. Not by white people but by BLACK people.
The general thrust of the writer's argument (let's call him Mr F), seems to be that 1) all black people commit crime, so 2) the police cannot be justifiably called "institutionally racist" in their treatment of them. But rather than hastily dismissing Mr F's outburst as nonsensical, let's consider some of the evidence in one area of historic contention between black communities and the police and consider whether the charge of institutional racism really is justified: the issue of stop and search.
In 1999, when the Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence was published, black people were six times more likely to be stopped and searched compared with white people. Only 13% of black people stopped and searched, from a total of 94,774, were subsequently arrested. The most common reason given for these searches (for both black and Asian people) was drugs.
Today, black people are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people.
Drugs, followed by stolen property, are the most common reasons for these stop and searches for all ethnic groups (including white people). Of the 152,120 black people stopped and searched, 12% were subsequently arrested.
So, what was going on with the remaining 88%? In order to conduct a stop and search (excluding those conducted under the Terrorism Act), police officers are required by law to have "reasonable grounds to suspect" that the person has committed some unlawful act. Therefore, if they weren't arrested and convicted why, in 2007, were the remaining 88% of black people (that's 134,000 in 2007 compared to "only" 83,000 in 1999) stopped and searched? Why were nearly nine in 10 black people wrongly suspected of committing an unlawful act? Why has this ratio not changed over the 10 years since the publication of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry? And, finally, how can the police justify stopping and searching 50,000 more innocent black people today than 10 years ago?
Those, such as Kit Malthouse, who argue that stop and search is an effective crime prevention measure, would do well to look to Lord Scarman's report into the Brixton disorders of 1981. It was the overuse of stop and search measures that sparked tensions which led to the rioting. Yes, there is an issue today with gun and knife crime among black communities (although it is not limited to this group) but stop and search is a reactive and divisive measure. We need to better understand the key issues that result in these forms of antisocial behaviour. We need to take more seriously the issues within school that result in so many young black boys being excluded – the link between school exclusions and social exclusion is already well documented.
So the distracting focus on simply making the stop and search form shorter, as has happened in the past year, misses a key point: we need now to either review the use of stop and search as an effective "intelligence-led" crime reduction strategy, or ask how the police can be better supported to improve their accuracy in suspecting members of the public of some unlawful act.
Starting the debate with the premise that all black people commit crimes leads to the type of stereotypical and divisive conclusions expressed by Mr F and will see black people continue to be unfairly over-represented in what can only be regarded as "sus laws" for the 21st century.