By Stewart Tendler, Crime Correspondent
The Times Online - 11th August 2004.
MICHAEL HOWARD’S attack on plans for police to record every occasion on which people are stopped or stopped and searched, echoes the scepticism of rank and file officers who fear new friction with local communities and mountains of paperwork.
The new recording system was proposed six years ago in the report by Sir William Macpherson on the Stephen Lawrence murder and racism within the police.
At the moment police only provide a record if there is both a stop and a search, or if a driver is required to produce papers at a police station.
Sir William supported the continued use of stop and search, but called for all stops as well as searches to be recorded even if no action was taken. An ethnic description of the person stopped would be included in paperwork and a copy given to him or her.
Trials are being run in five forces but from April next year all officers patrolling on the streets will have to fill in new forms or use palm top computers and provide members of the public with receipts. There are already forecasts that up to two million extra records will be generated each year in London alone by the change.
A stop is defined as when “an officer requests a person in a public place to account for themselves — their actions, behaviour, presence in an area or possession of anything.”
Police officers must record the name of the person stopped or a physical description if they will not answer; date, time and place; a vehicle registration if necessary; a reason for the stop; the outcome and the identity of the officer. The whole incident usually lasts about ten minutes and observers have estimated that in 75 per cent of cases filling in the forms took less than five minutes.